Wild Indigo (10 page)

“I really am so sorry.”

“Don't say any more about it,” Contreras said, patting my shoulder. “I really do understand. Listen, maybe I can help you. You know, my brother is the governor of the pueblo. I'll talk to him. Tell me what happened, and I'll take the story to him. Sometimes it helps if someone who knows our ways does the talking.”

Mountain yipped from the back of the car, complaining of being left out of all the activity up front. Contreras tipped his head, trying to see into the rear of the Suburban, but my position in the driver's seat prevented that.

I took the wolf's interruption as a cue to leave. I felt uncomfortable sitting there, not knowing how much I should say, who I could really trust. I wasn't even supposed to be at the pueblo, and I didn't want to make the situation worse than it already was. “Thanks, Hunter,” I said. “I'd really appreciate that. But I'm late to meet my friend. Can I talk to you another time?”

He looked disappointed. “I guess. But this thing is really heating up.”

“Right,” I said. “But this is my friend's car, and I borrowed it from her. I've got to get it back. She'll be waiting.”

“Okay,” Contreras said. “Just let me know when you're ready. You know, you shouldn't be here until this thing is settled. Better head on out the gate before somebody sees you. And take care of that,” he added, gesturing toward my face. He turned then and hurried away, shaking his head. I saw him draw a tobacco pouch from the pocket of his shirt as he walked quickly past the hay bales he'd been loading. He made a beeline for the cab of his pickup, hoisted his massive frame onto the seat with amazing speed and dexterity, and then he started the engine and drove away, the tailgate still down, the unsecured hay bales bouncing in the back of the bed as the truck jostled over the ruts in the field.

Mountain and I struck out on the west rim trail of the Rio Grande Gorge on our usual run. Even though it was nearing the end of the day, the intense sun burned my bare back around the edges of my running bra. I paced myself due to the heat, stopping frequently to give the wolf water from the tube of my CamelBak, and varying my speed when I felt myself overheating. We had a fairly set route that went out about a mile and a half on open ground, at which point we always cut across the high rim of the gorge, and went back along the narrow rim trail another mile to the starting point. As I ran the open part of the path, sweat streamed down my forehead and stung the lacerations on my face.

From the rim of the gorge, which carved through a high mesa above the Taos Valley, I could see a beautiful panorama of mountain ranges as I ran, the high desert floor beneath the mountains, and the small town of Taos nestled against the Sangre de Cristos in a low basin nearly fifteen miles away. Deep below me, in a slender canyon lined with sheer rock, was the Rio Grande. The turquoise sky held only a few puffy white clouds, and the bright sun cast an elongated twenty-foot shadow of my figure before me as I went. I reached my turnaround, where the rim trail narrowed and clung to the edge, occasionally curving through outcroppings of rock and dipping into the gorge a few feet against slick basalt walls, always rising again to the very rim. I stopped to lean against a large boulder for some shade, jacking one foot back against it and breathing hard. I mopped at my forehead with one arm.

The harsh contrast of deep, dark shadow and brilliant, sunlit patches of scorched earth strained my eyes. Here in the long eclipse of this boulder, it was cool and very dark, the air around me almost gray. Beyond the silhouette it cast, there was a fiery, white glare of sun on desert grass and stones in the open ground I'd just crossed. Winded and tired, I began to feel a little disoriented looking from one to the other. I forced myself back onto the loop, moving into the narrow rim trail that would lead me back to my Jeep, ready to complete the course, thinking it would be dark soon if I didn't keep a good pace. Just as I rolled into a jog again, Mountain darted out ahead of me and then pulled up abruptly right in my path, as if someone had yanked on his brake. I nearly tripped over him. The hair on the back of his neck rose in a ridge, and he pulled his lips back from his teeth and uttered a low growl as he stared at an outcropping of boulders near the canyon rim ahead and slightly above us.

I followed his gaze, but saw nothing in particular. Mountain growled again.

“What's up, buddy?” I asked.

He quickly darted around behind me and pulled into a tight heel beside me, his neck touching my left thigh. His hair continued to stand all along his back, and he mouthed again, pulling his lips back and baring his teeth. I had never seen him show any aggression before and I didn't know quite what to do. I reached down and patted him, stroking his neck, but he nudged my hand away.

I shook my head in confusion. “C'mon, Mountain,” I urged, and began jogging in place. “Let's go. Gonna be dark soon.”

But he didn't hear me. He postured aggressively in the direction of the outcrop and refused to move from his turf.

I looked once more, still not seeing what had upset him. I decided to walk ahead and show the wolf there was nothing to fear. I took a few steps and felt the hair on my forearms tingle. A faint, cool breeze suddenly wafted over the rim of the gorge, where there was nothing but shadow now, the sun too low to illuminate that deep crevice. I shivered, the sweat still standing on my upper back and shoulders. I stopped and looked back at Mountain. He whimpered at me.

“Look, I don't see whatever it is you're afraid of,” I said. “I'm gonna go check it out.” I wagged my arm at him. “C'mon. Go with me.”

He lowered his head, his hair still standing on end. He remained planted.

I turned then to walk ahead and saw a glimpse of movement, as if something large had just darted from one of the boulders across the open narrow section of trail to behind the stone on the opposite side. I caught only a trace of shadow, no image, but my impression was that of something weightless, dark, like a bat or a gigantic moth, some creature of flight.

“It's probably nothing,” I said aloud, but not so much to reassure Mountain as myself. “Anybody there?” I called. I took a few steps forward. “Who's up there?”

As if on cue, another breeze stirred, this one making a low wailing sound in the sage scrub along the rim of the gorge. I smelled rocks cooling, exuding the day's heat. I tasted metal in my mouth from overexertion. Again, I shivered.

Mountain growled, this time viciously, a serious warning. I froze, now trusting his instincts as my senses opened wider.

The sun's rays, low against the western horizon, made a penumbra around the giant boulders ahead, and the ground between them and me lay in darkness. I looked around, noticing the pink glow of the high mountains north of Taos. Pink time. Sunset. It would be dark in minutes and this rim trail would become a dangerous precipice to walk or run without light.

I retreated a few steps to stand beside Mountain and take his collar in my left hand. He stood, unmoving, in the same low crouch he had held for what seemed like an eternity now. I considered whether to go back—or skirt the rim and head for open, high ground. In my mind, I searched the contents of my CamelBak pack for a weapon, and remembered I had a good-sized pocketknife in there. I reached to unhook the waist strap.

And then I saw him.

He stepped onto the trail for only a moment, the sun behind him, illuminating the fine hairs of his fur robe. His face was encased in the mouth of an enormous brown bear, the teeth bared and the large black nose extending out beyond the man's forehead as if the bear had swallowed the man and they had become one. The immense arms and claws of the pelt hung against the man's bare chest. His face was in shadow, but I saw brilliant red claw marks on both cheeks and two black eyes peering angrily at me. Around his neck, he wore a long necklace of giant bear claws, at least a dozen of them. In his left hand, he held a lance, and he wore nothing else but a loincloth with sprigs of cedar tucked in the waist.

In the next instant, I saw only a shadow where he had stood, and the deepening gray cast of cool, retreating light filtering between the boulders.

Mountain lunged from beside me and pulled out of my grasp. He bolted for the space where the Indian had stood, but found nothing. He sniffed persistently around the large stones, looking for a sign, his back still a ridge of punklike spikes of hair. I realized as I watched him that I had been standing for some time with my mouth open. I closed it and walked toward the gap, joining Mountain in his search. There was no evidence that anyone had been there, no footprints in the dusty trail, nothing.

Just as I was about to give up, I spotted red markings on one of the boulders. I stepped back and to one side to take in the full image. An ancient-looking red pictograph appeared to have been painted into the stone with blood. It depicted an anthropomorphic figure, nearly life-size. Part man and part bear, the figure wore a necklace of claws and held a raised staff.

I've seen this same image before,
I thought.
Where was it?

Then I remembered:
It was in the ruins.

While I pondered this, the red painting faded like moisture evaporating from a hot surface. The rock's veneer became a blank, gray slab.

I shook with a deep, involuntary shudder.

“Time to get back,” I told Mountain, and we broke into a fast-paced run, neither of us tired now.

In my first year with the BLM, I'd been assigned to a sector of land on the northern aspect of Sacred Mountain. Just off a two-lane road headed for the Colorado border, an unassuming stretch of sage and chamisa pasture was cordoned off with barbed wire. Some of the locals knew what lay beyond. They needed a good four-wheel drive vehicle, preferably one they didn't mind risking to scratches, dents, and maybe even a damaged oil pan. The heartiest among them would open an inconspicuous cattle gate and drive through, closing it carefully behind them lest their secret be discovered. Then they would grind their way up a gradual ascent, wind and turn and twist as they climbed, dip through ruts and ease over rocks in the red dirt track, scrape through stands of juniper and piñon and hear the paint scratching, claw their way across red dirt washes that ran like rivers in the monsoon season but were dry gulches the rest of the year, bang and jolt and jostle and dip and tip and list and yaw over the roughest terrain around, rising toward the top. And if they survived this two-hour ordeal without getting stuck, breaking down, bottoming out, giving up, or going back, they would be rewarded with a beautiful, remote, and largely unspoiled treasure—a camp high on a canyon rim among ancient ruins.

They say the Indigo River used to run through here, forming this deep gorge. The cliffs on the south-facing slope of the canyon were dotted with ruins and ceremonial caves. The People who once lived here hunted the high mesas above, planted corn in the mountain valleys, and drew water from the river. Thus, they had everything they needed. But one day, the river turned away, cutting through rocks and boulders in the other direction, twisting through arroyos and bubbling down slopes until a little brook flowing down into the valley land below was formed. The People followed the water, and it showed them a new place to live. They no longer needed to dwell in caves or behind piled stone walls under overhangs of rock. The hallowed water from the falls led them to a beautiful valley nestled at the base of Sacred Mountain. And so Tanoah Pueblo was built, and the People came to live there.

Now the canyon above was dry and desolate. High on each side of the ravine were ruins of round houses made from stacked rocks—lookout stations to protect from attacking tribes. A courageous modern-day traveler who made it this far could make camp next to one of these ruins and watch the moon rise over the peaks on one edge of this wide split in the earth, then see it set over the summit of Sacred Mountain on the other side. And an even more brave, hale, and athletic adventurer could cross the narrow wash atop the mouth of the chasm and then skirt the rim on the other side and find ways to navigate the ledges and stretches of sheer rock face to get to the many aboriginal sites. It was difficult and dangerous climbing, but the mystery—the lure of the silent, empty ruins—was irresistible.

And so, one day when I was just doing my job, I rode a paint mare named Redhead up to the canyon rim ruins. I had packed in gear and provisions for a quiet night among the ancient spirits. I arrived close to dusk and worked fast to settle my horse and roll out my sleeping bag. I built a campfire on a flat of stone overlooking the seven-hundred-foot drop down into the gorge. It was midsummer, hot days and cold nights up here close to the stars. I could hear water running below me, a spring or mountain seep falling on rock. I ate jerky and drank from my canteen while an enormous pink-gold moon floated up over the rim and bathed the canyon with rosy light. A demoiselle rose like a church spire above the lip of the cliff wall, a stem of stone-colored purple and terra-cotta, indigo and gray, with a perfect red-clay turban for a hat. Coyotes howled a call to prayer.

That night, I lay on flat rock and looked at the sky. Even with a full moon, I saw dozens of shooting stars. There was no sound except that of wind and water, the crackle of piñon wood as it burned inside a ring of stones nearby. I smelled
trementina,
cooling rock, juniper sap, the wonderful charred scent of my campfire.

In the stillness of that night, I could imagine the People doing ceremony in one of the caves, building a fire as I had, and singing and dancing to celebrate life and its wondrous mystery. I envisioned them making simple offerings to gods that inspired both devotion and fear.

In the morning, I broke camp early, scattered the ashes of my fire, and rode down the rim a ways to look through my binoculars at the dozens of ruins on the opposite side. One place in particular interested me—a narrow ledge perhaps four feet wide with part of a stacked rock wall still intact. Above it, on a sheer slab of cliff face, a prodigious petroglyph loomed like the face of the moon. It was a large circle with eyes and a smile and a headdress. I decided to follow the lip of the canyon back to my campsite, then cross the wash and head along the opposite rim. Perhaps I could see a way to get down to that ruin.

I tied Redhead in the shade of a twisted old juniper near the only suitable place I could find to drop down into the gorge. Wearing my backpack and good leather gloves, I lowered myself between two giant boulders and started climbing, hand and foot, down the cliff wall. I worked at this for more than two hours, climbing deep into the ravine, across ledges, back up a rock-slide area, then over a huge, precariously placed round of stone to a spot where I could get a handhold up to the narrow ledge that led to the ruin I sought.

I passed several other ruins as I worked my way along the face of the canyon wall. On some, brass markers indicated their registration as archaeological sites. Small corncobs spilled out of round, stacked rock storage silos built into cliff overhangs. Pot shards littered the sites.

In one place, a shattered ledge led to a pond that had formed deep in the mouth of a high stone overhang, a basin that reached back into the belly of rock that made up the wall. The lagoon was no doubt fed by the seep that I'd heard running in the night. Reeds and grasses grew out of the edges of the pool. I could almost see the People wading there, the women washing pots, the children splashing in the water that collected in this stone depression hundreds of feet above the floor of the gorge.

The ledge had given way in places, and I took a detour downslope to go around some giant stones. On the other side, I found that I needed to pull myself up by my upper body alone to regain the ledge. My boots perched on a narrow mantle of basalt. I saw no way to use my feet or legs. I found myself fearful and off balance. There was no other route up, and the only alternative was to go down. I wasn't even sure I could go back the way I came, since I couldn't see to place my feet. I clung to the outcropping and studied my possibilities. I knew that if I lost my grip before I got my boots on that shelf, I would not be able to keep from falling to my death. I had gotten myself into a real predicament.

Finally it seemed there was nothing to do but to take the risk and try to hoist my body up to the overhang. Perhaps because no one was around, I found myself whimpering under my breath. My hands and arms were trembling. I sucked in my gut, rose up on my toes, gave a little jump, and pulled my weight up to where my chest mashed into the rim of the ledge. I swung my right leg and got the tip of my boot to lodge, shoulder height, on the rock, then pressed and pulled and hauled my body over the edge and onto the foot-wide outcrop of stone, flat on my face, lying down. I lay there for a moment quietly celebrating, sniffing back tears, until I realized that I was facing the wrong direction. I would have to stand up on the thin shelf, cling to the rock face, and change directions. I waited for courage, but it never came. Eventually, I resigned myself to the task. Carefully gauging my balance as I went, I cautiously maneuvered my body into an about-face. I edged forward on the ledge to the place I had spied through my binoculars.

There was another body-lift ahead of me, this one easier than the last. I pressed my hands into the flat floor of the narrow ruin and pushed up until I could get a knee on the ground. When I finally stood on firm base, I saw the great glyph above me like a smiley face. There were hundreds more petroglyphs on the walls: bear tracks, mountain goats, deer, badger, snakes, spirals, alien-looking people with large hands and fancy headdresses, a mountain lion, and even what appeared to be the story of a man falling off the very ledge I'd just traversed.

A magnificent and solitary glyph was etched into the cliff wall where the rock face jutted out to create the end of the room. It was a large figure, nearly life-size—and though carved, he was also stained with red tint. He stood alone: part man, part bear, wearing a necklace of what might have been bear claws. He held a raised staff to challenge all comers. He was the only figure adorned with the blood red color, or with any color, for that matter. He was partly covered with adobe plaster, and slabs of dried stucco had fallen away and mounded in a heap beneath him, as if he were emerging from a tomb where he'd been sealed in the wall.

The space was narrow, no more than four or five feet wide, and perhaps twelve feet in length. The rubble of a rock and plaster wall still held on the outer edge of this room. There was evidence of a firepit against the cliff face. There were no corn bins here, or anywhere nearby, no other dwelling-type ruins, not even any caves. There were no pot shards either. Suddenly I realized that this must have been a place of ceremony, a sort of kivalike space, with the legends recorded on the walls of the room, the venerated images of bear and deer—their sustenance and their strength—carved and pecked with loving reverence into the sanctuary itself. The one large, facelike image above all the others must certainly have represented the sun.

What rituals had been held, what sacrifices offered in this ancient and sacred place? I closed my eyes and felt the presence of the People, who lived in the shoulders of the Earth Mother, revered the Sun Father, and took energy from the deer, fortitude from the bear, and warrior spirit from the badger. The remnants of their life here were immersed in mystery and enchantment, like the crypts beneath ancient cathedrals—dark and full of wonder, hidden, forbidden, steeped in secrecy and soul. I looked again at the Sun Father image and felt transformed by its radiance. Somehow, I knew I had seen something, felt something, sensed something that was an uncommon privilege. I turned to leave and said aloud, “Thank you.” My voice echoed in the ravine, and a chorus of thank-you's added to mine.

In those days, I didn't know to leave an offering, but my expression of gratitude was given with the same spirit.

When I made my way out of there and back to the canyon rim, I felt a new strength. The climb out was not as difficult as it had been coming in, yet still dangerous. But I felt a quiet calm. I had been somehow altered by what I had seen and where I had been.