While planning our Arizona trip (when the Navajo Nation was still shut down to tourism), I heavily considered skipping Monument Valley altogether. But a few months later, after taking a tour of the backcountry with our amazing guide, Don, I can't believe I ever had second thoughts about visiting this magical place. Upon returning to the welcome center, all of us felt like professionally trained photographers, historians, and most of all, family -- part of the "Dine'," connected to the sublime scenery that surrounded us in every direction, as well as the kindhearted people who inhabit it. This, all thanks to one of the most knowledgeable and stimulating minds I have ever encountered, in Don.