Montezuma Creek • Every other morning at dawn, just before the sun rises over Sleeping Ute Mountain, Marilyn Holly takes her eight goats out to graze. With the help of a sheepdog, she guides the herd through the clumps of greasewood and rabbitbrush near her home, fattening them on the desert vegetation of the northern Navajo Nation.
Holly, who is vice president of the Navajo Nation’s Red Mesa Chapter and chairwoman of the San Juan County Democratic Party, has a permit to graze the animals on an allotment extending northeast from her homesite to the San Juan River that she utilizes on the days she doesn’t feed them grain.
The field was discovered in 1956, a few years after Holly was born. As a child, her brothers used to climb on the bobbing pump jacks and ride them like carnival attractions. Over 430 million barrels of oil have been extracted from the region over the past 60 years, and although production has declined in recent decades, the signs of the industry are everywhere.
Walking the 100 yards from Holly’s front door to her goat pen requires stepping over three aboveground pipelines that crisscross through her neighborhood. Some of the pipes lie broken and abandoned. Others, still in use, hum with flowing crude oil or natural gas.
In places, gullies have eroded from underneath the rusting pipelines where they sag unsupported. Evidence of small past ruptures are apparent, both in the repair patches that have been put on the lines, and in the oil-stained ground underneath.
Read More: Utah oil field leaves a mixed legacy for members of the Navajo Nation
