I decided to visit Canyon de Chelly after my first weaving workshop on the Navajo Reservation. Our workshop facilitator scheduled a trip to the canyon during our weeklong class, but I skipped the trip and stayed behind to weave instead.

Luckily for me, I didn’t miss much. The spring rains flooded the streambed and turned the canyon floor to mud, and the tour never made it to its final destination: Spider Rock, the home of Spider Woman.

What I know about Spider Woman I have had to learn from books and the internet. Even though my great-grandmother was a weaver and traditional adviser, she passed away years before I returned to the reservation; as did my grandmother; as did my mother. My traditional knowledge is borrowed, secondhand.

But here is what I feel comfortable telling you: In Diné Bahane’, the Navajo creation story, Spider Woman is the holy one who gave us the gift of weaving. She gave us the Beauty Way. It is impossible to translate hózhó directly into English, to understand the full weight of beauty. Beauty is health and...