Five days a week, a young Navajo named Adrian Jackson pulls on a red shirt and cowboy hat and drives up a dirt road to John Ford's Point in Monument Valley. Then he spends the day sitting atop a horse named Pistol, trying to look epic, meeting travelers from around the world and helping them take pictures of one another sitting atop Pistol.
A photo by the jewelry tables? $2. Out on the point with the big vista? $5.
This is the family business.
John Cly did the job in the early 20th century. (You can see his red shirt, silver hair and furrowed brow, as photographed long ago by Josef Muench, in the tourist booklet "Monument Valley: The Story Behind the Scenery.")
After Cly came Adrian's grandfather, Frank Jackson, who did the job (again in red shirt) for about 40 years before his death in 2009. That's when Albert Jackson, Adrian's father, inherited the business and invited his son to handle the horse much of the time.
Adrian Jackson, 24, didn't always have this in mind. He went to college in Phoenix to study electrical engineering. But he's back, applying his considerable charm when a Goulding's tour van rolls up and tourists climb out, savoring the landscape when it's quiet.
"It's pretty cool," he says, "when the fog comes in and starts covering the rocks."
Often as Jackson works with the horse, girlfriend Myra Watchman is nearby selling jewelry or tending to their 2-year-old daughter, Amaya.
As for Pistol, 29 years old, succession plans are in place. Jackson estimates that Pistol is the fifth horse to do the job, which requires supreme equine calm. (Much of the time, the horse stands on a narrow outcropping above a 50-foot drop, with a tourist on its back.)
"After Pistol is gone, we have three horses who are going to alternate. So they won't wear out so fast," Jackson said. "They're a lot of fun to train."
