Paria Canyon Pt. 1
Paria Canyon Pt. 1
Musings on the Sasquatch, wilderness, condors and vultures
We were due to begin our hike through Paria Canyon but a flash flood upstream had swelled the muddy Paria River, flooding Buckskin Gulch and trapping cattle in the deluge. We picked up our permit from the Paria Contact Station, where the ranger told us that the canyon would be safe to hike the next day. Taking us for a couple of greenhorns, the ranger was initially standoffish. She looked at us as though search and rescue would be hauling us out of Paria Canyon come Saturday:
“Where’s your automobile? Have you arranged a shuttle for pickup?”
“We walked here from Flagstaff.” We said in reply.
“Oh.” Said the ranger. “Seasoned hikers I guess. Many people who come through here don’t know what they’re doing. Thought maybe you were ill prepared.”
Her demeanor lightened and she told us about what to expect on the hike. Ed Abbey came up in the conversation. The ranger it seemed, was not a fan of Glen Canyon Dam or Industrial Tourism.
Probe a little deeper with the average Bureau of Land Management and Park Service ranger and beneath that veneer of bureaucratic conscientiousness you will find a strong sense of chagrin at the current state of the Department of the Interior. “The parks are overcrowded” (they grumble). “Too much glad handing to industry and the recreation business” (they lament). “Too many roads and too little common sense” (by this point, their goat has been truly got).
“We need Abbey’s furrowed brow and his beard” (the ranger didn’t actually say this, but the sentiment was there).
“Get him out of that God awful hole in the Cabeza Prieta, Ed’s rested his bones long enough” (and so on).
The gist? We need a little piss and vinegar to further the cause (the whiskey, monkeywrenches, bolt cutters, peanut butter, rafts and dynamite are in the truck).
Us damn environ-mentalists have lost the spirit and the fight. Too much soy milk, too few caguamas. Too much litigation and too many 501(c)(3)s. The Church of Ecology, having worn so much guilt into our souls, has smothered the senses, the lithium batteries having long shriveled the necessary huevos – the cojones and Rebel Yell for Earth First! – needed to take on the whole damn system, regardless of political and fiscal allegiance.
Its gotten to our bleeding, tree-hugging hearts: all that magnanimity and passive solar design.
We reach for the lawyer instead of the wrench.
We need Chuck Bowden too, the future’s gettin’ mighty hungry. We no longer say Yes.
Hell, we need Thoreau and his pious libertarian soap-boxin’: Simplicity! Simplicity! Place a sabot in the cogs of the Machine ye leaders of lives of quiet desperation. The marrow is sweet and juicy for the yearnings of savage delight…
…and the hour is getting late.
A turkey vulture wheeled through the heavens and landed on the extended limb, offered like a gnarled hand, of a juniper tree five hundred years old and ancient of stone.
The vulture’s eyes, all chipped granite, squinted at the horizon. A coyote trickster’s grin lingered on its impressive beak, as if to sing the ballad of its kin. It mumbled something about slumgullion stew and took flight, careering towards the nearest sandstone cliff or perhaps some bar in Page, Arizona (the Highfalutin Bureaucrat, the Hard Hat Cafe, Floyd’s Flophouse Fajita Bar, or something like that), off towards the dam, bedrock and paradox.
We left the Paria Contact Station with permits in tow, blinking into the bright desert sun, prepared to spend the day noodling around the Paria Outpost and exploring the area on foot, when a voice called over our shoulders. We turned to see Dave, a tall, grizzled desert rat dressed in hiking garb. Dave had overheard our conversation with the ranger, and was similarly waiting for the flood to recede so he could hike Buckskin Gulch with his wife (who was back in Salt Lake City):
“Do you fancy a dodgy tour guide for the day? I can show you around and take you to Lees Ferry, where you’ll finish your Paria Canyon hike.”
He looked at us as though he thought we thought he was some kind of crank. A highway killer or insurance salesman perhaps.
“I’ve got beer.”
A minute later we were sat in Dave’s truck, heading towards some petroglyphs further west off Highway 89. We couldn’t find the petroglyphs so we headed over to the original Paria (Pahreah) townsite, way off the highway in the pink, purple and white Chinle topography of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. We walked around the remnants of the old outpost, past shacks and a cemetery under the blazing roof of the desert. The former Mormon settlement, named after the Ute word for muddy water (referring to the nearby river), was originally a trading post for local Indian tribes and was established as a Mormon village in the 1870s. A series of flash floods swept through Pahreah during the 1880s, leading to the eventual abandonment of the settlement.
The dirt road wound its way through the technicolor landscape, sometimes resembling a vast quarry, other times a Jurassic land missing only the giant beasts of the field. West led St. George and Zion Canyon. East along Highway 89, Page, Navajo Mountain, and Glen Canyon Dam, the latter backed up by the reservoir of Lake Powell. Somewhere in that maw of topography stood Yellow Rock, and north by river, the Cottonwood Canyon Road and State Route 12, Cannonville, Tropic and Bryce Canyon National Park. South led the Arizona Strip and the outer reaches of Mormondom. The whole a region less visited but geologically more interesting than the swaths west of Moab and Grand County’s finest.
At some point, Bigfoot came up in the conversation. We had been reading The Desert Oracle, which contained an article about the desert Sasquatch. Bigfoot has been regularly spotted around Joshua Tree National Park and throughout the forests of the Colorado Plateau. One of us laughed about the idea of a Bigfoot roaming the deserts. “Why are you laughing?” said Dave, mildly offended (with tongue in cheek) that anyone would find the idea of Sasquatch amusing.
The legend of Bigfoot aka the Sasquatch aka the Yucca Man aka the Hairy Devil, is one rich and laden with lore, hearsay, gritty truth and frontier exaggeration (J. Frank Dobie would have written a fine book about the Bigfoot), an idea as kooky and easily dismissed as the lore surrounding Deep Underground Military Bases (DUMBs), the existence of space aliens, and the notion that we are living in a free and open society (how incredulous!, you may mutter). To take the Bigfoot seriously is to step into Twilight Zone territory. To be labeled a crank or a conspiracy theorist (oh the horror).
Yet the idea that a giant cryptozoological man-beast is roaming the continent of North America is an oddly persistent one, spanning centuries. Perhaps only the onza is more elusive. Bigfoot is a quintessentially North American cultural meme, as archetypal as the legends of lost Spanish silver and the nonesuch of an eternal frontier.
The wildland swaths whose use cannot be quantified in timber, ore, pasture of plenty and recreational refuge, have instilled a sense of fear and awe: we only understand nature as a resource. It cannot simply be, for that is too darn scary.
As psycho drama, Bigfoot embodies the fearsome Out There – the wild deer place – a realm teeming with beasts red in tooth and claw for raw man flesh. Perhaps that giant figure looming beyond the thickets and pine trees is the ghost of our ancestors, the shadow of our former hunter-gatherer selves before seed, iron and engine re-imagined us as conqueror instead of comrade.
In the simplest terms, some places are best left alone. Some regions and landscapes should be left to exist in and of themselves.
The mighty shadow of the Bigfoot re-imagines the dread and fear of the wildernesses of old. Places of banishment and perpetual exile populated by large carnivorous critters and wild humans – a truly lawless, woolly and wild frontier. The Sasquatch in that sense haunts our consciousness as a reminder not to tread beyond the imagined (and sometimes real) boundaries constructed by civilization as a barrier to the wild lands of deep human time. A check, as it were, on our all-consumptive avarice.
The history of the United States is rich with folklore and legends of giant bears and fearsome wolves – larger than life creatures from fable and allegorical oral history. These legends and stories (tall and true) emerged from the fever dreams of mountain men, prospectors and Native American sages. An ancient national mythology, rendered in bedrock and paradox, of civilization versus nature. A struggle between man and beast: the need to tame a wildness without and the dormant wildness within.
We claim to value liberty, independence, openness and space. Yet we also strive to smother and subdue the wild country beyond the city limits, further infringing upon the sole remaining refuge capable of providing any true sense of liberty and personal freedom.
However, without civilization there would exist no concept of wilderness. There was no despoblado grande in North America until European disease and zealotry (spearheaded by the Spanish conquistadores and padres) wiped out most of the Native American peoples living and thriving throughout the continent. The tribes – via fire, hunting, cultivation, irrigation, and (in the case of Chaco and Cahokia), the building of roads and cityscapes – altered and stewarded the land, the continent very much settled before the advent of conquest.
It was Indian America. Indian Country, from sea to shining sea.
A few centuries later, the Anglo-American fur trappers and pioneers found a veritable wilderness, sparsely populated by humans but teeming with wild critters: a land seemingly untrammeled. Then came Thoreau and Muir – after most of the remaining tribes had been corralled on the rez – and the idea of pristine nature and the modern concept of wilderness (in the ideological sense), was born.
Through civilization we have created a conflict between the human realm and the greater wild and uncivilized natural world, separating ourselves from the howling wilderness by constructing a tangible and psychological enclave, wrought from the industrial and technocratic concept of progress and a foolish belief that we are somehow superior (to the non-human realm). We have come to view nature as a commodity, as something that must be rendered and put to use. A means from which we can perpetuate exponentially the cult of progress and sustained economic growth.
Our perception of progress is defined by this great divide between Man and Nature. We seem to prefer a synthetic and controlled environment, our habitat digital, airbrushed and technocratically governed. For this, apotheosis will be met when humans merge with the machine.
The more we pursue progress, which inevitably manifests itself in the excessive industrialism required to perpetuate civilization (for civilization’s sake), the less free, open and autonomous our society becomes. As Edward Abbey argued: wilderness can exist without freedom, however freedom cannot exist without wilderness.
As Abbey pointed out in Desert Solitaire:
“The wilderness should be preserved for political reasons. We may need it someday not only as a refuge from excessive industrialism but also as a refuge from authoritarian government, from political oppression. Grand Canyon, Big Bend, Yellowstone and the High Sierras may be required to function as bases for guerrilla warfare against tyranny.”
The mythical narratives of inexhaustible forests and vast reefs of copper and gold, of the last herds of bison making their last stand in the mountain valleys, and of elusive beasts like the Bigfoot roaming yonder thicket in the belly of our fears, are part of the lore and vernacular of the Frontier West, those lands yonder the banks of the Missouri where a nation found its feet and created from the metate of forest, stream, prairie, desert and mountain its moral code and character.
Here is the unedited version of the still contested Patterson-Gimlin film, shot in northern California in 1967. Though many claim to have conclusively debunked the footage as a hoax, the film’s veracity cannot be entirely dismissed.
As they say, keep an open mind.
Cryptozoological myth or not, the Bigfoot has been seen, heard, smelt and sensed by thousands of outdoorsmen and outdoorswomen since the beginning of the Republic. He is glimpsed, a blur of movement, the rustle of brush and knock and yell of huge hairy knuckle on tree trunk, from the Kaibab and Coconino to the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest. Perhaps that shambling figure yonder campfire, resplendent with an unruly stench, is he; the oldest American. The original Mountain Man.
As for the much-maligned and too often and easily dismissed (and ridiculed) realm of Bigfoot research, semantics are important: Sasquatch is the preferred nomenclature (would you like to be named after part of your anatomy? Bignose? Fathead? Giantflaps?) for those studying North America’s most elusive hominid. Also, an open mind is key (so check the incredulity at the park entrance station).
Observers in the field, predominantly up in the Canadian provinces and across the northwestern United States, have noted in Sasquatch behavior: a keen intelligence (Sasquatch is also observing us); playfulness (Sasquatch is something of a prankster); a preference for isolation far away from Homo sapiens; proficient skill in mimicry (Sasquatch has been known to imitate coyotes, birds, people and rapid gunfire); a healthy appetite (household pets, wild game, fast food and pumpkin pie, are all suitable Sasquatch fodder); a generally nocturnal lifeway, though the Sasquatch is occasionally diurnal if human contact can be avoided; and the well-known characteristics of a strong, usually bad-smelling odor, stealthiness, curiosity, tallness, hairiness, and the general impression that Sasquatch would much prefer it for humans to get the hell out of Dodge (or at least high-tail it out of the forest back to where we belong).
Sasquatch is also most definitely a hominid, and perhaps a species of the order Homo.
Thom Powell (author of The Locals, which is one of the more credible and humorous Sasquatch studies), has compared Sasquatch behavior with that of isolated hunter-gatherer tribes still living in parts of South America, Africa and Indochina, concluding that the Sasquatch are possibly an extant tribe indigenous to North America. Powell suggests that the avoidance of modern humans, the nomadic lifeway, the mimicry of wild animals, and the total self-sufficiency typical of traditional hunter-gatherer societies (those who manage to thrive and maintain their isolation despite the infringements of the modern world), correlates with documented Sasquatch behavior (observed first-hand in the remote backcountry of Oregon where Powell lives).
A long shot perhaps, but worth considering: the forests of North America, particularly up in Oregon, Idaho, Washington and throughout western Canada, are large enough and wild enough to sustain a small population of highly elusive hunter-gatherers (given the comparison to extant tribes living in South America et cetera).
The world, so easily diminished by the over-rationality of science, is perhaps a far more strange and mysterious place than we would like to believe.
Sasquatch is referenced in Native American oral history as part of the lore of the continent (most of the northwestern tribes have at least one name for the Sasquatch, and our hairy, elusive hominid comrade appears in various forms in Native American rock art, spanning the western states). Native American oral history, though often dismissed as myth, is one of our best resources of ancient North American lore, a lived-in perspective wrought from close contact with the land that documents events and knowledge omitted from the historical record. (Including, but not limited to, the sophistication of indigenous society in the pre-Columbian era, and the broad scope of inter-connectivity between the far flung corners of the continent, demonstrating that a highly advanced civilization capable of keeping detailed records of past events, both in written and oral form, thrived throughout much of the prehistoric Americas: the Aztecs, the Maya, Chaco and Cahokia preeminent in this.)
Whether Native American accounts conclusively prove the existence of Sasquatch is up to individual interpretation. Researchers can easily cherry-pick examples of Indigenous lore to suit their bias, omitting the whole story and plucking information, anecdotal or otherwise, out of context. Tales of giant man-eating bipedal beasts are often used as cautionary moral lessons in concert with Indigenous religious beliefs. Some tribes view the Sasquatch as a harbinger of tumultuous times ahead, a sign that human conduct is in opposition to natural and ecological law.
Other accounts suggest that Sasquatch was part of the mytho-geographical canvas, a fellow forest dweller who wished to be left alone. Sasquatch could be a fearsome killer or a gentle beast attuned to the human culture around him. It has been said that Sasquatch will choose whom he wishes to interact with, and that he will purposely evade those who seek to meet his path. Ultimately, Native American oral histories are rich with stories of supernatural encounters, from shape-shifting animals and talking critters, to accounts of beings capable of wielding lightning like staffs of wood.
The Sasquatch, in this case, is one of many cryptid creatures native to the North American continent, visible only to those with the eyes to see.
Former Forest Service employee John Mionczynski, who tracked radio-collared bighorn sheep for the service and helped the Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team live-trap and radio-collar grizzlies in Yellowstone (a man, in other words, well-versed in and familiar with wilderness lore), is a firm believer in the Sasquatch, saying that: “It's a subject of ridicule, but I think it's also cutting-edge science. People being afraid to suffer ridicule has prevented science from moving forward. They laughed at Lavoisier when he tried to measure oxygen.” (from John Mionczynski: naturalist, accordionist, and Bigfoot expert, High Country News, 2012.)
Mionczynski is a well-respected and accomplished naturalist and adventurer of the Adolph and Olaus Murie kind, somewhat akin to Julian Hayden (the rogue archaeologist of the Pinacate), resourceful and fiercely independent. While camping up in the Wind River Range in 1972, he was awakened by a huge hand pressing on top of his tent. The creature then collapsed the tent (which stood 6 feet tall) and headed back into the forest. Thinking that it may have been a bear (though he could clearly distinguish fingers on the hand), Mionczynski built a fire to keep watch while the bipedal critter peppered him with pine cones for 45 minutes straight (the creature stayed in the vicinity of Mionczynski’s camp for almost two and a half hours).
Several other people reported Sasquatch sightings in the Wind Rivers that summer.
Mionczynski has spent years working on the “Bigfoot thing,” assessing habitat, food sources, and attempting to acquire Sasquatch DNA. He also collects casts of Bigfoot tracks and has analyzed Sasquatch sightings across the West, finding that though many are likely mistaken, a significant amount of anecdotal evidence is highly indicative of a genuine phenomena – namely that a large hominid is living in the American wilderness, occasionally terrifying, though frequently beguiling, those who happen to cross its path.
He says that his experience with Sasquatch research has ranged from “exciting in a very positive way like you know you’re onto some, as-yet untouched science, to the other extreme of dealing with ridicule and job threats.” (from John Mionczynski: A biologist revered and ridiculed, wyofile.com, 2011.)
The acclaimed author Peter Matthiessen, who was friends with Mionczynski, may also have been a Sasquatch believer, as this excellent article from Literary Hub points out.
Those who search for the Sasquatch oftentimes end up on a life-long quest – an all-consuming passion that has succeeded in shifting this once obscure subject to the realms of popular culture and citizen science. It also gives a little hope to those who advocate for wilderness: despite the rabid industrialization of much of the continent, there still exists in North America enough wild and relatively unexplored country for a wild and woolly creature (hominid or otherwise) to live largely unseen and unbound – a true American wilderness with all the danger and mystery that such a classification would suggest.
Here’s an interesting presentation with Cliff Barackman, owner and curator of the North American Bigfoot Center in Boring, Oregon.
Theodore Roosevelt, that cowpunchin’, mountain lion hunting, rough ridin’ Commander-in-Chief of the Progressive Era, shared an anecdotal Sasquatch encounter in the The Wilderness Hunter, a tale (perhaps tall) recalled to him by a grizzled mountain man, though Roosevelt and Bauman (the mountain man who provided the yarn) never refer to the creature as Bigfoot or Sasquatch (the tale describes the critter as a howling bear on two legs).
Here Bauman and his cohort (the two men were out trapping beaver in the Montana Territory) return to their camp and find the tracks of a mysterious wild beast:
“They were surprised to find that during their absence something, apparently a bear, had visited camp, and had rummaged about among their things, scattering the contents of their packs, and in sheer wantonness destroying their lean-to. The footprints of the beast were quite plain, but at first they paid no particular heed to them, busying themselves with rebuilding the lean-to, laying out their beds and stores and lighting the fire.
While Bauman was making ready supper, it being already dark, his companion began to examine the tracks more closely, and soon took a brand from the fire to follow them up, where the intruder had walked along a game trail after leaving the camp. When the brand flickered out, he returned and took another, repeating his inspection of the footprints very closely. Coming back to the fire, he stood by it a minute or two, peering out into the darkness, and suddenly remarked, “Bauman, that bear has been walking on two legs.”
Bauman laughed at this, but his partner insisted that he was right, and upon again examining the tracks with a torch, they certainly did seem to be made by but two paws or feet. However, it was too dark to make sure. After discussing whether the footprints could possibly be those of a human being, and coming to the conclusion that they could not be, the two men rolled up in their blankets, and went to sleep under the lean-to. At midnight Bauman was awakened by some noise, and sat up in his blankets. As he did so his nostrils were struck by a strong, wild-beast odor, and he caught the loom of a great body in the darkness at the mouth of the lean-to. Grasping his rifle, he fired at the vague, threatening shadow, but must have missed, for immediately afterwards he heard the smashing of the under-wood as the thing, whatever it was, rushed off into the impenetrable blackness of the forest and the night.
After this the two men slept but little, sitting up by the rekindled fire, but they heard nothing more. In the morning they started out to look at the few traps they had set the previous evening and put out new ones. By an unspoken agreement they kept together all day, and returned to camp towards evening. On nearing it they saw, hardly to their astonishment, that the lean-to had again been torn down. The visitor of the preceding day had returned, and in wanton malice had tossed about their camp kit and bedding, and destroyed the shanty. The ground was marked up by its tracks, and on leaving the camp it had gone along the soft earth by the brook. The footprints were as plain as if on snow, and, after a careful scrutiny of the trail, it certainly did seem as if, whatever the thing was, it had walked off on but two legs.
The men, thoroughly uneasy, gathered a great heap of dead logs and kept up a roaring fire throughout the night, one or the other sitting on guard most of the time. About midnight the thing came down through the forest opposite, across the brook, and stayed there on the hillside for nearly an hour. They could hear the branches crackle as it moved about, and several times it uttered a harsh, grating, long-drawn moan, a peculiarly sinister sound. Yet it did not venture near the fire. In the morning the two trappers, after discussing the strange events of the last 36 hours, decided that they would shoulder their packs and leave the valley that afternoon. They were the more ready to do this because in spite of seeing a good deal of game sign they had caught very little fur. However it was necessary first to go along the line of their traps and gather them, and this they started out to do. All the morning they kept together, picking up trap after trap, each one empty. On first leaving camp they had the disagreeable sensation of being followed. In the dense spruce thickets they occasionally heard a branch snap after they had passed; and now and then there were slight rustling noises among the small pines to one side of them.
At noon they were back within a couple of miles of camp. In the high, bright sunlight their fears seemed absurd to the two armed men, accustomed as they were, through long years of lonely wandering in the wilderness, to face every kind of danger from man, brute or element. There were still three beaver traps to collect from a little pond in a wide ravine near by. Bauman volunteered to gather these and bring them in, while his companion went ahead to camp and made ready the packs.
On reaching the pond Bauman found three beavers in the traps, one of which had been pulled loose and carried into a beaver house. He took several hours in securing and preparing the beaver, and when he started homewards he marked, with some uneasiness, how low the sun was getting. As he hurried toward camp, under the tall trees, the silence and desolation of the forest weighted on him. His feet made no sound on the pine needles and the slanting sunrays, striking through among the straight trunks, made a gray twilight in which objects at a distance glimmered indistinctly. There was nothing to break the gloomy stillness which, when there is no breeze, always broods over these somber primeval forests. At last he came to the edge of the little glade where the camp lay and shouted as he approached it, but got no answer. The campfire had gone out, though the thin blue smoke was still curling upwards.
Near it lay the packs wrapped and arranged. At first Bauman could see nobody; nor did he receive an answer to his call. Stepping forward he again shouted, and as he did so his eye fell on the body of his friend, stretched beside the trunk of a great fallen spruce. Rushing towards it the horrified trapper found that the body was still warm, but that the neck was broken, while there were four great fang marks in the throat. The footprints of the unknown beast-creature, printed deep in the soft soil, told the whole story. The unfortunate man, having finished his packing, had sat down on the spruce log with his face to the fire, and his back to the dense woods, to wait for his companion. While thus waiting, his monstrous assailant, which must have been lurking in the woods, waiting for a chance to catch one of the adventurers unprepared, came silently up from behind, walking with long noiseless steps and seemingly still on two legs. Evidently unheard, it reached the man, and broke his neck by wrenching his head back with its fore paws, while it buried its teeth in his throat. It had not eaten the body, but apparently had romped and gamboled around it in uncouth, ferocious glee, occasionally rolling over and over it; and had then fled back into the soundless depths of the woods.
Bauman, utterly unnerved and believing that the creature with which he had to deal was something either half human or half devil, some great goblin-beast, abandoned everything but his rifle and struck off at speed down the pass, not halting until he reached the beaver meadows where the hobbled ponies were still grazing. Mounting, he rode onwards through the night, until beyond reach of pursuit.”
Roosevelt, though he never witnessed these events directly, is not entirely dismissive of Bauman’s account:
“It may be that when overcome by the horror of the fate that befell his friend, and when oppressed by the awful dread of the unknown, he grew to attribute, both at the time and still more in remembrance, weird and elfin traits to what was merely some abnormally wicked and cunning wild beast; but whether this was so or not, no man can say.”
Whether or not Roosevelt believed in the Sasquatch (or even knew of its existence) we may never know, although had the game and exceedingly masculine aristocrat met chest to Bully grin with the Sasquatch he would have probably delighted in shooting the poor fellow for sport (or at least in pursuing the rangy biped through the forest, a spirited hurrah! punched into the night with each shot of his rifle).
Perhaps Roosevelt would have had the Sasquatch’s range designated a national monument in order to protect America’s iconic cryptid for posterity.
Ridicule often has its basis in fear (fear of the unknown, fear of ridicule itself). The confirmed existence of a giant hominid, one that is keenly intelligent and wily of instinct, would challenge our notions of superiority over the feral, fearless other. Wilderness, after all, is the great leveler – a place where techno-industrial man is outmatched by the ignoble beasts of the field. Facing a grizzly bear bare-handed, a man might survive, lacerated and bloody and near to gone dying (if he’s lucky like Hugh Glass). Facing a Sasquatch – 8 feet tall and mean as hell (or at least pissed because you have infringed upon its territory), a creature both smart, formidably strong and able to operate tools and wield weapons – a man wouldn’t stand a chance.
Sasquatch, real or imagined, is enough to take us out of our comfort zone. It is also perhaps far more comforting to believe that we understand all of the mysteries of this world, with little room left for the unknown and unknowable.
We headed along the House Rock Valley Road in a storm of dust, trailing the Vermilion Cliffs towards Marble Canyon and the fringes of the Navajo Nation. To the south, the Kaibab Plateau (Buckskin Mountain) climbed towards the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, its high country dappled with pines and aspens and the guttural metallic bugle of rutting elk. A little north of the Stateline Campground, Dave picked up an AZT hiker who had just finished working a season at Glacier National Park, the four of us split between the cabin and bed of Dave’s truck as we rolled along the Coyote Valley towards U.S. Route 89A.
Streaks of California condor poop lined the tops of the Vermilion Cliffs near a breeding site seeking to reintroduce North America’s largest bird to its native range. The area is home to mountain lions, bighorn sheep and pronghorn antelope, as well as a healthy population of the critically endangered condor, the land a mixture of high desert scrub and grassland dotted with pinyon and juniper. The California condor (Gymnogyps californianus) is a type of vulture, and like its cousin in carrion consumption, the condor is neither predator nor prey.
As a key scavenger the vulture provides a vital role within the cycle of life – vultures are content to gorge on the rotting carcasses of dead animals (and humans), upcycling as it were the remains of formally sentient life through a cathartic cleansing of the land. California condors can live for up to sixty years. Their huge wing spans (nine to ten feet) enable them to soar effortlessly for miles without flapping their wings, riding the thermals for hours, scouring the land for a meal.
The condor, like his brethren the turkey vulture (Cathartes aura/Cathartes aura aura), is an almost holy creature – he does not kill, he wastes nothing, he transforms death into life – an arbiter for the reincarnation of consciousness, and a mysterious, auroral ascendance to the unflappable patience of eternity in the Great Ethereal Above, the skylands of the future.
Yet no creature is as misunderstood or underappreciated as the vulture.
This critically important bird is reviled because of his culinary habits: that gaunt, bald head with its impressive beak, clasping the bloody entrails of heifer and horse with nonchalant diligence, and the unfathomable consciousness lurking beneath those indolent yet keenly observant eyes, stir a primeval dread within our mollycoddled hearts – the look of Death’s judgment. The vulture at his work – sweeping to pick clean the bajadas and plains of decaying, sun-blasted flesh – is perhaps too visceral for our fastidious sensibilities. He is a bird with a fine sense of smell. A creature who sweeps from the heavens to feast on death.
They are deemed grotesque, an affront to our misguided and narrow definition of beauty (admittedly, they do hiss and vomit when threatened). The vulture reminds us of our mortality. Yet no creature is perhaps as noble, honest and pure in its pursuits. The roof of the desert would be poorer in his absence. The land more resplendent with dead cattle and disease.
Consumption of carcasses tinged with lead from lead bullets led to a sharp decline in condor populations, which reached near-extinction in the 1970s (poisoned bait used to kill predators began the condor’s decline during the late 19th century), resulting in the current captive breeding program.
The condor thrives (as do most wild critters) in areas where human population density is low and where our infrastructure is minimal to non-existent (powerlines are a particular hazard). These magnificent, graceful creatures will hopefully repopulate their ancestral, prehistoric range throughout the West, where they favored the wildest, craggiest and ruggedest reaches of our deserts and mountains.
We pulled into Marble Canyon for dinner at the lodge – veggie burgers, fries, fry bread and honey, washed back with fine American beer. Outside, the night was so absolute, engulfing the fringes of the small town with dark shadows, that a step beyond the electric haze of the lodge promised a plunge into an abyss. A serene and beautiful land of hushed rocks and salt and pepper stars dripping towards the desert plain.
Dave dropped us off at the Paria Outpost. We exchanged email addresses and then he was gone, tail lights fading to black as his truck careered along Highway 89. Dave, gregarious and well-versed in desert lore, was an interesting dude. Aside from the Sasquatch (and between sips of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale), we talked about Neko Case, desert critters, conspiracy theories, Ed Abbey, lost ancient civilizations, and Native American lore and rock art. A wild gamut for sure, but interesting all the same.
Hell, it beats talking about politics.
Later in the evening we shared beers with a vanlifer from California, who was out in the canyon country with his retrofitted camper van on a sojourn across outback America. He was heading out to Coyote Buttes and the surrounding backcountry of the Escalante badlands early the next morning, a trek away from the hyper-crowded diorama malls of the national parks and the rancor of over-civilization.
America’s great lost highway still attracts a steady stream of war veterans, outcasts, mystics and non-conformists; an exodus nurtured by an increasingly insane and unreasonable world. Society generally spits out and rejects the misfits, iconoclasts and independent thinkers.
Those who need mountains, deserts, space and freedom find it hard to function along Main Street, Shithead City, Citadel of AZ, CA, NY, TX, NV…[add state here], USA.
As Will Dilg once said:
“I am weary of civilization’s madness and I yearn for the harmonious gladness of the woods and of the streams. I am tired of your piles of buildings and I ache from your iron streets. I feel jailed in your greatest cities and I long for the unharnessed freedom of the big outside.”