Against the black night, the darker-than-night silhouettes of Monument Valley buttes graced the horizon. Overhead, stars were scattered across the sky—a prank by Coyote, according to Navajo legend—and the stripe of Milky Way stars arced brilliantly across the sky from the southwest to the northeast horizon.

It was a cold night in northeastern Arizona on the Colorado Plateau, and our group of photographers huddled deeper in our jackets with cameras ready. I kept checking the time on my phone. We knew we were in the right spot; it was just a matter of watching the Milky Way and waiting for the Galactic Center — the center of our galaxy — to flare above the horizon.

Ten minutes. Five minutes. Then it was the predicted moment, and nothing seemed to change. It’s a moment to consider what ancestral people on this very spot would have thought seeing the blaze of golds, reds, blues and all the colors of the stars of our galaxy that come into view. The suspense kept building.

Across the valley came the occasional call of a night bird in flight, mingling with the low murmur of conversations among the photographers and the periodic click of shutters as cameras were tested and adjusted. As if we needed a reminder that we were in the wilds of red rock country, far off to the west a pack of coyotes howled.

Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona is a little west of U.S. 191, but offers impressive night skies/NPS, Jacob Holgerson file

“Here it comes,” one of the photographers far to the right shouted.

We all gathered behind our tripod-mounted cameras as the blaze of stars poked up from the horizon. Centered in the viewfinder was King On His Throne Butte, a formation running on the northern edge of the Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park. The Milky Way Core was so bright, it backlit the butte silhouettes. 

Click. Click. Click. The night echoed with the whirr of camera shutters, followed by oohs and aahs when the photographers saw the displayed images. Because cameras capture a wider range of colors and are more sensitive to light than the human eye, our photos captured the dazzling colors of the Milky Way. 

For the ancients millennia ago, the lack of pollution enabled them to discern the galaxy’s colors, G. B. Cornucopia, a retired archeoastronomer at Chaco Culture National Historical Park, once told me.

Tribal Stories

More than 4,000 years before the Greeks named the constellations, the original people of North America taught their young using clusters of stars to recount sacred stories of how and why the stars were placed in the sky.

Often central to the story is Coyote. For the Navajo in the Southwest, Coyote is the one who scattered the stars across the heavens. Similar accusations are made against the animal by the Sioux, the Wasco, and other tribes.

According to Navajo legend, the gods told Rabbit to place the stars in the sky. They gave him a blanket with all the stars, which Rabbit placed in beautiful, meaningful patterns. But then Coyote came by and ruined the sky by upsetting the patterns.

That said, there appear to be no central threads to the different tribal stories.

“Every tribe has their own sacred stories of the sky,” said Travis Novitsky, a professional photographer and member of the Grand Portage Anishinaabe Nation of the Ojibwe people. “Take the Big Dipper. Almost everybody has their own interpretation of what it means to their culture. For the Ojibwe people, it was a fisher, which is in the weasel family.”

For the Navajo, known as the Diné, living in the Dinétah, a nation covering portions of three states, what Westerners call the Big Dipper is their First Man.

The Milky Way over Cataract Canyon In Canyonlands National Park/Kurt Repanshek file

The Tohono O’odham see that same cluster of stars as the kui’pad, the long-handled tool they made for harvesting bahidaj, the fruit of the Saguaro cactus.

Stargazing is a family activity that provides exceptional opportunities to study the sky through ancestral eyes, setting aside modern Greek interpretation.

“We call it ‘himadag,’ sharing the traditional life,” said Jacelle Ramon-Sauberan, tribal member and NOIRLab Kitt Peak National Observatory Tohono O’odham education development liaison. “Storytelling takes place in the cool and cold months to bring families together.”

She said her Tohono grandfather would read the night sky to her. More than stories, the tribe’s star stories were a calendar telling when to plant, harvest, and schedule festivals.

“In family heritage, find the hero’s journey,” Ramon-Sauberan suggests if you want to create your own stories. “Think of the chores, the energy, a relation to nature, wind and sky, and the moral. These are all you need to start creating a family story in the stars.”

More than a dozen tribes have traditional lands through which the “Stargazer Highway” passes, and each has sacred tribal legends explaining the stars in the skies and lessons, consequences, and morals on Earth.

These stories await today under the darkest skies in America along the highway, better known as U.S. 191, and many of its side roads. The road runs 1,545 miles (2,486km) from Mexico to Canada through Arizona, Utah, Wyoming, and Montana, passing 24 national parks, monuments, and tribal parks.

Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park in Colorado is east of U.S. 191, but it's dark night skies are perfect for astrophotography/NPS, G. Owens

This summer, there are six opportunities to pick a park along U.S. 191 to experience an ideal mix of no moon, dark skies, and the Milky Way. The bonus is that, instead of having to be out and awake at 2 a.m., the Galactic Center is visible at a reasonable hour no matter where you plan to stargaze in North America.

With nearly all nights centered on weekends, the fiery, star-packed-like-a-cloud Galactic Center should be visible in clear skies for one to two hours on both sides of midnight.

Dan Zafra, a professional photographer who specializes in both landscape and astrophotography, said that it’s not necessary to be a pro to make family memories with star photos.

“Years ago, it was literally impossible (to photograph stars) with your phone. It was like a blur of dark, very bad pictures,” said Zafra. “With the latest models, (you) can get some decent images for the casual astrophotographer for a memory or a portrait with the family. ... I was in Alaska and tried some (Aurora) Borealis shots with the iPhone. It was great; it’s not professional work, but it’s for the memory.”

He does stress that “you need a tripod, even for a phone. And you need to keep the (shutter) open.”

Shutters on the iPhone should be kept open about 15 to 20 seconds. After 22 seconds, the stars' movement becomes visible.

The largest, darkest, cluster of the parks is in southeastern Utah, from Canyonlands National Park near Moab to Bears Ears National Monument and Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park, both close to Mexican Hat, Utah.