Raiders and the Talkative Arc

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Thursday was a great adventure day out here at the ranch. And I almost opted not to go because of the early wake-up involved - this can comfortably become part of your new defiant zen when you quasi-retire. It's a marvelous feeling to say "No!" just because you can. It's worth cutting back on your current lifestyle now to do this a bit earlier than normally expected, trust me on that!

But the prospect of roaming around our lands with someone who could answer my questions about its ancient history was too much for me to pass up. It haunted me throughout my night's sleep and I awoke at dawn, even before Mark and the pups, excited and determined to find answers. An hour or so later after a cup or two of Mark's always excellent stove perked coffee, we piled into his Ram to make the 35 minute trip to 'up top'. Although the sky was unusually overcast and denied us any customary morning solar warmth, we headed off without our jackets, confident that the day would warm up quickly. A bad assumption in the high desert.
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We made the rendezvous right on time with our gas field rep and the archaeologists, just outside the gates of the old gas field camp and headquarters. The mission of the archaeologists today would be to determine the suitability of new well sites and access road locations. The gas developer also very generously allowed them to research our personal choice for a new home site. I have had a love of archeology since elementary school and wasn't about to disturb any significant site for our own purposes so I was very grateful for this opportunity. There was a good chance that my personal choice of a future home site had already been taken by ancient peoples but I was willing to acquiesce to the importance of history. Mind you, my fingers would remain painfully crossed until that arc survey was complete.
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Here is the first meeting of minds. From the left, Mark is hidden behind my most informative arc mentor, Steve. Then our reasonable and pleasant gas field rep. Then another arc who I excitedly greeted with a handshake and a playful but irreverent "Wow, it's Indiana Jones!". Hidden behind him is the head land surveyor, a very tall Navajo who I decided may not like his image being captured any more than I do. To the far right is the head archaeologist and company owner, Doug.

The first order of business for both groups was the gas field matters. In the end, this was a wash for us. We lost more ground than we gained in comparison to their first well site choices but at least they weren't destroying significant archaeological sites in the process.
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Nearly everyone was unprepared for the cold winds that persisted in the sun's ongoing absence. A few shivers, a few sneezes, all hands buried deeply in available pockets when not being used.

Mark, myself and Mike (our gas field rep) eventually snagged Steve the archaeologist away to survey the south end of that mesa. Talking with Steve was a complete joy for me. This was like taking a college field trip for free but in the convenience of my own back yard. And he was one of those broadly knowledgeable people who can keep you fascinated all day long. He was even able to answer a question that a nuclear physicist had recently asked me about the existence of opals in New Mexico. I LOVE answer people!

I had read an article recently on what the established archaeological community thought of the Indiana Jones portrayal of the field. As expected, each person held a conflicting mix of emotions running between disapproval of the relic-snatching raider image and an appreciation for the new generation of students who had been snagged by the Indie romance. So you know that I just had to ask Steve what drew him into the field as we tramped through the sage, me barely able to keep up with his pace. The answer was amusingly surprising.

Steve had gone from a wide range of telephone field work through to FCC radio tech licensing; the guys who are qualified to mess with radio station signals, etc. He smiled broadly when he thought about the defining moment. "Well, I ended up at this keg party ..." At that point, Indy observed "Yeah, they threw some great ones!" and Steve continued, a thumb sideways pointing towards Doug "Anyway, someone introduced me to Doug here and that was that." A chance introduction at a kegger and a life long passion had been ignited. Doug also had the good luck of inviting Steve on his first volunteer survey and they happened to find an old pit house cut through by a meandering arroyo with a fully intact pot resting in the arroyo bed below. Hooked! Doug had been listening in and smiled at that memory. Then he added slyly "Yeah, that rarely happens but it sure got Steve hooked for good."
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How to make an archaeologist smile

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Here is Steve with his first find on the east end of our proposed home site. In his hand are two translucent fragments which most of us would likely walk past. They are small chips left by a man chipping away at an arrow or spear head, meat scrapper or other implement. He painted a fine mental image of a man finding a comfortable spot with a good view from our hillock and patiently creating a tool chip by chip over the course of half an hour. He not only knew the original home of each variety of rock used but pointed out which pieces were the outside cortex (or rough outer shell of the rock chunk) and was able to show me the exact impact point which flicked this piece away from the work, even mimicking the motion and tools needed to so do. At this point, I was starting to resent the occasional intrusion by the rest of the world pointing at watch faces. Notice Steve's ample supply of colored marker flags ready at his waist. He would color-code flag the artifacts in situ according to a specific category as he found them.

Before we were done walking the new site, he had found what only now strikes me as a very obvious site where rocks formed three sides of a rectangle and was used for the stone grinding of grains and then, but a few yards away, the remains of an old Navajo hogan several hundred years old. I was stunned by his abilities to discern such things at a quick pace but he explained that daily familiarity is everything, much the way an experienced bank clerk can tell a counterfeit bill by simply holding it. Doesn't matter, I am still in complete awe of their abilities.

The good news for me was that his exciting finds were so workably to the north and east of my preferred building site. History right outside the back door without destroying it - is that cool or what? The bad news? I quickly caught the flu from someone in that group, probably the guy with the small icicle forming on the end of his nose throughout that entire chilly morning. Hopefully I will kick this new bug and be back by Tuesday with the next update.
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Coming up next ...

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I've been trying to put together an update for you but I am utterly dragging after a very fun and interesting week. We just got back from a highly productive trip 'up top' which has brought us that much closer to moving up there. This meeting involved surveyors, archaeologists, electric company and gas field reps. Somehow the many, many objectives were completed by early afternoon; a good thing considering that there are weighty and bleak clouds rolling in as I am typing this.
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I am hoping to be recharged and back before the weekend. At that point, you will be hopping in the truck with us and then hiking a mile or two through the sage brush behind a very informative archaeologist just for starters.

But, for now, I am going to find a willing bedcat and take a much needed nap before our favorite cowboy shows up for supper in a couple of hours. I will try my absolute darnedest to be back before Saturday so don't wander too far away!
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Yesterday's visitor
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Hiking with the History Man

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Retrospect: Late Summer 2007

I looked out the large Rat window late morning and saw several pick-up trucks lined up on the road leading out of our canyon. That's an unusual sight and I decided to go investigate. My hunch was right; it was the gas field doing more poking around for potential new gas well sites. Better still, as I had hoped, they brought along a professional archaeologist as part of their team.

I always had a love for archaeology as a very small child and he kindly let me follow along. I promised that I would not interfere in his efficient survey strides and complied, for the most part. In the mean time, the rest of the team had set out with survey equipment to overlay the ideas of some engineer back in the office over the reality of this terrain. Along the way, the history hunter showed me a pit house dating back to the 9th century. I hope my disappointment didn't insult him TOO badly as I looked down and mentally glazed over. "Uhm, right here you say? Really?" I stared down at the ground trying my best to see a vanished people's history. What I saw was just another patch of ground just like any other in this vast wilderness except for a few anomalous rocks and a pottery shard or two. I began to realize that my childhood passions lay in discovering recognizable feats of man, cavernous repositories of megalithic statues and other incredible feats of art and craftsmanship. Somehow, this vague hint of man's presence just didn't fulfill my expectations.
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This is the first area we covered and where I found this very unusual patch of cactus growing in a tight cluster. I am now relying on my cactus-savvy readers to identify this species. This colony of very spiky plants stood quite low, no more than shin-high at best, but so tightly grouped that the surrounding thick grass had no opportunity to invade it. This plant was still rich with unshed yellow fruits, even though this photo was taken much later (just last week). The arms were not spatulate like a prickly pear but rather long and slender and very much restrained to within its low group profile.

Here is a close-up of the cactus cluster.

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He plodded on through the tall sage and I eventually got distracted by my current passion; desert plants. He was likely grateful that he had lost his ersatz student to the colorful blooms beckoning away from his grid. I would occasionally look up and head in his general direction but eventually found myself utterly distracted by the flora and well beyond his survey area. It was a gaggle (or whatever a plural of these is called) of military helicopters tightly hugging the terrain which caught my attention and made me realize that I had wondered too far into the inlet by myself. I back-tracked quickly and rejoined the history man on a roadward leg of his mission. About five minutes later, after we had separated again, I heard the familiar unfettered roar of a military plane and looked up. I ran down the separating hill towards the history hunter, yelling excitedly as I went "Is that a BUF? Oh yes, yes, LOOK, it's a BUF! It's a BUF!! " It then occurred to me that he might not have a clue what a BUF is. He dutifully looked up just as a low flying B52 crossed over his head and climbed up to clear the mesa in front of him. As it turned out, he had grown up in Texas near the development area of the B52 and shared some of his recollections of the plane with me. All in all, it was a rather fabulous way to spend an impromptu romp in the sage.

I only wish that I had brought the camera along. Within one of the shallow caverns created by the immense boulders, we had discovered a slab with the deeply etched inscription "Greer" on it plus an indecipherable date of possibly '08'. I was determined to find it again last week to show you. I looked. And I looked. Nothing. That is the amazing thing about this part of the world; you can see something once and probably never find it again despite your best efforts to remember the locale as you leave it behind. So many of the treasure tales I hear are about people who found something once and meant to return to investigate it further. And some have been trying to do so for over 30 years since.
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I looked though acres of rock formations for that inscription last week with Brou and Daisy's help, all to no avail. The consolation was being able to admire the bizarre rock formations left behind by Mother Nature. The photo above shows some of nature's curious carving work. Erosion had left but one tall column to support this precariously balanced massive rock roof.
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. In this photo is another boulder of harder material left on a pedestal of softer sandstone, all perched atop the massive boulder occupying the majority of the photo. If you enjoy geology, this is a continual trove of awe.

I never did return home with the photos I wanted but I eventually will, even if it takes me a few decades to find the spot again.

This is all leading somewhere, unfortunately.
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Dark Side of the Canyonlands

A group of seven natives (five adults, a young child and baby) were going about their daily routines in the canyon when they were surprised and set upon by unknown assailants and brutally massacred. Investigators are not ruling out an ethnically motivated crime.

This could well be a plot from the pens of New Mexico mystery writers Tony Hillerman or Michael McGarrity. The difference is that the victims and the investigators are separated in time by over 900 years, more than a challenge for the best of today's cold case detectives.

Read the rest of this intriguing story at:

Ancient Massacre Discovered in New Mexico -- Was It Genocide?

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/07/070712-chaco-massacre.html