THE ANCIENT ONES OF GRAND CANYON
By Jeffe Aronson
Fine, powder dust. My running shoes land like imploding meteors with each footstep, sinking an inch into confection-sugar earth. A million years of desiccated desert, blown in by the random dust-devil through the subway tunnel-sized cave opening. Poof. Poof.
We breathe hard, not from the dizzying speed-climb up through the Redwall Limestone verticality, hearts and spirits leaning towards this. No, we’re young and fit. Heroes in our world of guiding. “Bronzed River Gods”, as they say: half naked in shorts and maybe torn t-shirts, floppy sunhats, mirrored sunglasses and runners. Daypacks half-full: a liter water bottle, headlamp, high-carb snacks, a band aid. Nothing else.
Nothing else is necessary. If we peel, we die. Twist our ankle, we wait for our pards to jog back for help, or limping slowly, cling to each razor-sharp handhold and stumble down in the dark. Or not. Like in a firefight or mountain climb–your comrade will absolutely have your back. If at all possible in any sort of physical universe, including the superhuman sort. It is, however, dumber than snot to kill yourself whilst also failing miserably to save your pard, like in those bad news clips. You’re on your own in the final assessment to get your ass there and back again.
Or not.
What do we seek? What indeed. Might as well ask the meaning of reality. Well, we’re going to the mountain cave, for real.
Hans told me not to tell, all those years ago. Not anyone. Secret.
Promise.
But he told me. Probably others as well?
I promise.
And Wesley. He’s going to die young. Wants it, in fact. A wounded spirit, killing himself with liquor to be crouching back through the jungles of Vietnam, sensing the tripwires for comrades who no longer need that. I cannot give this man much, he who gives all, like a Shaman demanding nothing but your acceptance of his mischief and understanding for his failures. I try not to enable, but like most, cannot help it. Tripwires.
So, I cannot help but show him this. The “Ancient Ones” left the “split twiggers” here in this chilly darkness five thousand years ago. Shrine? Probably. Magic. Definitely. They didn’t like caves, it is said. Scary. Where the dreadful flying mice hang upside-down. Dark.
Wesley says of these things: “They’re trying to show you something. Trying to give it to you. Take it. Its OK.”
He hangs with the local natives, smokes their pipes, sweats, sings. Nothing pretentious. He just needs that camaraderie. The deeper kind he had back there. Why he’s with us, as well.
Along with us there’s this otherriver guide. One I trust less. We work together, have shared whitewater and whiskey and adventure. I cannot show Wesley and not show her. You just don’t do that. So I exact a promise I myself have already broken: do not share this.
Especially with a mutual friend who couldn’t keep a secret in his child-like, irrepressible soul if his life depended on it. One who moved a basket once to keep it from being “collected” by Park archeologists, promptly forgetting where he put it. (I told him there were too many rocks in this land of rocks.) He accused me of stealing it myself, then found it again, then gave it up for the dead museum up there on the swarming South Rim. What else did he give up?
Don’t tell anyone, I pleaded. Especially that one. Made her promise, spine tingling, sensing a wrong stroke. Into the rocks.
I do not have many regrets in my life. Life is too short, too full, too demanding. Like Crystal Rapids I suppose, you shouldn’t make a move that you will later regret mightily. We all do it, though. Fragile, just like our crafts.
We three feel the power, here and now. My heart thumps my chest, though I’ve been here before. No one speaks. I’ve been there, before, too. Thunderous river in the desert. Oasis amidst sand and rock. Cliffs blazing in the hot desert sun, everything ashimmer. Food. Life. What can you possibly say?
Split-twig figurines. You take a willow stem, river-fed and green and pliable as only youth can be. Tear it right up the middle, but not the whole way, like being born. Then weave life into it, forming a sheep, a deer. Food, life. Maybe stick a sliver of jasper or obsidian through its heart like a spear. Will the hunt bring meat? Will my children survive another winter? My clan? Will I?
Where to leave it? Out there in the sun, most likely gone in a few years at best, eaten by mice for the salt or dried and blown like an old man’s bones. Under a rock? Hard to find in such a land of rocks. Constellations of them, forever shifting with the wind and water. Kinda like us boatmen.
No wind. Sacred silence. Most fear to tread here, so less chance of being fiddled with. Cool and dark. Things last better in such places. Maybe some mice, the ground kind, but if we bury it…
So, from the river two thousand feet below and maybe three miles away, they brought the woven willows, up those unmarked cliffs, careful to leave neither footprint nor cairn, half naked in breech-cloths, braids, water gourds, some high-carb pemmican, black paint under eyes and yucca sandals. Nothing else.
Nothing else was necessary.
I know where to look, yet still I must hunt. They look to me, the one who’s been before, and I am confused. I put it out of my mind, as usual. I just know they’re here, somewhere.
We stand motionless, no lights, adjusting to the dark, the scant illumination from the world outside forming shadows and ghosts. Somehow electric lights will spoil this, and we have no living flame save in our breasts. The cool on the skin, the quiet. So quiet I can hear my own blood coursing through my veins. It smells, what? Not musty. Something cleaner, older. I can feel the burden of rock above, pressing in. I am not afraid.
Ah! That rock pile. Just there. And there.
So, gently, with respect, I lift, one at a time, trying to remember their exact placement as best I can so as to try and fix things afterwards. I feel like I’m an interloper. Desecrating an ancient church. This doesn’t stop me. I have to look. I have to see. They’re trying to give it to me.
And all our breaths catch at once. It is too much. Too powerful. I have said these words before. Will say them again. My heart lies in the desert, too much and too powerful is the air I breathe. I hunt for a little of that very thing deep inside where its dark, am usually disappointed. But not always.
The piles of rock are the size of a coil of bowline, each rock shaped like a rough grinding stone. They are piled in a spiral pattern. Dusty.
I remove them, placing them gently around the perimeter. Underneath are sheep. Deer. Woven spirits with spears through their hearts. Bigger than I expected–about the size of my calloused hand.
Eyes wide, we look. We touch–maybe like the Indians seeing their first looking glass–careful. What’s in there? It might blind or steal our spirit. Or nourish it. Also, the salt and oil from our fingertips might attract hungry rodents. Put them back. Bow your head in thanks and request forgiveness. Return whence we came, to food and sleeping pads and a quiet scotch by the rushing moonlit river, leaving no more than footprints in the dust.
As it turns out, the hungry rodents will have two legs and floppy hats.
Three years later, I hear the tales. I have left the place I love for a time, needing to regroup. Stir up other dusts a bit. Share my love with a human who needs me. Who I need as much as my river. Anywhere else, I am something less. She is not my compromise, she is my love, my food. My Life. I gladly share with her my morsels. But my entrails and bits of hair and skin blow in the wind of my desert.
Shrine Cave? Yes. I know it. There’s a trail to it, now. Two guides were leading clients there on hikes. But not to worry. Nothing left, anyway. Those split twiggers are gone forever.
Five thousand years. Poof.
I
am wretched and sorry, Hans. Sorry, ancient ones. My heart is desolate–which is
not anything at all like a desert. Deserts flourish–its just harder to see. I
will return there, find a hidden, dripping spring in a shady alcove, some
maidenhair fern dancing in the afternoon breeze. Wash away the dust.
