Sledgehammers and Spray-Paint Now Dominate the Art Scene at Cow Springs, Arizona - 2013

 

Sledgehammers and Spray-Paint Now Dominate the Art Scene at Cow Springs, Arizona

In September 2013, I wrote about the state of the art at Cow Springs, Arizona. The term “Cow Springs” has a triple meaning. It stands first for the elusive springs once used to water cattle. Second, it stands for the small Navajo community that occupies a space between Cow Springs Lake and U.S. Highway 160, thirty miles south of Kayenta, Arizona. Third, the name is synonymous with the long defunct Cow Springs Trading Post and service station, which once stood across the highway from the settlement.

Being too small to rate its own U.S. Census district, no one knows how many Navajo actually live in Cow Springs. There are no discernible commercial services available in the settlement. With that, the “Cow Springs Head Start” nursery school appears to be the most prominent enterprise in town. To see for myself, in October 2013 I took a quick driving tour of Cow Springs. After looking around, I would guess the place has a few hundred residents.

After inspecting the ruin of the former Cow Springs Trading Post, I then drove across the highway, over a railroad grade crossing and into a tiny hamlet of mostly well-kept frame houses. Turning south on what appeared to be the major road in town, my path paralleled the highway. With my travel trailer in tow, I could not locate Cow Springs Lake, which I knew lay to my southwest. Although I could see the growth of a tree line upstream of the dwindling lake, I could not risk becoming stuck on some dead end road.

Despite the fact that the Cow Springs Trading Post closed over forty-five years ago, human activity in and around the ghost-building remains high. The two artistic implements of choice remain spray-paint and the sledgehammer. Almost equal in their usage, paint covers old art as the hammers continue deconstructing what little remains of the building. Since my previous visit, in the spring of 2013, the rate of destruction was astonishing. Even the paint on the old Standard Oil Products pole-sign appeared more flaked and baked in the sun.

When observing public art, most humans tend to like older, more traditional works. Although portraits of warriors and braves once adorned the concrete block walls of the ruin, most are now gone or covered with many layers of seemingly random words and images. If we can surmise any underlying theme within recent art at Cow Springs, it is that those in power will fall some day. Apocalyptic art and poetry, accented by the hammers of destruction create accidental cubist works.

Perhaps the best example of "sledgehammer cubism" is the Prophet, seen here in a time-lapse animated GIF image. Not many years ago, the Prophet appeared on a prominent wall of the ruin. Evocatively painted with both brushstrokes and spray-paint stencils, destructionist wrecking crews soon targeted the work. On my 2009 visit to the ruin, the concrete slab that held the Prophet’s image no longer stood. Although the image of the Prophet remained largely intact, it was now lying on the concrete floor. During my most recent visit, I noted that the visage of the Prophet had become a jumble of unrecognizable fragments. After an extensive sledgehammer attack, portions of one haunting eye and a bit of a skullcap were all that I could recognize. although rotated or tumbled into a chaotic pattern, most of the fragments remained in their places.

The dramatic spray-paint profile titled “Navajo Warrior” had suffered a similar fate. Over the course of a decade or so, the female warrior mythos had suffered various graffiti-induced indignities. On this visit, I found her image obliterated by elaborate graffiti monikers. In the afternoon sun, only her red-accented left eye shone through to me.

As recently as 2012, local artist Jetsonorama’s photo-mural depicting a young Navajo girl graced a prominent south-facing wall of the ruin. Resplendent in her finery, but with one eye torn mostly away, her youthful energy and optimism still shone through. A year later, beneath a welter of angry words and misogynistic art, her visage now hides from the world.

As I indicated at the beginning of this story, most people opine for the day when art was beautiful and easy to appreciate. A century ago, the likes of Pablo Picasso deconstructed beautiful images into their cubic components. Likewise, unseen hands continue to deconstruct the remaining walls and art at the Cow Springs Trading Post. Those works not yet obliterated, are festooned with colorful fragments of the deconstructionists' aching souls.

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By James McGillis at 06:50 PM | Fine Art | Comments (1) | Link

Navajo and Hopi Nations Remain Locked in an Old Energy Dance with Peabody Energy - 2013

 

Navajo and Hopi Nations Remain Locked in an Old Energy Dance with Peabody Energy

In their homes, the Navajo and Hopi often burn coal for heat, which leads to a prevalence of respiratory illness. With coal at an average price of $90/ton, it would take $875 worth of wood to obtain the same amount of heat. With electrical transmission lines absent over much of the reservation, electrical heating is not an option. Even if available, electricity would cost far more than coal, wood or sparsely available propane.

The artist Jetsonorama lives in Inscription House, in northeastern Arizona. There he is the only permanent physician at the Indian Health Service's Inscription House Health Center. Although not a Native American, his wheat-paste photo murals periodically appear on crumbling or abandoned walls throughout the Navajo Reservation. Several years ago, at the ruin of the Cow Springs Trading Post, multiple copies of the artist’s work appeared.

A memorable series of Jetsonorama’s posters featured a beautiful Navajo baby. Shown with a large lump of coal looming over its head, the Navajo baby represents Jetsonorama's message that energy from coal contributes to climate change. At the time, he called it, "a metaphorical black cloud over the head of future generations, if we keep burning fossil fuels."

As part of the agreement between Peabody Energy and the Navajo Nation, the Black Mesa Complex is obligated to provide free coal to any local Native American family. In the fall and winter, when residents seek coal for their stoves, trucks and trailers often clog the road up to Black Mesa. Fully twenty-five percent of residential coal stoves on the Navajo Reservation began life burning something other than coal. Free coal or not, unacceptable levels of smoke and ash often enter the living areas of coal-heated homes.

With its three 775 ft. tall flue gas stacks sending coal smoke into the upper atmosphere, local residents may not notice emissions emanating from Navajo Generating Station (NGS). The heat island effect created by NGS keeps a near-permanent updraft operating in the immediate area. Depending on the prevailing winds, however, NGS coal smoke and its nitrous oxide haze may settle near or far, anywhere in Four Corner Region. In summer, coal smoke from NGS and other Arizona coal-fired plants affects cities as far away as Durango, Colorado.

The burning of coal near ground-level is more detrimental to the health of local residents than the NGS stack emissions. Burning slowly, but continuously over the winter months, each residential coal stove is a constant source of air and water pollution. It takes relatively few inefficient coal stoves to affect an entire community. In winter, when the air is often cold and still, residential coal smoke pools near its source. Thus, residents of places like Cow Springs, which sits in a depression midway between Black Mesa and NGS, may experience both residential and NGS coal smoke.

I have a proposal for Peabody Energy and its partners, the Navajo Tribal Energy Authority (NTUA), NGS and the Salt River Project (SRP), which owns the Central Arizona Project (CAP). Instead of removing all outward signs of Peabody Energy’s existence from the Navajo Reservation, the coal mining company and its partners should provide relief to the Navajo who need and deserve it most.

At a minimum, the utility consortium should provide pollution controls for any residential coal-burning stove from Kayenta to LeChee. If no such emission-controlled stoves are available, the consortium should provide propane-heating systems to all current coal-burning families. Although they deny it, Peabody Energy has a record of misuse and abuse of the Navajo Nation and its resources. To make up for their excesses, providing subsidized, clean heat and electricity to several thousand Navajo families is the least that they can do.

When writing about coal, water and the Southwest, it is easy to become morose and believe nothing in our fossil-fueled political environment will ever change. However, there is some good news. According to a recent Los Angeles Times article, college students from all over the U.S. are raising their consciousness regarding the effects of fossil fuels. In one college or university after another, groups and individuals now step forward to assert their power. Students who have never seen a coal plant or choked on coal smoke realize that their actions can make a difference to all who breathe.

Student campaigns such as “Fossil Free UC” have made their mark on policy. Recently, the fundraising foundation for San Francisco State University committed to selling stocks and bonds of companies with significant coal and tar sands holdings. If all three hundred colleges and universities targeted by the “fossil free” advocates join in, the true cost of coal mining and coal burning would become obvious. As our collective investment in Old Energy wanes, that capital can migrate to development and construction of new energy alternatives.

The Navajo and Hopi reservations exist within a desert region. Why not use home-based solar on the reservation to decrease dependency on coal fire? If every Navajo home were to feed power back into the electrical grid, "reverse carbon credits" could allow cleaner propane heating to replace residential coal stoves. The result would be a construction boom unlike any ever seen in the Four Corners Region.

No worker ever contracted black lung disease while installing solar panels or a propane heating system. With excess energy flowing back into the grid, NGS could power-down to a lower level. As a result, we could save Navajo and Hopi land, water and air resources for the use of future generations.

This is Chapter 4 of a four-part series regarding coal and water in the Southwest. To return to Chapter 1, please click HERE.

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By James McGillis at 12:56 PM | Environment | Comments (0) | Link

Colorado River Dine & Unwind - 2012

 

"First, there was the beating drum. Then, somebody invented the flute. Maybe we should have stopped there." - Edward Abbey

On October 6, 2012, I was busy with two projects in Moab, Utah. By noon that day, I had two live webcams operating Behind the Rocks at the last and final 24-Hours of Moab Off-road Bicycle Race. As soon as I had the webcam images of the race streaming properly, I headed for my base camp at the Moab Rim Campark. After a quick cleanup, I dashed off to the Canyonlands by Night pavilion on the banks of the Colorado River.

Travel in time through the North Portal of the Colorado River, Moab, Utah.

Now called Canyonlands by Night & Day, in 2012 the company celebrated its forty-ninth year as a river tour operator in Moab. With their unique floating dock, flat-bottom excursion boats and high-speed jet boats, the company offers a wide variety of tours both up and down the Colorado River. In the early 1970’s, Canyonlands by Night was already an established tourist attraction. In the early days, their most popular tour was a night visit to the Colorado River Canyon, downstream from Moab. With powerful lights played upon the canyon walls and music to match, it was a multimedia experience unique to Moab.

I had met Evan Haworth several years ago, while dining at Pasta Jay’s Restaurant in Moab. In conversation, I discovered that Evan and I had something in common. We both played traditional wooden Indian flutes. As it turned out, I am a novice and Evan is a master flute player, internationally known in the realm of the wooden flute. In those early days of Facebook, we "friended" each other and kept in touch from time to time. In October 2012 I found a special reason for taking the Canyonlands by Night “Dine & Unwind” tour.

In September, I received word that Evan would be playing the flute alongside Gray Boy, his Native American friend and master of the Navajo Hand Drum. That Saturday evening, Evan Haworth and Gray Boy were to play live on the new “Dine & Unwind” dinner tour at Canyonlands by Night. After rushing to the river, I was the first guest to arrive for the tour. A few minutes later, Evan and Gray Boy approached, dressed for their performance. Soon, a busload of French tourists arrived and we boarded our boat.

With forty guests, plus crew, we headed upriver in the open-air excursion boat. Almost immediately, we passed beneath the new U.S. 191 Highway Bridge. Actually, there are now a pair of identical bridges in place there, separated by a narrow gap. In order for traffic to keep rolling during bridge construction, engineers first built a new southerly span of the bridge. After switching traffic to the new span, engineers demolished the old highway bridge. With all of their experience constructing the southbound span, the new northbound span took far less time to build.

To motorists crossover over either span, each side appears to be part of a greater whole. From our vantage point, we could see dual structures arching gracefully over the Colorado River. With their concrete spans and massive center supports, the color-matched bridges created an impressive sight.

Earlier in the season, there was sufficient water in the Colorado River for the boat to travel unimpeded upstream. After passing beneath the highway and bicycle bridges, I noticed that the water level on the Colorado River was near its all-time low. About a mile upstream, our shallow-draft excursion boat could go no further. Ahead there was a rock-shelf in the river bottom over which the boat could not pass.

Taking advantage of the slow current, our captain centered our boat in the river, with the bow pointing upstream. As the sound of the engines died, Evan Haworth and Gray Boy began for their performance. Between each song or chant, the captain swung the boat back into upstream position, preparing for another slow drift downstream. As I looked through my viewfinder, the late afternoon sunlight played tricks with both my eyes and the video camera lens. As Evan played his first number, my eye caught the image of an Ancient Spirit up on the canyon wall. Known locally as “ET, the Extraterrestrial”, the Spirit of the Colorado Riverway is visible in the video accompanying this article.

Next, Navajo elder, Gray Boy performed solo, rhythmically playing the hand drum while chanting in Dine' Bazaad, his native Navajo language. As a young man, Gray Boy departed the Navajo Reservation to the south, traveling to Moab and there finding a good life for him and his family. Now, thirty years later, Gray Boy worked as a maintenance person at Canyonlands by Night & Day.

Earlier in the season, musicians scheduled to play on a river cruise were unable to perform. In his unassuming way, Gray Boy offered to play the drum, while his friend Evan played flute. The rest, as they say, is history. Now, during the season, Evan Haworth and Gray Boy often play together on “Dine & Unwind” dinner tours. If you plan to visit Moab, be sure to call ahead and see which days they will play, as theirs is still a limited engagement. Once the world discovers this unique experience, I expect to see the pair perform several times each week.

If you had walked the banks of the Colorado Riverway one or two thousand years ago, you likely would have heard both flute and drum. Throughout Canyonlands, those were and still are the primary musical instruments of traditional Indian culture. For a sampler of what you will see and hear on your own “Dine & Unwind” tour, please watch the accompanying video.

For several years now, I have studied and written about various energy bridges in and around Canyonlands. In my concept, an energy bridge allows us to experience vibrational energies that existed in that place, but at a different time. That particular time we may say is in the future or the past. The key to the energy bridge concept is that we can feel past, present and future, all right now.

While listening to the timeless music of flute and drum echo from the canyon walls, I realized that the new highway bridge serves a dual purpose. On one hand, it conducts traffic across the river, north of Moab. On the other hand, the the dual arched spans serve together as an energy bridge to the culture of the Ancients. After passing under the Colorado River Bridges, our boat headed up through the North Portal of the Colorado River. As we motored farther up the canyon, we were just in time to enter the timeless realm of the Ancients.

On our return trip, we passed again under the energy bridges. As we transited beneath the bridges, the sun was setting behind the Moab Rim. With fractals of new energy light captured by my still camera, the concept of an energy bridge seemed real enough for me. If only, I thought, we could capture that new energy; think what it could do for our world and us.

As rapidly as our upstream passage had sent us all to another place in time, we found ourselves back at the Canyonlands by Night, disembarking on to the floating dock. Shifting as we had from one earthly dimension to another in so brief a time, we had all worked up quite an appetite. Luckily, an excellent chuck-wagon-style barbecue dinner awaited us in the riverside dining room. At dinner that evening, I sat with Evan Haworth and Gray Boy. As we unwound from our mesmerizing upriver experience, I again felt the attraction of the energy bridge.

Suddenly, it was two hundred years before and I was sitting at a rendezvous between a mountain man and a Navajo elder, discussing their music. Since that ancient day, I thought, not much has changed. Being with friends while listening to live music on the Colorado River is as pleasurable now as it ever was.

 

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By James McGillis at 03:51 PM | | Comments (0) | Link

A Giant Navajo/Hopi Sipapu Awaits Its Time at the Base of Glen Canyon Dam - 2013

 

A Giant Navajo/Hopi Sipapu Awaits Its Time at the Base of Glen Canyon Dam

Disappearance and Reemergence:

The historical and scientific consensus is that the last pre-Puebloan Indians (Anasazi) migrated away from the Four Corners around 1300 CE. Later, they “reemerged” as the Hopi, Zuni and other Pueblo tribes. The Hopi Creation Myth centers on the “sipapu”, a hole in the earth from which all of creation arose. Every ancient ceremonial kiva in the Four Corners includes a symbolic sipapu in its floor.

The great kivas provided communal warmth and shelter to the pre-Puebloan. Since an earthquake could collapse their roof beams, kivas also carried with them the risk of sudden death. After a swarm of catastrophic earthquakes around 1250 CE, the pre-Puebloan survivors reemerged from the metaphorical sipapu of their collapsed kivas, only then to leave the land that had long sustained them.

In order to escape the ongoing desertification of their homelands on the Colorado Plateau, many of the lost tribes traveled downriver from the confluence of the Green and Colorado Rivers. To this day, many of caches of their food and tools remain hidden in alcoves high among those canyons. As the climate dried, timber became scarce, crops failed and game animals retreated to well-watered places like Glen Canyon. Using the river as a pathway, they headed south toward new lands and new lives.

In the wilds of Glen Canyon, they found sustenance for their long trek. Nuts, berries and small game were abundant along the shoreline. Those who understood the weather cycle travelled south in summer or fall, often wintering-over in the lower, warmer reaches of the canyon. Still, the canyon was no place to dally. With the warmth of spring would come annual flooding along the Colorado River.

If the pre-Puebloan episode of climate change was similar to our own, enormous spring floods may have swept the canyon. From wall to wall, the flood would roar, erasing sandbars and banks that had so recently provided shelter for their journey. If the people upstream waited too long, their own supplies of food might be exhausted. If they traveled the river too soon, they risked an unexpected cleansing in the mighty flood.

In its February 1961 issue, Arizona Highways Magazine devoted the inside cover to a photograph of Glen Canyon Dam, then in its early stages of construction. Many of us grew up thinking that the 710 ft. (220 m) high arch of Glen Canyon Dam had always been there. Seeing photos of dam construction in the early 1960s, reminds us how recently the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation placed a plug of concrete and steel into that enormous gap.

It was then, still several years before the filling of Lake Powell, that Edward Abbey and a few brave or foolhardy souls rafted down the Colorado River. Less than one hundred years after its discovery by the expedition of Major John Wesley Powell, Abbey and his inveterate river runners were among the last humans to see Glen Canyon as it always was. In 1869, Powell wrote, “...we have a curious ensemble of wonderful features - carved walls, royal arches, glens, alcove gulches, mounds, and monuments. From which of these features shall we select a name? We decide to call it Glen Canyon.” For his part, Edward Abbey wrote almost one hundred years later, “In fact I saw only a part of (Glen Canyon) but enough to realize that here was an Eden, a portion of the earth’s original paradise.”

Edward Abbey and many others were incensed that the U.S. Congress funded the building of Glen Canyon Dam. In his 1975 novel, The Monkey Wrench Gang, Abbey waxed rhapsodic on the possibility of toppling the dam, thus releasing the waters that covered all traces of Abbey’s “Eden in the Desert”. In 1981, Abbey and the group known as Earth First converged on the dam. While Abbey spoke to a small group gathered nearby, members of Earth First unfurled a banner designed to look like a huge crack on the face of Glen Canyon Dam. Throughout the protest, there was no violence, sabotage or destruction of property. The symbolic cracking of the dam, it seemed, was protest enough.

Even those who accept the human causes of climate change tend to see it as a recent phenomenon. Outsized events, such as Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005 or Superstorm Sandy in 2011 are not enough to convince many that humans play a role in our own meteorological environment. In the spring of 1983, two years after the symbolic cracking of the dam, Edward Abbey and his fellow travelers almost saw their wish come true. Heavy winter snows across the Colorado Plateau, followed by drenching rains and unseasonably warm temperatures brought a flood of unexpected proportions into Lake Powell.

The Bureau of Reclamation was unprepared for the onslaught of water. By July of 1983, Lake Powell reached its highest recorded elevation. In order to increase the carrying capacity of the lake, engineers hastily erected plywood barricades atop the dam. A month earlier, dam operators had opened the left diversion tunnel, sending 10,000 cubic feet per second (280 m3/s), just 7.2% of capacity, down the tunnel into the river below. Meanwhile over 120,000 cubic feet per second (3,400 m3/s) was pouring into the upper reaches of the reservoir.

In this lopsided scenario, something had to give. For a few weeks, it appeared that erosion in the spillway tunnels might cause catastrophic failure of the system. Cavitation-caused erosion was backtracking from the tunnel outlets. If erosion had loosened the enormous concrete plugs that held back lake water from the diversion tunnels (used during initial construction), the dam could have failed. Although the dam rumbled ominously while the spillways were in operation, luck alone saved the day. Just as options were running out, inflow from the upper Colorado River began to slow, allowing the reservoir to subside. Perhaps warm weather caused sufficient evaporation from the lake to save the dam from destruction.

While the “outlet works” received emergency repairs, the ancient power of the river had reemerged from beneath placid Lake Powell. In deference to the facts of global warming, dam operators never allowed Lake Powell to approach full capacity (3708 ft. elevation) again. Since 1983, they have kept lake levels low enough (3640 ft. max. elevation) to capture a flood at least that large. To this day, the “bathtub ring of 1983” stands as a high water mark on the walls of Glen Canyon. Had the public known that Glen Canyon Dam would never live up to its original design criteria, would the dam have received initial approval?

Hoover Dam, built into hard granite at the Black Canyon of the Colorado River many miles downstream will probably outlast Glen Canyon Dam by centuries. Wedged as it is into the soft sandstone walls of Lower Glen Canyon, the Glen Canyon Dam may have received irreparable damage during the vibrational drubbing it took in 1983. Those who controlled the dam during the harrowing days of summer 1983 are retired now, or dead. Despite several engineering surveys intended to allay public fears about permanent damage, we must wait for time to tell.

In what we now call the Four Corner States, it is likely that a swarm of earthquakes marked the end of the pre-Puebloan era. With their kivas in ruins, the ancients could not live through the winter without communal shelter and warmth. With the last of their timber beams burned for warmth, they soon departed for warmer climes. Just as likely, it will be a series of earthquakes near Page, Arizona that will release the plugs from the diversion tunnels beneath Glen Canyon Dam. When one of those plugs pops into the Colorado River like a cork from a Champagne bottle, the scouring effects of the water will bring Glen Canyon, the “Eden in the Desert” back to the surface of the Earth, where it belongs.

Today the Navajo Nation borders Lake Powell and the Colorado River along its northern and western reaches. Coal from Black Mesa, to the north fuels the Navajo Generating Station, which is visible from Lake Powell. Several centuries after disappearance of the pre-Puebloan culture, Indians from current day Western Canada repopulated the Colorado Plateau. Centuries later, those Dine' or Naabeeho people became known as the Navajo. In his 1975 book, “My Heart Soars”, Chief Dan George of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation, North Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada said this:

“Of all the teachings we receive,
this one is the most important:
Nothing belongs to you
of what there is,
of what you take,
you must share.”

In his lament for the hunting and gathering days of his youth, Chief Dan George summed up all that had been lost:

“No longer
can I give you a handful of berries as a gift,
No longer
are the roots I dig used as medicine,
No longer
Can I sing a song to please the salmon,
No longer
does the pipe I smoke make others sit with me in friendship.
No longer”

As we focus on the 1961 image of Glen Canyon, without the dam, perhaps we can decommission it before it blows its concrete plugs. Otherwise, it behooves us to prepare now for the opening of a grand sipapu there, in Glen Canyon, at a future date uncertain.

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By James McGillis at 05:59 PM | Environment | Comments (0) | Link

The Gallo Campground at Chaco Canyon, New Mexico - 2011

 

The Gallo Campground at Chaco Canyon, New Mexico

Late on May 21, 2011, I arrived at Chaco Culture National Historic Park. Known colloquially as Chaco Canyon, the place is almost equidistant from Nageezi and Crownpoint, New Mexico. For Interstate Highway reference, Chaco Canyon is about fifty miles northeast of I-40, if exiting at Thoreau, New Mexico. Although situated at what once was the crossroads of the Pre-Puebloan world, Chaco Canyon slipped into obscurity after the Great Disappearance, one thousand years ago.
 
Today, the larger Navajo Reservation encompasses over sixty percent of San Juan County, New Mexico. Of the county’s 130,000 residents, about thirty-five percent are Navajo. Seventy percent of county population resides in the Farmington Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), including Aztec and Shiprock. Sparsely populated Indian lands dominate the balance of the county. Finding Chaco Canyon, sequestered as it is among high desert mesas can be difficult, unless you are Navajo.
 
Even in this era of GPS navigation, the Magellan map database is woefully inadequate in Navajo Country, which surrounds Chaco Canyon on three sides. At least twice during my southern approach from Crownpoint, Magellan instructed me to turn at erroneous locations. The first road resembled a dirt track; the second existed only in the minds of early Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) surveyors. Between my late start toward Chaco Canyon and Magellan’s sweet-voiced siren luring me toward sandy tracks across New Mexico and the high desert plateau, it was after 9:30 PM when I arrived at Gallo Campground in Chaco Canyon.
 
There, as I scanned the bulletin board for information, the campground host emerged from her coach. That kind soul, living in the middle of nowhere, had held back two RV spaces for late arrivals like me. Had she not done so, there would be no other legal RV camping within twenty miles, via treacherous, washboard roads. That night, I had tempted fate and fate had smiled on me. It came in the form of the volunteer host who saved my camping bacon.
 
While conducting research for this article, I found the “Gallo” name attached to many features in New Mexico. After I had no luck discovering who “Senor Gallo” might have been, I recalled that in Spanish “gallo” translates as “rooster”. Is the derivation of the local place name as simple as, “Rooster Wash”? Either way, its adjacency to the Gallo Wash, makes “Gallo Campground” an appropriate name. On the mesa north of Chaco Canyon, three “Gallo Wells” stand among the few other human-constructed landmarks. Every drop of fresh water used in Chaco Canyon originates in that sandstone aquifer.
 
Early in the past decade, the Gallo Wash flooded a portion of the campground. During my September 2007 visit, several low-lying campsites sported yellow tape and barricades. Floods along this Chaco River tributary had damaged the septic system, requiring extensive repairs. If you look at a satellite photo of the campground, long, geometrical berms associated with the new septic system are evident. Used as causeways during wet weather, one of the flattop berms ends at the communal campfire circle.
 
To their detriment and possible demise, Anasazi visitors and residents stripped the San Juan Plateau of all its timber. Deforestation eliminated extensive root structures, which had long held the soil. Later, cattle and sheep that grazed around Chaco Canyon exacerbated the erosion begun during the Ancestral Puebloan era. Undammed and wild, the Gallo Wash became a twentieth century focus for erosion control projects.
 
Beginning in the 1930s, the Civilian Conservation Corp (CCC) conducted extensive tree planting in the lower reaches of Gallo Wash. By that time, it was too late to save the meandering stream of yesteryear. Today, most of Gallo Wash is a deeply eroded, if somewhat stabilized ravine. Although only treetops are visible from the Main Loop Road, cottonwood trees planted there eighty years ago still flourish. At either end of Chaco Canyon, highway bridges span Gallo Wash. At the eastern bridge, near the confluence of Gallo Wash and the smaller Fajada Wash, you may stop and view full sized trees growing up from the streambed, far below.
 
Only upstream from the campground does the wash retain the look of a broad arroyo. With scrubby growth stretching from bank to bank, the water table there is closer to the surface. With less soil or sand below that section, floodwaters spread, rather than cutting deeply into the soil. In satellite photos, the larger Gallo Wash stands out as the most highly eroded canyon in San Juan County. Did early exhaustion of timberlands and arable land doom Chaco Canyon to depopulation and eventual abandonment?  Today, the grassy wasteland that we see in and around Chaco Canyon tends to say, “Yes”.
 
The following afternoon, I spent time walking south along a nearby canyon wall. Other than the contemporary toilet facilities, the most prominent permanent feature at Gallo Campground is a humble Chacoan rock house. Unlike the multi-roomed and multi-storied great houses found elsewhere at Chaco Canyon, this structure contains only two small rooms. Tucked under the canyon overhang, most of the structure has stood the test of time. In its heyday, around 1050 CE, what function did this structure serve?
 
The Chacoan rock house sits near the seasonal stream at Gallo Wash. Perhaps the structure was a granary, overlooking a stream fed cornfield or milpas. Maybe it served as a welcome center or port of entry to Chaco Canyon itself. Northbound, Chacoan visitors had the unique round kiva at Kin Klizhin to welcome them. For southbound visitors, the campground may have served much the same purpose that it does today. Then, as now, the site provided a final rest before viewing the great houses at Chaco Canyon.
 
As I continued my campground tour, I felt and then saw the spirit of the ancients on the walls around me. Whether decorating the canyon walls with pictographs and petroglyphs or building a small granary, the ancients imbued their outdoor areas with sacred art. As with many of the structures at Chaco Canyon, the rock house at Gallo Campground displayed an anthropoid image to me. Using its windows, air vents and roof beam holes, this little structure exhibited a face with character equal to its age.
 
As I approached the canyon wall, a variety of rock art images leapt out at me. One of the more obvious examples was a red ochre painting of a man. A pair of slim antennae emanated from the top of his head and a male organ pointed downward. Standing spread-eagle, this ancient Vitruvian Man predated Leonardo Da Vinci’s by five hundred years. As with so many ancient spirits, he had evolved over the past 1000 years. With two small rivers of gold flowing over his body, I noted that his stone cranium was proportionally larger than that of current humans. Perhaps the longer a spirit lingers on a Chaco Canyon wall, the greater consciousness he or she attracts.
 
My next stop was under the overhanging wall. There, water and minerals have seeped through porous sandstone, leaving their unique mark. If you study the Gallo Campground, you will find that both wind and water play a continuing role in the shaping the local landscape. Since the ancients last viewed it, this perennially damp wall has been sand blasted by one thousand years of storms.
 
As I stepped back, the erosional rock formation (image above) revealed its ancient essence to me. With the profile of a Mayan warrior in headdress, a face appeared. His large left eye seemed to spy me at the same time that I saw him. We both looked startled, I am sure. Regaining our respective composure, I asked if I could photograph him and share his story with the world. In silent ascent, he posed ferociously, if a bit comically for my lens. Oh, the stories he might tell of campfires and revelry at Gallo Campground, both past and present.
 
Soon, I reached the end of the cliff wall, where I discovered a cave large enough to shelter a family from the elements. When a freestanding slab of sandstone tilted, and then came to rest against the canyon rim, the cave established itself. Not knowing what wildlife might be lurking inside the cave; I remained outside.
 
As I completed my circuit of the campground, I could see Fajada Butte rising in the distance. The lowering angle of the sun reminded me of other plans. By then, there were less than three hours before sunset. My planned trip around the Main Loop Road at Chaco Canyon would take most of that time. Although the loop contains only nine miles of paved road, I hoped to stop and visit other Ancestral Puebloan spirits along the way. During a previous visit to Pueblo Bonito, I had discovered a cleft-rock frieze that I called “Lizard Man”. Had Lizard Man sloughed off in a recent rock slide, or did he patiently wait there for my return? I could not wait to find out.

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By James McGillis at 05:16 PM | Travel | Comments (0) | Link

Holbrook Basin, Arizona Water Creation Myth - 2011

 

 

Holbrook Basin, Arizona

Water Creation Myth 

 

A broad range of historical studies indicate that the aquifers of Northeastern Arizona may be over-subscribed. Still other studies predict long-term, persistent drought throughout the area. Sparse winter rains and the thunderstorms of summer are the only replenishment sources for aquifers in the Little Colorado River Basin. Most of the available moisture will either evaporate or runoff into the Colorado River. Long-term drought in the Four Corners states places stress on ecosystems throughout the High Southwest.

 

An easy way to gauge dryness in a desert environment is the frequency and intensity of regional dust storms. By that standard, the Four Corners states are now drier than at any time since the Great Disappearance, around 1300 CE. Even so, we are now on a fast-track to pump large amounts of water from these irreplaceable sources. A recent news report suggests that Passport Potash, Inc. plans an in-situ recovery (ISR), hydraulic-injection mine on their Twin Buttes Ranch property near Holbrook, Arizona. In March 2011, a Passport Potash mining engineer told the press that Passport Potash, Inc. hopes to pump up to 2000 gallons per minute from wells within the Holbrook Basin aquifer.

 

At first, 2000 gallons per minute does not sound like a large amount of water. However, pumping at that rate for one full year would produce over one billion gallons of water. One billion gallons equals over 3000 acre feet of water. If each three-person household used one quarter of an acre foot per year, Passport Potash water requirements would be equivalent to over 38,000 domestic water users. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Navajo County, of which the City of Holbrook is the county seat, had a 2016 population of 110,026. Thus, if Passport Potash reaches full production, it alone will pump water equal to one third of all domestic water use within Navajo County.

 

Through their creation myth, the Hopi people tell us that all water is both sacred and connected. In what could be a lapse of ancestral memory, the Hopi new lands trust appears to have granted eighteen sections of their Holbrook Basin water rights to Passport Potash. If the southern aquifers of the Holbrook Basin are pumped dry, it will be only a matter of time before the drought worsens in both Navajo and Hopi reservations. The elders within the Hopi new lands trust might want to check their pre ancestral memories regarding drought and its consequences. For decades, scientists have known that around 1300 CE, drought brought an end to Pre-Puebloan cultures within the Colorado River Basin. The Hopi creation myth was founded in fact, not fantasy. If they have the fortitude to retain, rather than to sell their hard-won water rights, the Hopi people may yet avoid watching their ancient and venerable culture dry up and blow away.

 

Potential potash producers now lure the Hopi, Navajo, Zuni and other tribes with prospects of employment. Touting well-paying jobs and generations of employment for local citizens, they predict that ISR mines will still produce potash and jobs a century from now. One hundred years of operations at the proposed Holbrook Basin mines would require 100,000,000,000 gallons of water. Does anyone seriously believe that the Holbrook Basin aquifers hold one hundred billion gallons of water, free for the taking?

 

I wonder what has happened to the Arizona State and federal agencies who are stakeholders in the Little Colorado River Basin. Other than the mining authorities, I could find no published position statement on behalf of any agency. Do the Department of Interior, the Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Indian Affairs and the U.S. Geological Survey have no opinion at all regarding this issue? Unless someone or some agency steps in and demands a region-wide approach to water use planning, continued depletion of the Little Colorado River aquifers is a near certainty.

Author's Note: Article updated 9/2/2017

 

Read Chapter One – The Little Colorado River Basin

Read Chapter Two – Holbrook, Arizona Basin - Potash

Read Chapter Four - Colorado River Watershed At Risk

Read Comment - Holbrook Basin Potash, Sinkholes and 'Nutjob Math'

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By James McGillis at 12:02 AM | Environment | Comments (0) | Link