For N. Scott Momaday, life is a journey with both physical and internal, personal components. Both aspects are equally significant for him as a Native American because his culture identifies spiritual features within specific features of the natural landscape. Travel both indicates a literal journey and stands for the inner transformations that he undergoes as he reconnects with the elements of Kiowa culture from which he had been separated. He specifically locates his cultural reawakening with his visit to his grandmother’s grave because she represents the origins of culture. Through accepting her death and making a pilgrimage to her burial place, he enables the personal, cultural rebirth that is crucial for his growth into a complete, adult self.

Momaday’s grandmother, Aho, is especially significant to him through her role as a storyteller, who had taught him their cultural history. Not only the elements that she relayed but the storytelling vocation is significant for him as a writer. In addition, because she was old enough to have lived in an era of great cultural vitality, she represents Kiowa culture as it was before white American policies and practices dismantled their settlements and outlawed their customs. Momaday’s journey, therefore, connects past and future as much as it links discrete places.