The Petrified Forest, Going, Going, Gone - 2011

 

Interstate I-40 East, From Winslow, Arizona to Gallup, New Mexico

     

In May 2011, I traveled from Winslow, Arizona to Gallup, New Mexico. Most of my trip was along Interstate I-40, but I did detour to parts of Old-66 at Holbrook, the Petrified Forest National Park and Gallup.

Whenever I am in Winslow, I stay at the Homolovi State Park campground. Although close to town, Homolovi itself feels like a place lost in time. From its Ancestral Hopi Indian ruins to its often-deserted campground, there is plenty of peace and solitude to go around at Homolovi. Departing at noon that day, I was the only human visible anywhere in the area.

From Winslow, east to Gallup, I-40 obliterated much of old Highway US-66. Side roads to the current interstate highway are the only remnants of Old-66, the “Mother Road”. Taking advantage of a gradual ascent towards Holbrook, the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad (BNSF) parallels the highway on the south side. Following the gentle gradient of the Little Colorado River, this transportation corridor takes the shortest and flattest route available. For those thirty-five miles of travel on I-40, the sagebrush desert stretches almost unbroken to the horizon.

To break the monotony of this stretch, travelers can marvel at the advertising signs along the way. For reasons unknown, most Indian trading post billboards have yellow backgrounds, with hand painted red lettering. Some of the signs harkened from an era when clean restrooms were a rarity, and thus a major draw. Other signs tout “cold ice-cream” or “Indian Blankets - $9.99”. Some of the billboards date back to the heyday of old Route 66. A few billboards were so well built against the wind, if not the weather, that only a trace of paint hints at their original subject matter.

In several places, the BNSF railroad tracks are close enough to the interstate highway for motorists to see the action. Years ago, workers laid a second set of tracks adjacent to the original east/west line. Rather than waiting on sidings for opposing trains to pass, this stretch of track is like an expressway, with trains operating in both directions, and around the clock. Elsewhere in the High Southwest, you might still see trains pulled by old Santa Fe Railroad locomotives. Here, however, there is a need for speed. The raw horsepower required to pull these long trains at 5,000-foot altitudes dictates the use of newer BNSF engines.

Painted in variations of orange, yellow and black, the Burlington Northern Santa Fe locomotives look clean when they are dirty and dirty when they are clean. Even when speckled with their own diesel exhaust particulates, they always look tailored for business. With their yellow lettering on a dull orange background, the BNSF locomotives reminded me of highway billboards advertising, “Chief Joseph blankets - $9.99”.

In Snowflake, Arizona, my friend Kathy Hemenway has a Route 66 vintage trailer stored in her yard. Outfitted to shield sensitive individuals from aberrant radio-frequency waves, its classic single-axle chassis belies its stainless steel interior. From its lonely perch along a High Southwest ridge, the little trailer appears ready to hit the road to high adventure. Although I would not relish sleeping on cold stainless steel, Kathy's trailer might convert well to a mobile kitchen.

Exiting I-40 East at Holbrook, I stopped for supplies at the local Safeway market. While waiting for service in the deli department, I spoke with an old-timer about the petrified wood trade around town. Although just a handful of shops and yards seemed to have the whole business tied up, he assured me that “almost everyone in town” had crates full of the scarce rocks in their garages. If I wanted a bargain on some rocks that had once been trees, he would have been happy to oblige.

Leaving Holbrook, I traveled eighteen miles southeast on US Highway 180. As I turned to pick up the highway to the Petrified Forest National Park, I glimpsed an industrial-sized yard full of petrified wood for sale. To the rear were the manufacturing and sales buildings. Well into the twentieth century, locals and opportunists often ignored bans against harvesting petrified wood from government land. Today, with legal collection of petrified wood from public lands long gone, I wondered who had gathered so many large chunks of our nation’s heritage and placed them in private hands. With so much petrified wood scavenged from the land, would there be any remaining for me to see at the Petrified Forest National Park?

Having turned sixty-three years old a few weeks earlier, I was intent upon buying my “Golden Age Passport” at the first national park I visited. After rolling up to the booth at the park entrance, I paid my ten dollars and received what the National Park Service now calls a "Senior Pass". As it turned out, I had been eligible for the pass since the day I turned sixty-two. With my lifetime pass, I can now gain entrance to any national park in the U.S., free of additional charge. As a reward for all of the federal taxes I have paid in this lifetime, I am happy to accept this federal government largess.

The young woman at the entrance booth reminded me that it was illegal to collect or transport any found item from the park, especially petrified wood. I assured her that I had no interest in collecting anything at all. In fact, it looked like the locals from times past had removed almost all of it anyway. She said that illicit collectors often develop remorse and return their ill-gotten rocks to the park headquarters. Although the park will accept such “donations”, they cannot return them to their natural place in the park since no one knows exactly where that place might be. Once taken from their original place of rest, these rocks become vagabonds within the mineral world, with no home of their own.

To a new visitor, most of the Petrified Forest National Park looks just like the surrounding desert. When we think of a forest, we think of trees standing upright, whether they are petrified or not. Actually, the Petrified Forest was a place where millions of years ago, large tree trunks washed into ravines, and then became covered with silt. Over the millennia, iron and other minerals infiltrated the cellular tissue of the logs, replacing cellulose and wood fiber with stone.

From about 12,000 BCE until 1300 CE, three distinct prehistoric cultures (Anasazi, Mogollon and Sinagua) occupied various parts of the park. As is true with almost all of the Southwestern United States, the climate today is drier and less hospitable than it was during the days of early human habitation. This land was not immune to the Great Disappearance of early tribes around 1300 CE.

Looking for evidence of running water in the park, I stopped at the confluence of Dead Wash and Ninemile Wash. Here, near the Puerco Indian Ruins, a confluence of two meager streams forms the Rio Puerco, which in turn flows into the Little Colorado River. The Puerco River, here flowing under the roadway in a culvert, looks more like a drainage ditch than a river. Although it still flowed sluggishly in May, I doubt that one would find running water here in late summer or fall.

After traveling almost half way through the park, I found the first petrified wood visible from the road. Stopping my rig, I confirmed that there was still some petrified wood left at Petrified Forest National Park. Until I saw tree rings in stone for myself, I had my doubts as to the authenticity of the whole enterprise. Until then, I wondered if the entire national park was perhaps an elaborate hoax.

To document the authenticity of the place, I got both of my Kokopelli and Coney (the traffic cone) out of my travel trailer. Posing them on one of the large petrified specimens, I took their picture as documentary evidence that the place still exists, and so too, do they. Reflecting my own stubbornness, sometimes they are hard to convince. In the second photo of my superhero friends, I unwittingly captured a picture of the Other, casting his shadow across the hard stone. It was late afternoon and I still had many miles to go before camping at Chaco Canyon, New Mexico. I ensconced all of my little friends in the cab of my truck and headed for the eastern exit of the park

After passing under I-40, I found myself stopping to stare at The Painted Desert. As a child, I grew up watching old Walt Disney documentaries about the desert, but I never imagined how realistic the Disney artists’ recreation really was. From each turnout, I could see a different view of a pastel colored desert, with subtle hues reflected in late afternoon sunlight. When architect Frank Lloyd Wright designed the Grady Gammage Auditorium at Arizona State University, in Tempe, critics cried foul at its pastel color scheme. Its exterior seemed to glow, with a pastel pink tone often predominating. Those who claimed that Wright’s colors were not true to any real desert should visit The Painted Desert. There they shall find proof of Wright’s veracity. His vision presaged the contemporary trend toward natural color schemes for Southwest houses.

Before leaving the Petrified Forest National Park, I came across the Painted Desert Inn. In 1947, Fred Harvey brought his famous "Harvey Girls" to the Painted Desert Inn, operating it as a hotel and restaurant for many years. In 2006, the National Park Service completed a major refurbishment of the original buildings, which are open for food service and souvenir shopping today. Gone now, are the only overnight accommodations anywhere in the park. I would not be surprised to find that this is the only national park to close its gates at sundown, reopening again after sunrise each day.

As I exited the park, the ranger on duty at the booth asked if I had collected anything during my visit. I answered, “No, I don’t believe in it”. Carrying with me a copy of Craig Childs' new book, “Finders Keepers – A Tale of Archaeological Plunder and Obsession”, I had lost all desire to collect artifacts or natural objects from any public land. OK, I do admit to bringing one souvenir piece of Redrock home each time I drive to Moab. If each of us collects only a few rare items, soon there will be no natural or ancient artifacts for humans to find and contemplate.

Now, when I find a potsherd in the desert, I observe it, photograph it and then return it to its place of origin. Unburied by my boot heel, it shall lay there until it welcomes its next visitor. If the next "finder" is also a "keeper", it shall be, "Goodbye, in-situ potsherd". With the fragility of desert environments, it is best to conduct one's search along established trails or in dry-washed arroyos. There, your boot can do no further damage. And if you do find a piece of hard-baked white ware, with indigo lines painted on to its white glaze, you will know its beauty immediately. Once removed from its rightful place, its value is nil. It may have taken eleven hundred years for our potsherd to make it from its original camp to a floodplain in the desert. I believe that each artifact is imbued with the Spirit of the Ancients. With that knowledge, one can see that the spirit accompanying that potsherd chose to bake there in that wash. Until the keeper found it, the spirit of the potsherd waited patiently for The Flood to carry it further on its journey. Having that potsherd in one's dresser drawer does not further the cause. Simply put, humans should not abscond with ancient potsherds, nor pieces of petrified wood, for that matter.

After seventy-two more miles of driving on I-40 East, I arrived in Gallup, New Mexico. Gallup is a regional center for Indian Country, with a business district that speaks to its long history. Pawnshops, Indian art galleries and trading posts occupy many of the old brick buildings in town. Drawn out over Old-66, the town appears larger than it is. If one drives only a mile north or south from the highway, there is more desert to see than there is city. Still, with Old-66, newer I-40, plus the BNSF rail line all running through town, Gallup is the largest transportation and lodging center between Flagstaff, Arizona and Albuquerque, New Mexico.

As I drove through town late that May afternoon, there were vehicles everywhere. On either side of the old highway and along the center median, I saw huge wicker baskets resting in truck beds and on trailers. Although there was not a hot air balloon in sight, it was obviously a rallying point for hot air balloonists. As if it were a normal occurrence, many balloonists were testing their propane gas jets right in the middle of the highway. Within a few blocks, I had passed the balloon-less balloonists and once again had the road almost to myself.

With sunset about an hour away, the light was low as I pulled away from the corner of Highway 66 and Second Street. On my right was a long block of gritty buildings. To my left, I saw an Amtrak train stopped at the Gallup Amtrak Station. Originally built as the El Navajo Hotel in 1918, the train station now shows a more contemporary front to motorists. After stopping for fuel, I headed east on I-40. With Chaco Culture National Historical Park as my targeted resting place, I hoped for a long dusk to light my way.

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By James McGillis at 07:13 PM | Travel | Comments (0) | Link

The Little Colorado River Basin - Pre-ancestral Memories - 2011

 

 

The Little Colorado River Basin - Pre-ancestral Memories  

In his 2007 book House of Rain, author Craig Childs describes the Little Colorado River, as follows. “It is hardly a river. A death rattle of water, more like it. Barely wet enough to be called a river, it is named the Little Colorado. During the few weeks it runs high; it is a bloody froth of silt.”

 

In June 2008, I visited the “Little C.” at Homolovi State Park, Arizona. As I approached the river, runoff from winter snows and spring rains had ceased. Ducking under a floodplain safety fence ravaged by the river, I walked out on to the rapidly drying floodplain. The remaining surface water in the riverbed collected in pools near the banks. While lingering at the edge of a large pool, I realized that I was standing in quicksand.

 

Without warning, my sandaled feet sank up to the ankles. As I lurched to get away, gravity pulled me deeper into the liquefied sand. The viscosity of the quicksand made it difficult to move. In fright I pulled harder, lifting one foot, only to find my other foot sinking deeper into a bottomless goo. Driven by fear, I began my version of an Indian dance, rhythmically lifting and then driving each foot into the quicksand. As my dance step quickened, I arose from that hole in the Earth. Not stopping the rhythm, I padding across the shaky surface until I reached the riverbank.

 

Looking back on that episode, I now realize new things. One is that quicksand can be deep enough to conjure pre-ancestral memories of death and rebirth. Unexpectedly, I had reenacted my own version of the Hopi Indian Creation Myth. Although firsthand versions of the myth are sacred to the Hopi, there are as many translations of that myth as there are Hopi willing to tell a story to an outsider. Still, at the center of each version of the myth is a vision of the ancient Hopi people arising from a water-filled hole in the Earth.

 

To this day, the Hopi protect their knowledge of creation both for themselves and for all of humankind. Whether one considers the Hopi story of creation to be myth or truth is not important. Either way, the Hopi, who are native to the lands and aquifers at the heart of the Little Colorado Basin, knew the power of water to confer both life and death. I for one was happy to be reborn that day on the banks of the Little Colorado River.

 

After my bottomless quicksand scare, I vowed to keep moving while exploring the riverbed. As I moved and observed, the lack of surface water led me to perceive that the Little C’s flow was opposite from its actual direction. Proving the power of our belief systems, three years later, I still tend to believe that the river flows back toward its source, in the White Mountains of Arizona. Scientists tell us that only prior to the Late Triassic Period, 250 million years ago did this system of rivers and aquifers flow as my mind’s eye still perceives. Such is the power of the landscape in the desert that it brings forth pre-ancestral memories for us to ponder.

 

The northern flank of the Little Colorado River Plateau basin ends at Navajo National Monument, near the Arizona-Utah border. Its eastern flank is near the Arizona-New Mexico state line. On the south the up-tilt of the Mogollon Rim constrains it. In the west, U.S. Highway 89 North traces its periphery. Even with its watershed of 27,000 square miles, few places within the Little Colorado River Basin offer year-round sources of surface water.

 

According to the Arizona Department of Water Resources, aquifers of the Little Colorado River Plateau basin contain large quantities of groundwater in storage. However, they are in a sensitive relationship with the Little Colorado River and its few perennial tributaries. Lowering of hydrostatic heads by excessive groundwater withdrawals may cause some perennial reaches of the streams to dry up (Mann, 1976). After thirty-five years, it seems time for an update on that research.

 

When last surveyed, almost two decades ago, the two southern regional aquifers were still in hydrostatic equilibrium, or ‘steady-state’. However, local groundwater sinks or cones of depression were already developing in areas of heavy pumpage (Arizona Department of Water Resources, 1991) such as the paper mill near Snowflake and three of the power plants: Springerville Generating Station, Coronado Generating Station (St. Johns), and Cholla Generating Station (Joseph City/Holbrook). Of those top-four users of water in the southern aquifers, three are coal-fired power plants.

 

According to the Food & Agriculture Organization (FAO) at the United Nations, the Little Colorado River Watershed qualifies as a Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System (GIAHS) – Following is the FAO's description of the area.

 

“On the Colorado Plateau (including the Little Colorado River Basin) farming has been an unbroken cultural tradition for at least 4200 years. The Navajo, Zuni, Apache, Hopi, Paiute and Tewa have cultivated the most diverse annual crop assemblage in the New World north of the Tropic of Cancer. The landscapes of this ecologically diverse but arid region have been shaped by a variety of traditional land and water use practices. Farmers have managed the same fields and terrace gardens for centuries, in a way well adapted to the arid climate and the altitudes from 3350 to 4000 meters. Their traditional ecological knowledge has been transmitted orally in at least six indigenous and three European languages. In addition to tending pre-Columbian crops, residents adopted and further adapted some sheep herding, ranching and orchard keeping traditions of Hispanic, Basque and Anglo immigrants. More recently, these rural communities have developed a multicultural food system with extensive cross cultural exchange and mutual support.”

 

In a recent report, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) said, “A system-wide management approach is needed to achieve cost-effective floodplain and sediment management, while enhancing environmental aspects of the Little Colorado River watershed.”

 

In general, the outer boundaries of the Navajo Indian Reservation coincide with the outer reaches of the Little Colorado River Basin. There are two major exceptions. The southern boundary of Navajo reservation coincides with the northern boundary of Petrified Forest National Park. From there, west to Flagstaff and south to the Mogollon Rim, the land is Forest Service controlled or privately held. The other exception to Navajo hegemony over the basin is the Hopi Indian Reservation. Despite their independent tribal status, the Hopi reservation is landlocked within the larger Navajo reservation.

 

 

Surface and ground waters flow between the two reservations without regard for political boundaries. Although the Navajo and Hopi stress cooperation where they can, competing claims on water rights can be a contentious issue. Among other issues, the 1996 Navajo-Hopi Land Dispute Settlement Act identified and funded the purchase of up to 500,000 acres of new Hopi Trust Lands. These 'New Lands', including attendant water rights were to come from Arizona State holdings, beyond the borders of either reservation.

 

In exercising their rights, the Hopi subsequently purchased land and water rights within the southern reaches of the Little Colorado River Basin. Little did anyone know at the time, but Hopi Trust Lands and their concomitant water rights would soon make news again. In March 2011, the Ringbolt/Passport/Karlsson Group potash consortium obtained agreement from the Hopi Lands Trust to conduct exploratory operations on their Holbrook Basin holdings. Through that agreement, Passport Potash will have access to Hopi water rights in the southern reaches of the Little Colorado River Basin.

 

Author's Note: Clarification on the Passport/Ringbolt/Karlsson Potash "Consortium". Article Updated 9/2/2017

 

Read Chapter Two – The Holbrook Basin Potash Project 

Read Chapter Three - Holbrook Basin Water Crisis

Read Chapter Four - Colorado River Watershed At Risk

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By James McGillis at 02:35 PM | Environment | Comments (1) | Link