Society
Tuesday, February 14th, 2023: Relationships, Society.
Exactly thirty years ago I had the best Valentine’s day ever.
We’d fallen madly in love a year and a half earlier, and had just reunited after a brief crisis and a few weeks’ separation.
Over the winter holidays, I’d helped her pick out a blue satin party dress. And for Valentine’s Day I gave her a dozen red roses. I know, conventional, but after the last few weeks, I wasn’t taking any chances! She set them on her side of our bed in her apartment on Grand Avenue in Oakland’s old Adams Point neighborhood, a block from Lake Merritt.
We both had the day off, and we packed our evening clothes into my Geo Tracker, and dressed for a day outdoors. We drove north through Berkeley and Richmond to the Richmond Bridge, and from there to Tiburon, where we parked and rode the ferry across the Raccoon Strait to Angel Island. It was a cool, blustery, but sunny day.
We rented mountain bikes at the landing on the island, and spent the day riding over and around the eucalyptus-clad hills together. The sparkling Bay surrounded us on all sides, with sailboats running and tacking, the white city of San Francisco sprawling over its own hills in the distance, the Golden Gate a window onto the vast western ocean.
In late afternoon we caught the return ferry to Tiburon, where we changed clothes in the Tracker – her satin dress rustling in the back seat.
Guaymas, the Bay Area’s fancy Mexican restaurant, was right next to the ferry terminal and parking lot, and I’d made a reservation. We chose a table on the outside deck overlooking the Bay, and were seated as the sun began to set.
After our drinks were delivered, the mariachis made a beeline for our table. My partner was Mexican-American, and she requested “Sabor a Mi”.
Our dinner was fabulous as usual.
We drove back to Oakland.
All I’ll say about Valentine’s night is that it literally couldn’t have been better.
Tuesday, March 14th, 2023: Coronado, Hikes, Indigenous Cultures, Society, Southeast Arizona.
I set out simply hoping to escape the snow in our local mountains – and ended up enduring hardship and danger in a remote, exotic landscape, to finally discover an ancient mystery.
City people think of mines as 19th century phenomena and copper as a 19th century commodity. But all the electronic and mechanical devices and machines we use are made of natural materials mined from holes in the ground that used to be natural habitat.
Electric cars use up to ten times the copper of conventional cars. Solar plants and wind farms consume massive amounts of copper. Mines and copper aren’t the past – they’re the future our colonial lifestyles and worship of progress have committed us to.
I live in a copper mining town – I can’t ignore or deny our impact on nature. It hurts me deeply to see these gaping wounds where wildlife and indigenous people once flourished, former heavens we’ve turned into toxic hells. 24-hour factories manned by dark-skinned laborers who are taught that they’re making life better for the rest of us. Hells we enlightened white professionals tend to avoid while fantasizing that our progressive lifestyles are saving nature.
As huge as our local mines are, they’re nothing compared to the ten-mile-long monstrosity over in Arizona. I was interested in trails in the mountains just north of the mine, but they were far enough away that I’d need places to eat and stay overnight after the hike, in or near the forbidding company town.
After weeks of sporadic research, I discovered a refurbished historic hotel in the quaint village below the mine town, reserved a room and put together some information on the closest of the trails. The topography of those mountains is incredibly complex – it’s not even a named mountain range, it’s just a confusing region of countless ridges and peaks, ranging from just below 4,000′ to just above 8,000′, rising between the valleys of a south-trending small river in the east and a south-trending large creek in the west.
A narrow, vertiginous paved highway leads north through the open-pit mine and up into the mountains, where it follows sinuous ridgelines for about another 50 miles to the base of the Mogollon Rim, finally climbing the Rim to the 9,000′ alpine plateau.
According to my topo map, the trail I wanted starts about 8 miles north of the mine, on a north-south ridgetop at 6,200′, surrounded by higher ridges and peaks. Trending generally westward, it first circles the head of a small north-south canyon then climbs to a high saddle on the next north-south ridge. This high saddle is the divide between two landscapes.
The first landscape is the north-trending corridor beginning with the mine and continuing up the highway. The second landscape, past the high saddle, appeared on the map as a long, broad valley descending westward between two east-west ridges.
Past the saddle, the trail appeared to descend this valley along the foot of its northern wall, through lower-elevation habitat I expected to consist mostly of exposed grass-and-shrublands. The entire trail was variously listed at 10-11 miles one-way, too long for an out-and-back day hike this far from home, so I planned to go only as far as conditions and time allowed – ideally 7 or 8 miles.
I usually avoid trails that start by descending and return by climbing, but beggars can’t be choosers. I do seek elevation gain, and while the map showed this trail descending from 6,200′ at its start to 4,200′ at its end, when I plotted it, the cumulative elevation gain over a 7-mile segment turned out to be more 4,000′. I would learn the reason for this soon enough.
I found little online information – this trail seemed seldom-used. I did find, in one old hiking trip report, mention of a prehistoric Native American pictograph site somewhere above that western segment of the trail below the east-west ridge, along with some vague, poorly shot photos. They didn’t clearly identify the location, which was both good for the site and bad for me, but they mentioned springs and black water piping left by a rancher in the vicinity.
Sunday’s sky was forecast to be mostly clear with scattered clouds and a high in the mid-60s. The drive took longer than expected, but in crossing the state line, I regained the hour I’d lost at home with daylight savings time.
As I drove through the mine, house-sized trucks and apartment-building-sized shovels operated in the distance, so dwarfed by the scale of the pits that I could barely discern them. But on the highway itself, I encountered virtually no traffic, nor on the narrow, winding, crumbling road with sheer drop-offs and no guard rails that climbs out of the mine canyon into the mountains. After pulling over briefly to check my map, I easily found the turnoff for the trail, a high-clearance dirt track. The map I’d brought showed the trail starting at the highway, but I decided to drive up the dirt road a ways instead.
The dirt road led to a ridgetop saddle with a big cleared parking area, where I found four pickup trucks with camper shells parked at random and 8-10 young people milling about with miscellaneous gear piled on the ground. Yikes! But their trucks were old and they were drably and cheaply dressed – not in the latest styles from REI – so I could tell they weren’t typical yuppie adrenaline seekers. And they were largely ignoring me, looking a little dazed like they’d just gotten up.
I parked and asked the nearest guy where they were from and what they were up to. He said they were near the end of a ten-day trip, mostly from Montana. They’d been in my hometown last week, and were planning a two-night backpack on this trail. He said he’d hiked it back in 2007 – but they all appeared to be in their early-to-mid twenties so he must’ve been about eight years old then. He mentioned the pictograph site and said it was right above a corral, with a black plastic water pipe running straight up to the site. That’s where they were heading and planning to camp.
As we were talking, one of the pickups drove away, back toward the highway. Perplexed, I thanked the young guy for the information, shouldered my pack, and headed off. It was chilly but sunny, so I tied my sweater around my waist, hoping the exercise and sun would keep me warm. I’d gathered from the old trip report that the trail began as a two-track mine road. Descending steeply into a narrow canyon through scrub and open pinyon-juniper-oak woodland, it was deeply eroded and blocked sporadically by boulders. The only tracks I found were from horses and a couple of hikers, from a week or more ago when the trail had been wet and muddy.
I began to realize that I’d misinterpreted distances on the topo map. I knew that in this first part of the trail the mine would remain visible on my southern horizon, but once I got past that high saddle it would be hidden and I would be in a new, wild, yet unseen world. Now, I began to realize that the high saddle was going to be much farther than I’d expected. This old road wound in and out of side drainages and forested habitat, traversing up and down steep grades, from which I couldn’t even glimpse the far ridge with the high saddle.
I was surprised to find Arizona cypresses on east-facing slopes. I have a couple of big ones in my backyard, but I’d never encountered them in the wild. Here, they were mixed in with pinyon, juniper, and oaks. From a distance, they looked much like firs or spruces, but at much lower elevation.
Eventually the road took me up over a low, rounded, exposed ridge, where a cold wind yanked my hat off. I was discouraged to realize I needed to drop into yet another deep side drainage before climbing toward the high ridge. I hadn’t noticed any of this up-and-down stuff on the map.
The old road ended at the bottom of the drainage, at a muddy, nearly dry stock pond and a low earthen dam. Below the dam I found a dilapidated trail sign pointing to an almost completely overgrown single track. This followed a trickle of water a few hundred yards to the edge of a cliff with fairly spectacular rock formations. From there, instead of climbing to the high saddle, the trail continued to descend, rounding an outlying shoulder where I found myself facing a dense forest across yet another narrow canyon. My high saddle was still hidden somewhere even farther above.
The farther I went, the steeper the climbs I faced. The next climb entered the forest, which turned out to be an almost pure stand of Arizona cypress. The grueling climb was only partly compensated by the botanical novelty. Disorienting, the cypresses felt like an alpine forest from three or four thousand feet higher – strange and mysterious. I saw the occasional pinyon or alligator juniper, but mostly just the stately cypresses, their branches densely interwoven.
Somewhere in that climb, the horse and hiker tracks ended and I seemed to be on virgin trail. By my watch I figured I’d gone a couple miles. I eventually climbed out of the forest and found myself facing east across a mile of intervening drainages to the cleared saddle where I’d parked. I could see my vehicle, but all the Montana pickup trucks seemed to be gone. Why had they given up on their trip?
The trail then curved to my right onto a south slope which was mostly scrub, facing the distant mine. Then, surprisingly, the trail began to descend again, rounding several more shoulders, still overlooking the mine to the south, before I finally spotted what must be the dividing ridge holding the high saddle.
This required yet another steep climb, but it was a huge relief to finally reach the little saddle which marked the divide between the “mine” side and the western backcountry I’d worked so hard to reach. It had taken me an hour and a half and more than three miles of steep up and down climbing.
The trail past the saddle was as steep as anything I’d faced so far, and much rockier. But gaps in the forest began to reveal a new world of endless western views and, to my right, the south slope of a ridge banded with red and white cliffs and ledges.
I’d left the cypress forest behind and was now dropping from open pinyon-juniper-oak woodland onto shallower grassy slopes dotted with shrubs. The narrow track got fainter and more overgrown, but I was reassured by the periodic appearance of long-established cairns.
The temperature remained in the low 60s, and a cold wind was hitting these open slopes so I had to tie my hat down tight. But the sun kept me warm.
I’d completely misinterpreted the map on this side, too. I’d expected the trail to descend a long valley westward along the foot of a high east-west ridge. The high ridge was there on my right, but a seemingly endless series of drainages cut southward from it, dissecting the valley into a seemingly endless series of rounded humps and deep gullies. My trail would have to climb down into and up over them like a rollercoaster. I was still hoping to find the pictographs, but I couldn’t imagine where anyone would put a corral in that convoluted landscape.
At this elevation, both catclaw acacia and honey mesquite grew together along the trail, and before long my skin, shirt, and pants all bore numerous scratches.
Up and down I went, over and over again, on a nearly invisible trail lined with sharp embedded rocks that had me stumbling and cursing. At several points I had to stop and spend minutes scouting among the dense, dry grasses for the trail ahead. In a few spots with bare dirt atop low ridges, I found the tracks of a man in sneakers who’d walked this way during a wet period, more than a week ago. Apart from him, no one.
Finally I reached the rounded top of the highest intervening hump and faced a big side canyon that cut far into the high ridge on my right. I found it on my map – it would require another steep downclimb of several hundred feet, and another steep ascent on the other side. Great.
I figured I’d gone five miles so far and simply had no chance of reaching the corral – which was also marked on my map – or the pictograph site. It was a beautiful day and this was a spectacular landscape, but it’d been one of the hardest hikes I could remember.
However, I still had time, so I carefully descended the dangerous, rock-strewn trail to the dense riparian corridor in the canyon bottom, where I found a creek carrying clear, ice-cold snowmelt.
Unfortunately, the trail seemed to end at the creek. The only clue was an old sign pointing downstream to a spring – apparently the creek is normally dry. I followed a faint path to where it ended at the bank of the creek. I crossed and saw a dim opening in the dense vegetation ahead, and shortly came to a tiny clearing where a barely discernable track switchbacked up the dark slope through the trees. Emerging from the riparian canopy, I found myself in what looked like a very steep, rock-filled erosional gully, but I kept climbing, and soon emerged on the familiar, overgrown, rocky, almost completely hidden single-track. A cold wind again threatened to take my hat, and I faced more rollercoaster ridges and steep climbs ahead.
The cairns had ended and I was left with only my routefinding skills. And past the big canyon, trail conditions deteriorated further, with the thorns of both catclaw and mesquite often blocking my way. With no hope of reaching the pictograph site, but with a little time still remaining before I had to turn back, I forged ahead as best I could. The rock “bluffs” above on my right were getting taller and more spectacular.
And after climbing up and down several more side drainages, I finally reached a deeper one where the trail really seemed to end. I explored a few options, but they all terminated in catclaw thickets and piles of rocks. Suddenly, returning from one of these forays, I noticed something bright red in the distance, just above the trail I’d arrived on.
It turned out to be a jumble of plastic cord, and next to it was a loose pile of galvanized water pipe, all stashed under a little tree. Scouting around a little I also found some loose lengths of black plastic pipe.
No corral – not even the hint of level ground on this high slope – but could this be the departure point to the pictograph site? I had no more time left – but shouldn’t I at least make an effort to find the water pipe descending from the bluffs?
I returned to the bottom of the steep little gully. Above me, giant boulders blocked the drainage below the cliffs. I laboriously climbed a little ways up, getting more and more discouraged in the boulder-choked drainage. But then I saw the black water pipe, draped over a boulder above! This had to be it!
It was obviously going to be a brutal climb, and I was sure that if I continued, I’d be stuck trying to find my way back to the vehicle in the dark. But I had a headlamp, and the last hour and a half of trail should be easy to follow. So I continued.
Having started in the gully, which was getting deeper, with sheer walls, I had to do some really dangerous moves to follow the pipe out of it onto the 45 degree, catclaw-choked slope above. From there, it was a long, slow, dangerous scramble toward the foot of the cliff, which loomed at least 150′ tall. But I was now absolutely sure this was the place – it matched what I’d read in the old hikers’ trip report, and I could tell there was an overhang and a ledge up there under the cliff.
Interestingly, although the pipe had clearly been abandoned, and surplus sections of it littered the slope, when I came to a tee fitting with shutoff valves, water was leaking out abundantly. It was still connected to the source, somewhere above.
Emerging onto the ledge below the bluff, I immediately spotted the pictographs, and the cave behind them, with its two seeps. The previous hikers had called it an Anasazi site, showing typical ignorance. But as I approached these signs from the deep past, my whole body registered its presence in a sacred place, starting with the tingling in my spine. I hadn’t felt like this since my last trip to Utah.
Canyon wrens cried and cliff swallows wheeled above as I explored the cave and the long ledge. It was blanketed with old cowpies and strewn with ranchers’ debris, but the rock writing was undisturbed. This was the most remote and little-known major site I’d ever found.
The Forest Service map I carried showed the corral nearly a mile west of here, in a fairly level spot. The 16-year-old memories of the Montana folks had understandably been a little rusty. But I was more curious about the water pipe, and the seeps under the cliff. This is normally a very dry area – the creeks and springs were running now after our wet winter, but would there really be a water source here, high on this slope, year-around? That would certainly explain the pictographs as well as the water pipe, and make this a precious site in more ways than one.
At this point, I no longer cared that I was late. But I was facing a really dangerous descent from the ledge, followed by a long climb to the high saddle, with countless brutal ups and downs before and after – hence the over 4,000′ cumulative elevation gain. My first job was to avoid injury on the way back down to the trail.
Taking it slow, I made it down safely, and vowed to take it easy on the entire return. But my left foot condition had been triggered for the first time in almost a year. I’d switched to winter boots in June when our monsoon started early, and when monsoon transitioned to snows I’d kept wearing them until now. Those boots have the stiffest available soles, but today I’d reverted to my old favorites, Goretex boots with slightly more flexible soles, and my foot was not happy. My knee was complaining, too.
If I took a pain pill, I would dehydrate faster, and with the arduous climbing in warmer temps, I was already running low on water. So when I reached the creek in the big side canyon, I stopped to fill and zap a liter bottle with my Steri-Pen. It was cold and delicious, and I popped a pain pill for my knee and foot.
After the steep climb out of that canyon onto the next shoulder, as I started down into the next drainage, I was surprised by voices. A twenty-something girl, wearing a bundle of fine rings through her nasal septum, appeared out of the scrub, followed by three tall young guys. As we talked, I learned they were part of the group with the pickup trucks. They said their other friends had had to leave early. I started raving about the pictograph site, but the girl said she’d also been here in 2007. I found myself liking them more and more for their cheap, well-worn gear and outfits. They were taking ten-day camping trips instead of competing for high-paying desk jobs. But I remained mystified about what they’d been doing all day, and why they’d gotten such a late start.
I continued and got lost in a badly overgrown area, wasting about 20 minutes scouting in several directions before relocating the trail. The final climb out of this remote backcountry to the high saddle seemed endless.
Once past the saddle, although it would still be a rollercoaster with brutal grades, on average it would be downhill – at least until the final climb to the parking area. I was mostly in shadow now and had to pull on my sweater. And those cypress forests were downright gloomy.
Most of the trees were less than 20 years old – many tall snags stood among them, but they hadn’t been killed by fire, so their deaths remained a mystery. The new trees and seedlings formed impenetrable thickets.
In the broad drainage before the final climb, another old two-track takes off north. I assumed it led to abandoned mine works. But checking the map again that night, I saw that it has its own Forest Service trail name and number – the Crystal Cave trail. It’s only a tenth of a mile long. But I couldn’t find any information on it online. More intrigue.
I’d hiked through time, from our misbelief that copper mining is an industry of the past, to our deluded future of “clean, green, renewable” technologies that rape Paradise and turn it into a toxic Hell, to the not-so-distant antiquity of sustainable indigenous culture. And back again.
I’d gained more elevation than on any hike since last October, before the winter snowstorms. Preparing to return to the mine town to look for dinner and my hotel room, I wasn’t sure whether I envied the backpackers, or should consider camping on these Arizona day hikes instead of sleeping indoors.
The fact is, whereas city people plan backpacking trips once or twice a year, and do the rest of their hiking in crowded parks near town, I get to do these remote day hikes every Sunday. Turning them into backpacks would subtract several days a week from the work I desperately need to finish at home, and camping overnight would reduce the time left for hiking – I’d have to return earlier to set up camp and cook. Although I do envy backpackers when I meet them, I get much more wilderness hiking in, week to week – and I still do longer camping and backpacking trips once or twice a year.
The sun set as I was driving back through the mine. I turned off into the company town for the first time, found the sole restaurant, where I orded dinner to go, and grabbed beer at the nearby supermarket. Architecture and infrastructure were functional, bare-bones, but well-maintained.
Then, in full dark, I located my hotel in the old village below. I was exhausted, sore, and starving. The little building, which is not staffed, and in which I was apparently the only registered guest, was dark and locked up for the night. I had the code but couldn’t figure out how to operate the coded entry, so I had to call and wait for the manager to show up and let me in.
After dinner and a shower, I was still so excited about the hike, I finally had to take a sleeping pill, sometime long after midnight.
Canyon of the Long Skinny Creature
Sunday, March 19th, 2023: Hikes, Indigenous Cultures, Lower Box, Society, Southwest New Mexico.
After last week’s false spring, our weather got cold and wet again. I’d done a midweek hike on a muddy trail and wasn’t up for any more of that.
And after last week’s Arizona pictograph hike, I’d done some more research on the “high desert” area along the border, a large, remote region I’d previously ignored. There weren’t any trails there, but there were some buttes I could probably bushwhack, and by chance I learned about a canyon with petroglyphs. It would require an overland approach in unfamiliar terrain, and I couldn’t actually tell if the canyon itself was passable, but I’d give it a try.
I expected the petroglyph hike to be short, so afterward I hoped to drive north to the buttes and get some real mileage and elevation in.
There was frost on my windshield when I left the house – really unusual for this time of year. And our windy season starts in March – we were forecast to get gusts in the 40s.
The sky was mostly clear with high clouds. It took me an hour to reach the turnoff onto the first dirt road – as usual my topo map had it mislabeled, so I wasted 10 or 15 minutes looking for it. Once on the right road, I passed a Fish & Game truck, then found the next turn, onto a winding, high-clearance ranch road that turned out to be in terrible shape, with dozens of washouts. That road took me over a low rise, then down into the broad alluvial valley of our famous river. The road was so bad I averaged less than 15 mph.
Then I reached the final turn, onto a dirt track that hadn’t been driven in a year or more. It was even worse than the previous one – there were parts I could’ve walked faster than I drove. But I continued, through an old wire-and-branch gate that had almost dry-rotted apart, until I finally reached a dry wash where the track completely disappeared.
My topo map showed a couple of major tributaries approaching the canyon from this direction. I was hoping this dry wash was one of them, and sure enough, I immediately found the tracks of recent hikers. They’d come down the wash from much farther east – like the vast majority of urban hikers, they were probably driving a Subaru or some other low-clearance vehicle that couldn’t handle the track I drove.
I figured it would be a little over a mile to the main canyon. I was walking in deep, dry sand, which is no fun, but at this latitude and elevation, I was surrounded by familiar plants – honey mesquite, catclaw acacia, and best of all, really healthy creosote bush – so I almost felt like I was back home in the Mojave. I had to keep slowing down – my normal pace doesn’t work in sand.
This tributary, cut through alluvial deposits, finally reached a bedrock layer of conglomerate where it tightened and dropped through a slot. Around a few more bends and I was at the main canyon.
The main canyon started shallow and wide, but as it twisted back and forth it soon got deeper, and I reached a broad central area featuring old cottonwoods, living and dead. Water appeared flowing on the surface, green with algae.
Past there, it began to feel more like the canyons of Utah, with tilted strata rising from underground, water running over sculpted bedrock, and finally a slot canyon, where I had to climb down several short pouroffs.
Past the slot canyon, I carefully picked my way across a long, flood-sculpted ledge and found myself at the edge of an overhang, looking down at a deep emerald pool.
The ledge ended in a sort of ramp that I shuffled down on my butt. And turning to look at the pool, I discovered the first petroglyph panel, in a niche of a boulder overhanging the water.
Walking down the canyon from the pool, I immediately saw another petroglyph panel at the base of an outcrop on my right. To my left, high above the wash, I spotted a big white petroglyph at the base of cliffs. And straight ahead was the river, muddy and racing along in flood.
I walked toward the end of the wash, but soon got bogged down in mud. So I began climbing the left slope toward the petroglyph I’d seen above. The surface was a sort of flaky, treacherous shale dotted with catclaw.
The first thing I noticed was that there were two layers of carvings, one ancient, patinated, and dim, and the other much more recent, in high-contrast white. Unfortunately I’d arrived at noon, and the sun was casting a shadow that divided the panel. So I ate lunch and waited for the shadow to move.
What I was most interested in was the left side of the main panel. There were two tall images in parallel – a sort of ladder, spine, or trunk with branches, and what looked like a long skinny lizard with the head of a bird wearing horns like a sheep. They were obviously designed together to convey a single message.
From my lofty perch, I watched hawks wheeling on thermals over the riparian corridor. This whole valley is a wildlife sanctuary and wilderness study area, and is known for its exceptional bird diversity. But the more time I spent up there, the more I noticed the lichen.
Finally I got the shadow and pictures I wanted, and made my way back down, to check out the smaller panel across the wash. It had the same two layers, likely separated by thousands of years. So-called “rock art” is mostly ignored by scientists, and relegated to amateurs, who divide it into regional and temporal styles. But indigenous people recognize it as writing, and the rock writing I’ve seen is a continuum spanning the West, sharing a common vocabulary.
A gale-force wind was blowing straight up the canyon as I started back. I had to lean into it.
The wind was a little less harsh when I turned off into the tributary wash. There, I began to pay more attention to the year’s first wildflowers.
When I finally reached the vehicle, I discovered I’d spent 3-1/2 hours on a 4-1/2 mile hike. That’s partly because I was walking in soft sand, which probably requires 50% more energy than walking on a hard surface. It’d also taken me an hour to drive 9 miles on those bad roads. So there was no time left for a hike in the buttes to the north. But I drove up there anyway, and found that my map again had the roads mislabeled, so I couldn’t find the one I needed.
I arrived home after being gone for 8 hours, most of which was driving. And as soon as I got out of the vehicle I could smell the creosote bushes, which had scraped my fenders and doors on that abandoned track. Best thing I’d smelled in months!
Friday, June 2nd, 2023: 2023 Trips, Colorado Plateau, Indigenous Cultures, Regions, Road Trips, Society.
Day three was my birthday, and I wanted to avoid driving, so I just relaxed in my room, writing about day two and trying to figure out what to do next. On the dozen or so previous visits I’d made to this region, I’d seen all the famous and easily-accessed petroglyph and pictograph sites. More remote “rock art” locations used to be shown on AAA maps, until it became obvious that the general public saw this as an invitation to vandalize.
Since then, people who care about these artifacts have generally avoided publishing their locations. In addition to climate change, the spread of invasive species, and the breakdown of local communities, vandalism is one of the many tragic consequences of our mechanically-enhanced mobility. Giving random strangers access to the locations of prehistoric sites truly is an invitation to vandalize in a society with such poor social controls as ours. And if you care about these things, you really should get to know and establish trust with the local people who know where they are, before even thinking about looking for them.
But for this trip I’d been able to round up a few online accounts of lesser-known sites, written not by enthusiasts but by ordinary off-road adventurers. I’d printed those at home, and now in my room I laid them out on the spare bed, along with the relevant maps.
Usually I schedule trips to avoid holiday traffic and crowds, but my birthday fell on Memorial Day weekend this year, and day four was pretty much the big day, the Sunday before the holiday when most travelers would be packing up and heading home. My Sunday destination was a big canyon south of town which I’d somehow never noticed before, and which one of the adventurers said had “a lot of rock art”. A high-clearance 4wd track winds down it for about twenty miles from the highway to a river crossing, past which the track continues eastward. I had no hope of fording the river, but hoped to find a campsite and spend the night. I had no idea what the conditions would be like or how far my vehicle would get on what would likely be a difficult road.
After turning onto the back road, the first thing I found, even before the track entered the canyon itself, was a monster pickup truck and a huge travel trailer, detached, parked in a stark roadside clearing. I assumed the owners were out exploring in their UTV. I’ve always had trouble finding campsites in this region because most clearings are designed as parking areas for RVs, right beside the road, since people who travel with their own self-enclosed homes have less need for isolation.
I rattled and bounced across a rolling plateau for about three miles until the road finally wound down into the canyon proper, where I found a place to pull over. The author of the online report hadn’t given site locations so I wanted to check upstream on foot before driving ahead.
I walked nearly a half mile upcanyon but saw nothing promising. This is BLM land, open range, and I found occasional old cowpies throughout the day, but nothing recent.
The canyon was already awe-inspiring, and it became more so the farther I went. Suddenly I rounded a bend and saw a spread of brilliant green ahead – a stand of cottonwoods. I came to a sidetrack that led up a sandy bank into a small grove, and behind it was a cliff that looked promising.
Rock writers in sandstone country typically made use of sheer cliffs that were darkly patinated and free of drainage from above. When you’re looking for sites, you look for smooth, shiny cliffs that are free of water streaking and are reachable by human hands. Sometimes they’re elevated dozens of feet above the canyon bottom, requiring field glasses to spot, followed by a steep climb up a boulder-strewn debris slope.
I drove up onto the sand bank, and soon saw the petroglyphs. It was a nice site, but sadly vandalized with prominent graffiti – names and initials are the typical product of Anglos with limited imaginations and boundless egos. There was a perfect campsite here, so I memorized the location in case I didn’t find a better one downstream.
I soon came to running water, and a pool full of tadpoles. I pulled over for a young couple driving up canyon in a small side-by-side UTV – obviously the owners of the big truck and huge trailer I’d passed near the highway. Their monthly payments for all these toys could exceed my Social Security income!
Past sweeping bends beneath towering cliffs, I was driving slowly and craning my neck from side to side, glassing for likely sites, and I finally spotted a second site, about fifty feet up a debris slope. It was on a series of barely patinated, eroded, and stained rock faces – not the best surfaces for preservation – but because it required a climb, it had escaped vandalism by lazy white folks.
Downstream, I found more water and more lush vegetation, driving through a shallow pool then encountering a muddy one about forty feet long whose depth I couldn’t determine, so I stopped. I heard an engine approaching from behind, so I backed up, and the young couple whizzed past again on their UTV, splashing through the big pool, which reached their floorboard. Too deep for me!
It was lunchtime, but the canyon was narrow here, and I had to roll a heavy boulder out of the way to make a parking space off the roadway. Then I heard an engine approaching from downstream, and climbed up the bank to watch them drive through the big pool. It was a lifted pickup with big tires, and the water reached the axles – well over a foot deep.
I was making a sandwich out of the back of my vehicle when the young people passed a third time. They laughed and said they’d dropped a phone down-canyon and had to return to get it. One of the hazards of riding in an open vehicle. I congratulated them on finding it. Definitely not a day for solitude in a remote canyon.
Just as I was preparing to carry my lunch up to the shade of a cliff, an outlandish vehicle approached from up canyon – a “rock bouncer”, the ultimate evolution of the old dune buggy, with a lifted suspension, fully exposed frame with cargo bed in back, widened track, and giant tires. These still-rare contraptions, inspired by NASA and the Road Warrior movie, are the most extreme and capable off-road vehicles ever made – something you take where your Jeep, Hummer, ATV or dirt bike can’t go. In it was a friendly couple, probably in their early sixties, who had no idea where they were or where they were going, and asked if I had a map. Of course I was loaded with maps, including detailed topo printouts for this canyon, all of which the woman photographed with her phone.
Their RV was parked just off the highway at the foot of the high mountains, about twenty miles south. They were from Grand Junction, Colorado, “thirty minutes from the Utah desert”. They used to haul their boat to Lake Powell south of here, but were now more into backcountry exploring, and like almost everyone who visits these areas now, they base themselves in their RV and explore in their open off-road vehicle. Their goal was just to drive as far as possible all day on back roads, avoiding the highway, returning to “camp” by different routes if possible, so my maps were a great help. I warned them there was a river crossing at the mouth of this canyon, and the river was likely in flood.
After lunch, I had to climb and follow a ledge for several hundred yards to get past the deep pool. Back down on the rocky road, it was a hot day to be walking exposed under the sun, with cliff swallows swooping and crying overhead, the cliffs and rock outcrops approaching and receding over and over, as I rounded the never-ending sweeping bends, glassing for petroglyph panels above.
I climbed through a grove of cottonwoods and partway up a debris slope without finding anything, when I heard more engines coming up canyon. They passed below me, oblivious, a convoy of nine vehicles led by what looked like a boxy, repurposed game warden truck, followed by various Jeep Wranglers, Toyota FJs, and lifted pickups, and ending with a stock Toyota Highlander, which I was amazed could ford the deep pool. Then I descended and continued down canyon until I spotted the next site.
This one required a more precarious climb, but had been attacked anyway by enterprising white vandals. Nor was it as interesting as the earlier panels.
I continued downstream, but the canyon became wider and the cliffs taller, with debris skirts over a hundred and fifty feet high. I glassed promising, darkly patinated rock faces but could find nothing up there, I had no shade and it was getting hot, and I kept having to climb out of the track to let off-road vehicles pass, so I finally gave up. On the bright side, I’d encountered very few flies, despite the warmth, old cattle sign, and abundance of water. That original shaded campsite was beckoning – hopefully no one else had taken it yet.
As I walked back, I pondered my goal for these trips. Looking for more obscure prehistoric sites, I’m destined to reach a point where my vehicle can’t proceed and I need to walk miles on sun-exposed canyon roads, passed by UTVs and lifted pickups full of oblivious explorers. Is this really how I want to spend my time in nature?
Even if I had a more capable vehicle, that would just mean more driving time and less hiking time. Maybe I should be looking for better hikes, closer to the highway, instead of better prehistoric sites, and give up on the really remote stuff requiring long backcountry drives.
I reached my parked vehicle just ahead of the couple from Grand Junction. They’d crossed the flooded river – it reached the floorboard of their rock bouncer, which was waist-high for me – exploring for an hour or so toward the Maze district of Canyonlands. I said I’d been looking for rock art, and they were surprised, as if they’d never considered any purpose for being here other than driving. So I tried to describe how to find the site I was hoping to camp at.
They were admiring the petroglyphs and bemoaning the vandalism when I arrived. “Why do people destroy things they don’t understand?” the woman cried. “Big question,” I answered, and the man grinned sadly, shaking his head. I actually think it’s complicated, with almost as many answers as there are vandals. In the old days, ranchers and cowboys likely saw the Indians as barbarians and prehistoric artifacts as the work of Godless heathens. Today’s young people have been abused by a dysfunctional society and are as likely to destroy as to create. I’d chanced upon a professional rock art website the day before and learned one of the most spectacular and well-known panels on the San Rafael Swell, north of here, had recently been defaced, so although most of the vandalism I’d seen today was historic, the problem is just as bad now, after generations of what we call “education”.
We talked pleasantly for a while, comparing our hometowns and favorite haunts – they said they lived in paradise but loved the desert too, and were hungry for information about this area. They said they’d been snowed on in the mountains last night, while I was sleeping my motel room below, in town. They said they had to drive home tomorrow, and I mentioned I was retired. They said that was hopefully only a few years away for them, but with all their investment in toys, I wondered how soon they’d really be financially secure. A rig like theirs – truck, trailer, and rock bouncer – could cost well over $200,000, and when combined with a home mortgage, the monthly payments could postpone retirement indefinitely. They do save the cost of motel rooms, which for me can amount to $1,500 a year. But I’m guessing for many people I encountered that day, expensive toys would become a burden.
The sun was still high, so I filled my shower bag and left it on a rock to warm up while enjoying an early beer. Then I noticed a couple of cottonwoods separated by the perfect distance for my hammock – I’d had to replace my original Yucatan hammock after the house fire, and this would be the first test of the replacement.
That shower was wonderful and it felt great to be clean again and wearing clean clothes. Vehicles kept passing but I was screened by cottonwoods. I lit my oil lantern and made dinner after sunset, had an unusual second beer, and sat out under the light of the high half moon, admiring it and Venus, which was setting in the west. I had bad double vision, but it varied from minute to minute and I could sometimes reduce it by concentrating. In a tiny vehicle I’d paid $4,000 cash for, I’d carried everything I needed to be safe and comfortable outdoors. I would sleep out under the stars, the way I was taught.
I can enjoy nature in the daytime without leaving my home. But when I go camping, I want to recapture the experience of my ancestors, to adapt to and learn from new natural habitats both day and night. I spent much of my life learning the skills required to live simply outdoors, and I’m still learning – why would I want to give up that priceless achievement now? Why would anyone need to haul a familiar kitchen, bath, and bedroom with to them into the backcountry? It reminds me of the big box chain, Camping World, that specializes in RVs, trailers, and accessories. That’s not camping to me.
Finally I went to bed, and tossed and turned in the hammock for several hours. It’d been a few years since I’d slept in one, my back condition had been getting worse, and I’d settled into a habit of sleeping on my stomach, which isn’t possible in a hammock. It was 11:30 when bright lights suddenly hit the crowns of the trees above me. The light bounced around, then I heard a dog barking. I looked over at the sandy trail that led to my campsite, and saw a truck approaching slowly, a middle-aged woman walking beside it, and a big dog running toward me, barking. I yelled that the site was occupied, but the dog ran right up to my hammock, jumping and barking hysterically. I yelled to the woman, and she ran up to me and grabbed the dog. Without apologizing, she returned to the truck and with difficulty, they backed out.
I swore to bring “Occupied” signs to post at the access points on future trips. Giving up on the hammock experiment, I used a flashlight to find a level spot, unpacked my tarp, sleeping pad, sleeping bag, and pillow, and finally got to sleep well after midnight.
Friday, June 2nd, 2023: 2023 Trips, Colorado Plateau, Indigenous Cultures, Regions, Road Trips, Society.
I woke well-rested in my beautiful campsite, as more UTV riders passed up and down the remote canyon in early morning. The plan for the day was to head north, stopping briefly to check out a couple of modest but better known sites near the highway before making a longer drive into unfamiliar backcountry, hoping for another good campsite in preparation for a canyon hike the next day.
The first stop was a pictograph site located near a popular state park designed for off-roaders of all kinds. They were all naturally avoiding the pictographs and unloading their UTVs, ATVs, and dirt bikes to raise dust and sand in a roar of engines.
This small panel in the ancient “Barrier Canyon” style has severely decayed due to natural erosion. It was lunchtime so I made a sandwich before heading north again.
Not long after, I joined the westbound interstate for about three miles, signalling far in advance and carefully making an abrupt right turn onto a gravel road with big rigs barreling past me at 80 mph. This road leads into a spectacular narrow canyon with towering walls where I abruptly came upon a big family group of adults and kids who’d arrived on dirt bikes and UTVs and were noisily climbing around in the shade of a huge, shaded stone alcove where water oozed out of the base of the cliff in a profusion of ferns. There was one kid tottering around in bike helmet and full body armor who couldn’t have been older than three.
It turned out that this was not the pictograph site, so I parked and walked a short distance to the next bend, where I saw a pictograph panel under a smaller overhang, at the base of a tall sunlit cliff. All these publicized sites had fences to prevent vehicle access, but the fences had trails leading behind them for a closer look on foot.
This site was called the Black Dragon, but I couldn’t see what the name referred to. Maybe it was farther down the canyon and I missed it? Still, these paintings in the heart of the Barrier Canyon “stylistic region” were done in a completely different, seemingly abstract style – much more like what we have in the Mojave. In any event there were too many people there today – other vehicles passed me several times.
I rejoined the interstate and headed west across the “Swell”, past constantly changing canyons and formations, and finally down the other side, where I took an unfamiliar shortcut on my way north. There were high snow-draped mountains in the western distance, and this road started by following one of the creeks that drain that range, all of which are raging torrents now, gray with sediment.
The back road I wanted led east from a small farming town – I stopped there for gas and motor oil to top up my engine. Here I found the core of the UTV culture that’s taking over the rural west. The extra-wide streets had been repurposed for UTVs, speed limits were set to 25 and UTVs had the right of way, so if you wanted to drive through town, you had to creep behind them as the drivers waved to each other and defiantly ignored you. They kept their cars and trucks parked at home, reserved for highway driving.
I’d printed complicated directions on backcountry roads to the edge of the remote canyon which “should be better known for its high quality petroglyph panels”. These directions led me past heavily irrigated alfalfa fields, grazing cattle, and dilapidated or outright ruined Mormon farmhouses – the poorest I’d ever seen. The gravel road climbed a plateau, then descended through a maze of gray canyons, eventually emerging onto a red clay plateau to a crossroads. All along the way, big roadside clearings were occupied by parked pickup trucks with empty UTV trailers, and at one point I met a group of teenagers on dirt bikes.
I came to a Y junction and took the left branch, which had been rained on and driven while the clay was wet, leaving deep crisscrossing ruts in a rock-hard surface which went on for a couple of miles.
Cattle were grazing along the clay road, fifteen miles from any ranch. I came to another Y and climbed another plateau, finally reaching a wooden fence and the rim of the 600 foot deep canyon.
I followed the rim, on a fairly rough and hazardous clay and bedrock road, to the trailhead, and past, where campsites had been promised. There turned out to be only one, totally exposed on the very rim of the canyon. I unpacked and set up my shower bag to warm in the sun. A wind came up, and got steadily stronger, becoming a full gale across the rim.
As an experiment, I tried spreading and anchoring my tarp, but even with a continuous line of heavy rocks it still ballooned out in the middle. I tried to warm up leftovers for dinner, but had to enclose my stove in the back of the vehicle and wait over a half hour for the pot to warm in the crazy wind.
I had about 20 minutes of sunlight left when I finally gave up, after two hours in this ridiculous campsite. I drove six miles back on the road and found another site on an exposed ledge below bluffs. This site had no wind, and I quickly took a cool shower just as the sun set. Tomorrow I would drive back to the canyon rim and hike down into it looking for more petroglyphs.
