Fare thee well...

Cedar Mesa as seen from Comb Ridge

Parting is such sweet sorrow...the bard had it right on that! After a great month playing Ranger Rick, it's finally time to head back to Washington. Can't say I'll miss all this glorious sunshine but it is starting to get a little warm for me; afternoons are getting beastly and it isn't even the hot season yet! Guess I'm a heat weenie now that I live in the Northwest. This will be my last posting on this blog - hope you enjoyed it. And now for a few parting shots:

Fallen Roof Ruin

Black Hand Ruin

Pictographs in Coldsprings Cave

Potsherd

Slickhorn camp

Globemallow

Bullet Canyon

Happy trails!

In Praise of Ducks!

Ducks, cairns, trail markers – no matter what you call them, they’re life savers when you need them. Here in the Gulch, most of the popular trails are relatively easy to follow, but sometimes they can be downright confusing. You can be strolling merrily along what appears to be a good path only to come screeching to a halt as you stare at a forty-foot pour over. 

Um...now what?!?

This is where the magic of ‘ducks’ comes in – these piles of rock help hikers find their way on the slickrock when there is no other path apparent. Additionally they’re just darn cute. Most of them are nothing more than a pile of stone but every now and then someone gets creative. 

Here on Cedar Mesa we have big problem with too many trails going to the same destination. The sandy soil here has been pounded for many decades by the overgrazing of cattle and now hikers. The BLM has been doing a good job educating folks not to walk willy-nilly, here and there; most understand now that this compromises the ‘cyrptobiotic’ soil – a crusty black combination of lichen, algae, moss, microfungi and cyanobacteria. This binds the soil together making it resistant to wind and water erosion. 

So ducks not only keep people from getting lost, they also herd thousands of hikers down the same path which helps keeps the topsoil from washing or blowing away. Which in turn allows grasses and plants to establish themselves which provide food and home for critters. Everyone is happy. 

So let’s hear it for ducks!

On Patrol

As mentioned before, part of my duties as a volunteer is to patrol the trails. Yesterday Laura and I did on a fast and furious loop hike down Bullet Canyon to Grand Gulch and then up Sheik’s Canyon to the park truck sitting at the trailhead – a distance of roughly ten rough miles. Ostensibly our job was to check on the ruins and water sources and interact with visitors, if any. 

Hiking west on an old abandoned jeep trail – that had been bulldozed in to look for uranium back in the 50’s – we dropped over the rimrock into Bullet and made our way down the slickrock. 

The first order of business was to check on a well-known ruin named Perfect Kiva. (Yes…another perfect kiva; different from the one in Slickhorn Canyon I wrote about in a previous post.) Stabilized years ago by the park service to accommodate visitor usage, we checked for abuse (none) and then chatted up the folks that were there. They had a lot of questions about who, what, when, etc. One woman wanted to know what they used to make their paint for the pictographs? (crushed minerals and plants mixed with grease) while another asked about the closet water source? (just around the corner) 

Since we had miles to go before sundown, we wished them well, said our goodbyes and headed down canyon to inspect Jailhouse Ruin, its spring and then on to the junction two miles later with Grand Gulch. 

One of the great things about hiking with someone who’s been here over twenty-five years like Laura, is that she knows exactly where all the ‘goodies’ are - this saves one lots of time bashing through the brush wasting energy searching for sites in vain. Keeping an eye on the sun and watching the shadows lengthen, we boogied along visiting Castle Ruin, Rincon Ruin and numerous rock art panels most don’t know about and certainly aren't found on any map. 

Late in the afternoon we turned east up Sheik’s Canyon and stopped for a welcome water break at Green Mask panel. This is a very unusual panel in that almost all the pictographs are of women. 

Laura noted that a mummy of a ‘princess’ had been discovered here many years ago and the speculation was that this alcove was a sort of ritualized tomb for her. After taking a passle of photos and admiring the work, we headed up canyon and began a long, dusty scramble up a scree slope to a higher slickrock bench that eventually led us out of the canyon and back to our starting point. 

Five major ruins, over twenty rock art panels and ten, rocky canyon miles – all done in seven hours. Woof! I’m not ashamed to admit I was pooped. The hot shower that night surely was well-deserved.

Flora and Fauna

A complete picture of Cedar Mesa wouldn't be, well…complete without mentioning its plants and animals. Although not quite as diverse and abundant as other climes, this area supports quite a variety of species. The most dominant plant of course is the ever-present Utah Juniper – also called ‘cedar’ which accounts for the mesa’s name. 

Juniperus osteosperma

Pinyon Pine is almost as prevalent and provided an important source of food (pine nuts) for the Ancient Puebloans. 

Down in the canyon bottoms where there’s plenty of water, are the Cottonwood trees - perhaps the most pleasant of all, especially on a hot, sunny day when shade is at a premium. 

Other common plant species I've seen are: Prickly Pear Cactus; Mountain Mahogany; Mormon Tea; Thin Leaf Yucca, Brittle Bush and Bursage. 

Prickly Pear

Thin Leaf Yucca

Flowers are becoming more abundant as the season wears on. When I first arrived in mid-April I only found: Paintbrush; Wallflower and Phlox. 

Desert Phlox

But now as the days lengthen and warm, it’s common to find: Globemallow; Scarlet Penstemon; Claret Cup; Primrose and many others. 

As far as critters go, I've seen mostly lizards and grasshoppers on the trails...with the occasional gopher snake.

But there's also a large community of birds: raucous ravens; squawking jays; mellifluous wrens and too many LGB's (little grey birds) to count.

Canyon Wren

The literature says we have bobcats, mountain lions and bighorn sheep - none of which I've encountered...although I did see fresh tracks near camp one morning.

All of these played a very important role in the ancient peoples’ lives. They provided not only food but construction materials, dyes for clothing and pottery, medicinal remedies and more.

The Ancient Ones

Fallen Roof Ruin

One of the things that draws people to Grand Gulch is the superb hiking. Another – and in my opinion, greater draw – is the thousands of ruins, paintings and pottery artifacts left behind by the first people to inhabit these canyons. 

Black and White Potsherd

Cultural scientists have given them many names over the years: Moki, Anasazi and now, Ancestral Puebloans (based on building evidence linking them to today’s pueblo tribes in Arizona and New Mexico.) Whatever you call them, it’s hard not to admire their tenacity and artisanship as exemplified by the structures and rock art they left behind. They may be thought of as a primitive culture, but their technological skills and knowledge of the natural environment were far from primitive. 

Pictographs in Collins Canyon

Wandering down the Gulch and it’s many tributary canyons, one finds ruin after ruin – with rock art panels around almost every bend. As I travel deeper and deeper into these drainages, I stop often and spend at least a little time photographing and contemplating what it must have been like to live here a thousand years ago. The answer I've come up with is this: Not easy! The landscape and climate were basically the same as now; high semi-desert with cold winters, short growing seasons and not a lot of rain. But for a time, the folks living here actually thrived and multiplied and built wonderfully complex and artful structures to live and conduct their ceremonies in. 

The Citadel

Fishmouth Cave

Monarch Cave

Mano and metate for grinding corn

Eight hundred-year-old remains of a willow and mud roof

Some time around the late 13th century – about the time our ancestors in Europe were emerging from the Dark Ages – droughts in this region intensified, land became overused and fighting between tribes and neighbors for ever diminishing resources escalated. Within fifty years or so, the people slowly left their homes and barren farmlands and migrated south and east; or so it is thought, since no one really knows for sure. One thing I do know is that besides being very successful dryland farmers, they were also accomplished builders and artists as these images I hope, show.