Published: September 4, 1996

Desert Bloom

To live in Thoreau, New Mexico, is to know the great unspoken sadness present on American Indian reservations. Last year my wife, Jenny, and I were teachers at a Roman Catholic mission school for Navajo children in Thoreau, on the edge of a Navajo reservation. I taught high school science and P.E.; Jenny taught preschool and kindergarten.

During our time in Thoreau, we were occasionally inspired by the sight of a flower breaching the desert soil. For us, the Navajo children we taught will forever be our sown seeds of hope. Our work at the school was the most gratifying either of us has ever done. The teaching, however, involved wearying struggles that tested us often and at times nearly broke our will to continue.

The classroom where I taught science was a dilapidated trailer with shoddy plumbing that on occasion would spring a leak, leaving the floor under an inch of water. The room would also take in water during autumn's frequent drenching rainstorms. And in spring, violent winds would coat the floors and counters with desert sand and blow out the pilot light in the furnace,...