The Last Empty Places (36 page)

Many weeks later they reached Mexico City, where they were received joyously by Viceroy Mendoza and by Cortés himself. They wanted to know—everyone in Mexico City wanted to know—if he’d seen any signs of gold in his eight years of wandering. It seems Cabeza de Vaca suggested there could be gold, at least the possibility of it. He’d also heard from the Indians—and perhaps seen them with his own eyes—of seven cities existing in these unknown lands to the north.

The Mexico City authorities asked Cabeza de Vaca if he would be willing to lead an expedition back to the north to find the gold and the cities—or the Seven Cities of Gold, as they quickly became known amid the spreading rumors.

Cabeza de Vaca declined, wishing to return home to Spain, but suggested that maybe one of the other three survivors, such as the Moor, Esteban, could guide a party there.

And with that began the official Spanish exploration of this great unknown blank spot to the north of Mexico. Much of it is now part of the southwestern United States. Some of it—the part toward which we aimed our rental car stuffed with camping gear—remains blank today.

B
Y LATE AFTERNOON
, we’d arrived in Silver City, New Mexico, an old mining town of about ten thousand surrounded by high desert. To the north, toward the very heart of that big blank spot, rose the mountains of the Pinos Altos range, and beyond them the Diablo range, the Mogollon range, and many more. These were encompassed by the Gila Wilderness Area and the Gila National Forest. At 3.3 million acres, it is the largest national forest in the contiguous United States.

We drove into the small downtown—the historic district—and parked. Billy the Kid’s childhood log cabin perched beside the creek that rushed through town and that, during an 1895 flash flood, had washed out Silver City’s Main Street and torn a fifty-five-foot-deep arroyo in its place—a gully that still bisects the middle of downtown. Late-nineteenth-century brick buildings lined the narrow side streets, the shady side of the street chilly at six thousand feet, and the sunny side warm in the clear, desertlike October light. The contrast felt like a black-and-white photo from the old mining days, except above arched that deep, deep blue sky that darkens with high altitude and desert dryness,
the sky that makes you sense that the infinity of space begins just beyond this thin envelope of air.

“This place feels a little bit creepy,” said Molly, looking around.

We walked to the Palace Hotel, a funky, mostly renovated old pile, built as a bank in 1882 and made a hotel in 1900. We entered its eclectic old lobby and took a small two-room suite. Just around the corner was a great coffeehouse that Amy immediately homed in to—the Javelina—and two doors from the Javelina stood a famous biker bar, the Buffalo. Small art galleries and knick-knack shops lined the streets. Silver City had become something of a magnet for artists and bohemians, a kind of tiny, scruffy Santa Fe. As we walked along checking the tempting restaurants for that evening’s dinner possibilities, I swear I smelled patchouli oil drifting in the late afternoon sun.

Back at the Palace Hotel, I sprawled out on our bed and studied the maps I’d bought at the headquarters of the Gila National Forest and more at the Gila Hike & Bike shop. One of the dilemmas of exploring “blank spots,” I’d found, is to figure out just where to go amid all that blankness. Selecting a route into the wilderness is a choice like certain others in life that can sometimes feel arbitrary and capricious, yet, in the end, lead to all sorts of tribulation…or wonder.

Later, over dinner at Diane’s—seared pork medallions for me, Thai curry for Amy at this, our last supper before the wilderness—I presented to our little family the options, as I saw them. They all centered on the Gila Wilderness:

1. Hike straight into the highest part of the Mogollon Mountains and return by the same route.
   

2. Hike up a river canyon to a hot springs, then follow another river canyon to the ancient cliff dwellings.
   

3. Hike straight north across the entire Gila Wilderness and Forest, which was likely to involve some very long days on the trail, until we emerged on the far side at the VLA—the Very Large Array—a huge pattern of satellite dishes spread across the high desert that listen to signals from outer space.
   

They all listened intently to the options. Skyler was savoring his New York steak—always his first choice if it appeared on the menu—and
Molly her filet mignon. I wondered how we’d brought up our children so their palates always gravitated to the most expensive dishes on the menu. The dim, high-ceilinged old room was nearly full. Amy had observed that not all of the customers looked like hippie artists. Rather, there were some slim, elegantly dressed older couples amid the mix of black clothes and body piercings. Clearly, some lifestyle money had already found Silver City.

I pointed out that each of the three routes had its advantages and disadvantages, and listed some of them, like scenery—or lack of it—and distance, and weather, and cultural interest.

“What do you want to do, Dad?” Molly said.

“Yes, what works best for you?” said Amy.

“Dad, what feels best for you?” echoed Skyler.

I was quite touched to receive all this consideration from my family. I wondered if Amy had prompted the children ahead of time, or they were being that thoughtful on their own. Often—not always, but often, especially on the important things—they showed a true thoughtfulness toward others. Filet mignon and thoughtfulness.

I sipped my beer, trying to sort my own priorities.

“I want to do first of all what’s possible for all of us to do,” I said, envisioning ten-year-old, seventy-five-pound Skyler trying to hike twenty-five miles per day under the load of a backpack in order to cross the entire Gila Wilderness.

“And second, I want to take a route that gets us into a wild place. And third, a route that’s beautiful and fun. And fourth, a route that has an interesting cultural story.”

“What’s possible for us all to do is certainly important, too,” said Amy. “But we want you to get out of it what you need.”

“Okay,” I said, “let’s vote.”

I said I’d vote for either Option 1 or 2. So, without any argument, we decided on Option 2, the hot springs and cliff dwellings and river canyons, with the promise to Skyler that, after our wilderness hike, we’d seek out the suspended catwalk and walk it.

We then ordered up several large, thick, chocolaty desserts, knowing they would be our last for some time.

M
Y ORIGINAL PLAN
, in this quest for blank spots, was to avoid national parks or “designated” wilderness areas, as they were too well known and defined. But the Gila Wilderness was the exception. It was very large, to begin with, and geographically fascinating with its high-desert mountains, its deep, winding river canyons, and its ancient cliff dwellings. Most important, it was the nation’s—in fact, the world’s—first land preserved as actual wilderness (as opposed to, say, a national park or game preserve). This occurred largely through the efforts of Aldo Leopold. An early twentieth-century ecologist, Leopold formulated a philosophy of wilderness and a famous dictum, “The Land Ethic,” which still guides much of today’s thinking about the moral value of wildlands. You could argue, convincingly, that Aldo Leopold was the first modern “green”—the first modern “environmental philosopher.”

I felt some personal bond with Leopold, too. Born in Iowa, he’d started his career as a forest ranger in the Southwest, then spent much of his adult life in Wisconsin as a professor, writer, and philosopher, and owner of a run-down farm. I’d grown up in Wisconsin. John Muir had, too. So I had several good reasons to visit the Gila. I wanted to understand what, as a young man, Aldo Leopold had seen there that caused him to devote his life to writing and thinking about wildlands. And I wanted to understand what, in my native Wisconsin, helped bring Leopold’s ideas to fruition.

The next morning found me rummaging through the racks of women’s discount shoes at Silver City’s Wal-Mart. I tossed into my cart a pair of size 7 and size 8 of low, white, rubber-soled shoes of the type formerly worn by firm, strong-armed women softly treading infirmary floors. “Nurse’s shoes,” we would call them. They were for Molly and Amy. My research had turned up the need for a spare set of shoes or protective footgear while wading the river canyons of the Gila Wilderness.
I’d heard from someone in Silver City that cheap tennis shoes work as well as anything.

For Skyler it was a pair of Chinese-made runners with rocket-booster heels, and for me a set of boatlike, Velcro-strapped sneakers that looked like a whole lot of shoe for only ten dollars. While I shopped for the shoes, Amy and Molly and Skyler roamed a Silver City supermarket loading up on food and snacks—
lightweight
food, I’d cautioned them repeatedly, as, before eating it, we were going to be
carrying it on our backs
.

We then rendezvoused back at our hotel. It was past checkout and, with a new guest imminent, the maid was cleaning our suite. We hauled our gear from our room and spread all our belongings out on the floor of the hotel lobby as people came and went through the rubble—tents, sleeping bags, pads, clothing sacks, nurse’s shoes, water bottles, gas bottles, lightweight stove, headlamps, packages of batteries, lighters, emergency kits, cooking pots, cups, knives, plus many bags of ramen, oatmeal, cheese, trail mix. Sorting through it, mixing up zip-lock bags of trail mix and granola, we began to load it into our packs.

By two o’clock—the usual two hours late and with a quick stop at the Javelina—we were in the small rental car, packed cheek-to-jowl with our new shoes and food and gear, heading north on a narrow, twisting road that climbed over the Pinos Altos mountains toward the Gila Cliff Dwellings and our jumping-off point.

T
HE
S
PANISH IN
M
EXICO
C
ITY
headed north, too, toward this same region, carried along by the rumors from the shipwreck survivor Cabeza de Vaca, and convinced that there to the north lay the Seven Cities of Gold.

One can understand how a vague rumor from Cabeza de Vaca transformed into seven glittering cities. Cortés had conquered the wealthy Aztec empire only fifteen years earlier, in 1521, and only four years before Cabeza de Vaca’s report from the unknown lands, the conquistador Francisco Pizarro in 1532 had captured the Inca king, Atahualpa, and ransomed him for an entire roomful of Inca gold. The Spanish had already found astounding quantities of gold in the Americas. So it didn’t take much imagination for Cabeza de Vaca’s sketchy reports of metal deposits and tall stone cities in the unknown lands to the
north to race through Mexico City and transform quickly via word of mouth into the glittering Seven Cities of Gold.

The legend was well known in Spain at the time,
³
although it actually dated back hundreds of years, to 1150, when, in the eighth century, the Moors of North Africa invaded what’s now Spain and held it for centuries thereafter. It was said that seven Christian bishops escaped from the Moorish conquest, sailed westward into the Atlantic Ocean, and disappeared to a far-off and unknown land, founding fabulously wealthy cities of gold. There were seven cities—one for each bishop. Thus the legend of the Seven Cities of Gold.

Viceroy Mendoza, head of New Spain, wanted to send a party north to investigate the rumors of the Seven Cities of Gold, and hoped one of the shipwreck survivors would guide it, but none accepted. Cabeza de Vaca yearned to return to his native Spain as quickly as he could. Finally, the viceroy offered to purchase the Moorish slave,
⁴
Esteban, who’d been one of the castaways, from his owner, Dorantes, also one of the four survivors, for five hundred pesos on a silver platter. Dorantes refused the money but agreed to lend the Moor to the expedition in return for a share of any riches that Esteban discovered. Perhaps he also felt a much deeper bond with Esteban beyond ownership after their little party of four had wandered so long in the North American wilds. Meanwhile, Esteban, dressed in his preferred bright clothing and quite a charming celebrity in Mexico City, was apparently enjoying the settlement’s gambling and women.

For an expedition leader, Viceroy Mendoza consulted the Franciscan order of monks, which had sent missionaries into some of the nearer lands north of Mexico City. On the advice of Franciscan officials, the viceroy chose Fray Marcos de Niza, a French native who had been to Peru, “was endowed with all virtues,”
⁵
and knew, in addition to his Bible, how to navigate by the stars. To this small, lightweight expedition—Esteban as guide, Fray Marcos as leader, and Spanish-speaking Indians as messengers and aides-de-camp—the viceroy gave a weighty mission, written out carefully.

First, the expedition should promise the Indians to the north that the Spanish would no longer capture them as slaves. They would be well treated on behalf of His Majesty, the king of Spain, as long as the Indians remained at peace with the Spanish. If not, however, “they will be punished and will receive no mercy.”
⁶
Furthermore, Fray Marcos and
Esteban were to note the fertility of the soils and the abundance of rivers, and whether a gulf or waterway crossed the continent. Finally—and this was a key instruction—they were to observe the rocks “and the metals that it contains” and, if possible, bring or send back these ore samples “so that His Majesty may be fully informed.”

Paralleling the Pacific Coast northward, Fray Marcos showed the samples of gold he carried to the Indian tribes that the little expedition encountered. Several said they knew of such a yellowish material, used by interior tribes and fashioned into bowls and ornaments for the nose and ears, and some “made little scoops of the same metal with which they scraped away the sweat to rid themselves of it.” Fray Marcos dispatched Esteban ahead some 150 miles to scout, with the instructions to send back a prearranged sign if he found a “rich and sizable” country. The sign was to be a white cross one hand high if the country was of ordinary size, a white cross two hands high if the country was larger, and a larger cross still if the country was larger than New Spain itself.