I realize that I have no physical proof to corroborate the tale I
am about to tell you. Indeed, the only compelling earthly evidence that I
am aware of has been, shall we say, excavated.
Or we could say, evacuated.
Or perhaps even evaporated.
The point is, it’s all gone.
I never made an attempt to notify the authorities, for I found
myself in a situation completely lacking substantive confirmation of a story possessing
distinctly dubious credibility; indeed, had I not seen those things which I saw
with my own eyes, and heard what I did with my own ears, I doubt I would believe it myself. And the
consequences that would doubtless enter one’s life by stumbling into the
ranger station, speaking loudly and loosely of things which would seem a
madman’s folly to any sane person, most likely accompanied by wild
gesticulations in the air, were complications that I knew I did not need.
That much I could discern, even in the highly excited mental state I found
myself in at the conclusion of my adventure.
So I leave it up to you, the reader of my remarkable tale, to make
your own judgment about the facts that I will lay before you. This
is my desperate attempt to pry open the lock of the chamber of my mind where I
have buried these things, that they may take leave of me—indeed, that they may
take flight—and torment me no more.
I was a much younger man then, at least in mind if not in body, and did not carry the burdens I have
now. Indeed, I believe that within the short space of twenty-four hours I
gained more age than I had in the several years previous. I was blessed
with a robust physique and possessed a solitary disposition that, combined with
my lack of dependents and thirst for adventure, often took me deep into lonely
places.
I had taken to haunting the austere desert regions of the canyon
country in southeastern Utah. I was a transplant from the noisy, urban
jungle of the eastern seaboard. New
Jersey, to be precise—for geographical “precision” in the colonial region may
well subsist of naming a single state; such are the sardine-like confines of
the territorial boundaries drawn up there.
I left the land of my nativity, like so many pilgrims of the past, to go
west in search of a change: a change of pace, a change of scenery, a change of
just about everything.
And that’s what I found. I settled in Grand Junction,
Colorado, near the Utah border, on the doorstep of the towering cliffs and
salmon-colored bluffs that flank the edges of the Colorado River gorge.
This area is precursor to the national wonder and treasure that has captured
many imaginations—the Grand Canyon—but retains its own charm on a smaller
scale. To me, it’s more approachable, more livable, and ultimately, more
likeable than its much bigger, much more famous downstream descendant.
I accepted a post at a clinic in the center of town, where my
big-name credentials held their own mystique among the locals. Ivy-league snob and East-coast
big shot were phrases I
sometimes heard bounce off the walls of the waiting room. No one ever
said these kinds of things to my face, but there was often an atmosphere of
mild resentment that followed me like my own personal raincloud. No one
in town really understood me, not even my coworkers. In all candidness, I can see how they might
have interpreted my occasional abruptness and intentional aloofness as
haughtiness or disdain for the slower, more casual way of life that they were
accustomed to.
In reality it wasn’t anything like that, but simply a natural
result of the slow erosion of my energy reserves that exposure to the perpetual
buzz of patients, colleagues and staff exacted.
Like most physicians, my number was unlisted, and I seldom answered the door
unless I was expecting a visitor. My nature is not unhelpful nor
unfriendly—quite to the contrary, my heart is full of these Boy-Scout qualities,
or else why would I have gravitated towards the healing profession?—but having
a highly introverted disposition, it sometimes took all I had and more to make
it through the day. My peers thought it strange that I seemed to enjoy
settling into my office chair at the end of a long day to fill out forms and
make dictations and sign releases and other documents—elements of the career
that most of them loathed. But for me, this was my recharge time—when my
mental-emotional batteries could plug into the power source of solitary
confinement and slowly warm up by the bluish light of an LCD screen and the
soft tapping of my fingers on a keyboard.
So in a sense, my own introversion is a rather good analogy to
explain why I prefer Utah’s canyon country to the bigger, more famous, flashier
attractions such as the Grand Canyon. It is also why I prefer the relative quiet of
the Western desert to the insane bustle of the East coast. And it
explains why even Grand Junction often seemed to be too intense a climate for
comfortable living by the time I reached the end of the week.
Thus, I often sought refuge in the sand and sage brush that
swirled around isolated sandstone outcroppings like a vast, lonely sea.
By casting myself adrift in that sea—like the restless voyager-explorers
of bygone eras, when the world was so much bigger and there was still empty
space to be discovered—I could reestablish my tenuous connection with forces
that were so much more than human; forces that were cosmic,
unfathomable, and even occasionally terrifying. I felt that somehow I was
part of these. I felt there was, somehow, a grand reality that connected
and gave meaning to life; this transcended all the temporary nonsense such as
careers and politics and social engagements. Yes, there was something out there that I felt united
humanity, birds, beasts, trees, and even the rocks and sand, in one grand,
cohesive drama, in which each individual had a unique, important part to play.
As I endured the pressures of the day-to-day grind this became my
doctrine, and the desert became my sanctuary, my temple of learning these great
truths. In that refuge I would drink deeply of these metaphysical waters
until my soul was filled and I could bear to return again to "normal"
life.
And yet, by the time a week or two of association with the
multitudes of my own race had elapsed, I would find myself itching
uncontrollably for the solitude of the canyonlands again. It was with such skin-crawling anxiety that I
found myself at the Elephant Hill trailhead of the Needles late one
November. High season was long gone, and
there was only one other vehicle in the parking lot whose occupants had long
since dissolved into the shadowy crags that separated the white, mushroom-capped
towers that flanked the small valley of red sand and juniper.
I remember the exultation of having the whole scene to
myself. I closed my eyes and cocked my
head heavenward, feeling the penetrating warmth of the sun’s rays on my face,
though it strayed toward the southern horizon at this season. I concentrated on the cool air swirling about
my ears and neck like the whisper of a mountain stream. I was back in my place. Back, and wonderfully, deliciously alone.
Except for the raven, that is.
I was well-acquainted with these creatures. In my pre-medical study of zoology I had
learned that the common raven is a bird of particular intelligence, possessing
a large brain and mischievous demeanor that manifests itself in odd behaviors
that seem to serve no purpose other than self-amusement; for example, the use of
twigs or small bones as toys. Many a
desert coyote has been tormented by a persistent raven that will tease it
mercilessly, swooping down upon it and back up again, always staying just out
of reach of its angry jaws. They do it
for the pure sport of it, as if their ability to defy gravity alone weren’t
enough of an advantage over their earth-bound, half-starved targets of
ridicule.
I had been warned again that morning by the Needles District park
ranger issuing my back-country permit about the pernicious way they also pester
the humans that invade their world. In
the past I had used the visitor center’s stock Kevlar food bags, for experience
proved that Kevlar stopped both bullets and raven beaks. The first time I went into the back-country
without one, ravens pecked my backpack apart and ate a good portion of my food
during a single twenty-minute lunch break when I had the audacity to drop my
pack at camp and take my meal to a cliffy perch. Several subsequent visits to the area
convinced me that I preferred a slightly bigger bag to hold my aromatic
provisions; thus I had a newly acquired bag with me for this trip, still free
of the bite marks that marred the frequently-used loaners. The viciousness of how they dispatched my
backpack during that first experience, and the tenacity with which they always
seemed to attack the Kevlar, had made me a little wary of my black-feathered
desert companions and their hammering beaks that could inflict such destruction
in such a short time.
Not that this particular raven was threatening, or exhibiting any
propensity to torment me like a coyote.
In fact, the element of its behavior that caused me first to take
notice, and upon further scrutiny, gradually advanced itself into an object of vague
apprehension, was its remarkable stillness.
The bird sat perfectly motionless, perched high on a juniper
branch, not ten feet from where I stood fastening the straps of my pack, and
stared at me. I beheld no movement of
its head, no ruffle of its oily feathers.
Only its eye, that left eye that was so singularly ringed with the thinnest
stripe of snowy white, twitched slightly, as it looked me up and down
repeatedly.
I had never seen such a bird.
Most ravens, upon making eye contact, would comprehend a threat and take
flight. But this one held its ground,
staring me down through that unmistakable and unique white ring around its eye,
the like of which I had never seen before, nor have since.
I ceased my gawking back at the beast, and proceeded up the
trail. I could perceive its eye
following me, in utter silence. The only
sounds in the air were from my own footfalls on slickrock and the scrape of the
sides of my pack on the sandstone walls of a long crack that ascended out of
the trailhead canyon.
I soon forgot the bird and found myself relishing the varied
topography: the enormous mushroom rocks scattered about the trail; the
twisting, red canyons that dropped off the white plateau I traversed; the dark
gray pock-marks in the bedrock that filled with water each time it rained, only
to evaporate into the arid sky within a few hours of the storm clearing; the
majestic needles jutting heavenward on the varied horizons of each direction I
looked. Each rocky ridge or ravine I
traversed afforded new panoramas to enjoy in this labyrinth of geological
wonder.
It wasn’t until I stopped in the shade of a large overhang cut out
of a sheer sandstone bluff that I noticed the raven again. Whether it followed me or went ahead, I do
not know—only that when I looked up and noticed with some delight a tiny pinyon
pine tree defying the unforgiving elements by growing directly out of a
miniscule crack in the otherwise sheer rock face, the bird was suddenly also there,
perched on the tree’s only branch, staring fixedly at me with the same
white-ringed eye. A chill in the November
air seemed to catch my nerves and tingled down my spine to the soles of my
feet. Again, it sat perfectly
motionless, save that twitching eye which looked me over and over.
I found myself scurrying down the trail, descending the
switchbacks into Elephant Canyon with a rash burst of unnecessary speed. When my boot skidded over some loose sand and
I caught myself against a boulder on the edge of a switchback, I had to remind
myself that I was very much alone—just as I preferred to be—and would likely have
to hobble out of this canyon on my own two feet were I careless enough to
sprain an ankle or sustain a tumble down the cliffy slope.
Had I been there fifty years earlier and suffered such a fall, I
might have sought help from a lonely rancher or two, who brought their cattle
occasionally to feed from the relative lushness of Chesler Park, which borders
Elephant Canyon to the immediate south and west. This anomaly in the landscape is a valley of meadow
grass and flowers, several miles in diameter, sitting high up and unbroken
relative to the canyons surrounding it on all sides. The park is flanked by tall sandstone cliffs
and needles, and from the air looks a little like an impact crater. The unique properties of Chesler Park must
cause rainwater to seep into the sand and collect there in quantities unusual
for the region. Thus, the ranchers who
chose to brave this harsh landscape would bring their herds there to graze in the
relative oasis. An old cowboy camp is
still preserved along the rock island in the middle of the park, near several
of the back-country campsites. However,
no cattle have been there for decades.
Whether this is because of new restrictions, or the fortitude of the
hardy ranchers finally evaporating into the parched desert air, I do not know. What I do know is that in Chesler Park, the
lush green of spring and the golden fields of summer turn even more spectacular
in November, when white, yellow, and lavender wildflowers fill the red soil under
the watch of monolith sandstone sentinels that flank its borders. I could hardly wait to see it.
First I needed to setup my camp in the canyon. I had an affinity for the Elephant Canyon
campsites because of the panoramic views they afford of the chaotic
country. My favorite site was perched
relatively high up on the southern side of a bend in the canyon, where I could
see a 270-degree view up and down the fragmented gorge. Sunrise and sunset are both spectacular there,
as shadows of needle spires from one side of the canyon march vertically along
salmon cliffs on the other side, eventually swallowing up, or being swallowed
by, the earth, depending on the time of day.
At length I ascended the southern edge of the canyon and arrived
at my campsite. I took off my pack under
the familiar old juniper tree that afforded the only shade at this site, at
least during the heat of the day. Being
up on a rocky ledge, there wasn’t much shelter, but this tree made it a
home. Having learned the hard way through
prior experience, the first thing I did was pack the food I brought into my new
Kevlar stuff bag, which I hung from a high branch of the juniper. I had no sooner finished tying it up when I
noticed again, on a tree some twenty feet away, the same ring-eyed raven,
perched motionless, and boring into me with its twitching stare.
I must confess, though it may seem like some small thing to you,
that at this point I felt a degree of real alarm. I had never known any beast of the desert to
behave this way, and I knew not what it meant.
The thing had been watching me for who knows how long, had seen me pack
up my food sack and hang it, and doubtless was forming nefarious plans to
relieve me of my provisions the moment I left camp. The bird reeked of mischief.
But there was also something else, some deeper meaning in its
eccentric actions that unnerved me. The
way that it conducted itself with such patient stealth of motion, with such
silence, with such an air of ambush such that I had never yet seen it actually
change position in the slightest; and yet, here it was, miles from the first
sighting. And though I had only consciously
perceived it thrice, I suddenly became aware that subconsciously I had been cognizant of its presence all day; that wherever
I had been it had been also, ever since the trailhead, as if it were tracking
the progress of every footprint I made.
It stared at me with such intensity that I felt there must be some
connection we shared, some reason why this solitary raven had chosen to torment
me.
I resumed setting up camp: I pitched the tent directly on the
slickrock, weighing it down with large rocks I placed in each corner, and laid
out my sleeping quarters within. When I
emerged, much to my relief, the raven was gone.
Under the juniper I ate a silent lunch of salami, cheese, crackers, and
dried apple, and readied my day pack with the necessary provisions for my hike
up the canyon. I needed to filter water
if I could find it in any of the upstream potholes. The ranger at the entrance told me there
should be some available with the recent rains in the area, though I had seen
no evidence of moisture thus far. After double-checking
that my food sack was secure, and scanning the site one last time and finding
no trace of the bird, I descended to the rocky streambed below.
I enjoyed a marvelous hike in utter silence the rest of the
afternoon. My soul dissolved into the
alien landscape, becoming part of the remote austerity of the place. I soared in spirit among the needle towers,
and plunged into the shadowy crags.
Wherever I looked, I found strange forms and mysterious passages to
delight the imagination. Only once was
my reverie interrupted, when I crossed paths with the driver of the other
vehicle at the trailhead, near the ascent to Druid Arch at the top end of the
canyon. He was hiking out that evening,
which meant that by nightfall I would have the entire wilderness to
myself. I relished the thought and bid
him an eager farewell.
I returned to my tent just before sunset, having spent a full two
hours or so transfixed with the Stonehenge-like pillars of towering Druid
Arch. This delay necessitated a bit of a
hurried descent back down the canyon to my camp. I wasn’t so much concerned about the dark, as
I was about getting my dinner eaten and everything ready for my after-hours
entertainment. It was to be a nearly
full moon tonight, and I had a mind to explore the area in the monochromatic
glow of the heavenly orb. Everything
changes in the moonlight, and you perceive things—subtle details—that remain
hidden in the harsh light of the noon sun.
I eagerly anticipated the revelations this night would bring.
When I retrieved my food sack from where it hung from the juniper
tree, the raven had been hard at work: it had been thoroughly pecked, poked and
pried. The top of my box of crackers had
been torn slightly, where it was exposed by the dime-sized opening at the
drawstring mouth of the bag, but otherwise, everything had been well protected.
I ate my meal in haste as the last fiery rays disappeared behind
the western canyon wall. I removed
several of the water bottles I had filled earlier from my day pack, adding them
to the bag and tying it up to a high branch of the juniper again. It was bulging with its contents, the various
containers within pushing out in strange, lumpy shapes.
It wasn’t until the nearly full moon broke over the eastern
horizon a few minutes later, shining horizontally against the bag, that I
suddenly noticed that the bumps and forms pushing out from within the bag
seemed to create the shape of a face.
Yes, there was definitely a face inside the bag, pressing hard against
it so that I could see the contours of the nose, the cheekbones, the forehead,
the hollow indentations where the eyes were, and the chin. As a physician I had studied the anatomy of
the human skull in great detail over many years, and I was amazed at the
remarkable structural accuracy of the visage that I now beheld. A perfectly-proportioned human face was
there, upright and inside the bag, pressing to get out.
I simply gawked at the thing, so fascinated by this strange
phenomenon that for a long moment I did not notice the raven perched on the
very branch from which the sack hung.
When at last I beheld the moonlight spilling over its inky feathers, its
staring, white-ringed eye shot through my own with an icy coldness that spilled
down my spine and extended to the ends of my limbs. I trembled violently and cried out at the
thing, waving my arms wildly in the passion of the moment, prompting it to take
flight with a loud, cawing cry. The juniper
branch was left swaying in the moonlight, with the face in the bag slowly
rotating beneath it. At last, for the
first time, I could plainly discern that the raven was not just a shadowy
apparition, but in fact was a tangible being that possessed full capabilities
of locomotion like any other bird.
I had begun to wonder about that raven. Folklore had often claimed that ravens were
incarnations of restless souls who had been cheated of life, or harbingers of
death or doom. To many they were a dark
and ugly omen. I had never been
superstitious and thus had never put any stock in such rubbish. But being a spiritual being, and having my
own unique brand of transcendentalism which, though never understood by others,
to me served a palpable purpose (as I have described in this account), I had to
concede that such legends often possess distant roots in some form of truth. Like the juniper tree that stood before me,
sometimes the manifestations of tall tales visible to us in the present have
grown gnarled and twisted on the surface; yet at their core they draw real
sustenance from historical facts, just as this tree could mysteriously draw water
from soil that appeared, to my ignorant eyes, to be as arid as the dust on the
moon.
With the disappearance of the feathered beast into the night sky,
my thoughts returned to the present and I suddenly became aware of how very
fatigued I felt. The thought of a moonlit
stroll among the silent stone monuments and shadowy places of the canyon had
utterly lost its appeal, and I found myself distressed by an acute malaise of
some unspeakable source. The food bag continued
its slow rotation in the moonlight, and I was greatly relieved to see that the
face in the bag had disappeared entirely and it was, again, just an ordinary
sack containing the lumps and bulges of my provisions. No doubt, the phantom vision of something more had been just a trick of the eyes
resulting from the dim, ghostly light and the black shadows of the tree from
which it hung.
I retired to my tent at once and lay in the dark with my eyes
closed. I expected to drift off
immediately into the heavy slumber typical of days when I had hiked miles through
the wilderness, much of it with a loaded backpack. But instead, I found that even while my body felt
ill at ease, my mind was fully alert and my other senses seemed to be heighted
to an unusual degree.
With my eyes closed, I seemed to be able to comprehend the
movements of everything around me in the desert night—for it is in the darkness
that the desert truly comes alive. I discerned the scurry of a ground squirrel
as it investigated my camp, running up the length of the juniper trunk, then
out along the branch, finally sniffing at the top of the food sack. I could tell the exact moment when it
abandoned the pursuit of what was inside, and could sense it retracing its
steps, at last retreating back into the shadows of its hole, many yards
away. I could hear the flutter of bat
wings as they chased insect prey through wild loops in the air, sometimes
swooping to just inches above my tent. To
my astonishment, I found that I could also smell
them as they passed, their mammal scents leaving trails and arcs in the sky
like long kite tails. And then, in a
feat wholly outside the range of normal human sensory experience, I found
myself being able to locate, far above and around me, the individual insects that they feasted on—each set of tiny wings
fluttered just loud enough to be audible to my ears through the mesh roof of my
tent. The more I tried to ignore my
senses the more intensely they inundated my consciousness. I found that I could hear the distant march
of a beetle across the sand. I could
hear the faint croaking of toads in the marshes of the next canyon over. I could even—in an achievement all my years
of medical training would have told me was not humanly possible—discern the
individual steps of the ants exploring the slickrock around my tent. The cacophony of the wild menagerie outside
my little piece of human shelter swirled about me like the din of a marching
band. I had never felt so alert, so
awake, so alive!
And then the whole of the commotion was at once swallowed up, as
my attention honed in on a single sound—a different sound; not an animal sound;
but something that caused my blood to run cold in my veins.
I could hear the subtle, yet distinctive noise of drops of fluid
hitting the rock. They started
occasionally, but grew more regular.
Soon it was a pounding of droplets, each one splattering onto the sandstone. I could tell by the sound they made that it was
not water dripping, but something more viscous.
I could smell it—it was an earthy, salty smell. I plainly detected the direction of the noise,
for it came straight from the branch of the juniper tree from which hung the
sack with the face.
Yes, though my eyes were shut tightly, I knew that the face was
there again, its delineations protruding obscenely from the interior of the
bag. And it was the bag—yes, plainly the bag—that was dripping the viscous
fluid onto the uneven rock below.
And lo—what was this new sound?
It was the sound of something slowly, stealthily, almost silently,
snaking its way towards the door of my tent.
Back and forth it coursed across the irregular sandstone surface, always
flowing through the low spots, pooling when necessary until it could spill over
into the next depression, working its way steadily down the almost
imperceptible slope that lead to the zippered opening of my tent.
My ears burned with the noise.
My hands turned cold as I clenched them tightly over my ears. My heart pounded in my chest as I listened to
that great, black snake extend itself from its originating pool underneath the
sack, drop by drop and inch by inch, until it at last made contact with the
nylon of my tent. Unable to keep my eyes
shut any more, I sat bolt upright in my sleeping bag and—to my horror—stared
at a dark shadow in the front corner of my tent that began to spread like a
fungus across the floor and creep up the side.
All at once I sprang to my feet, my head colliding with the roof
of my tent, my eyes popping with horror as the inky blackness spread further
towards my feet, in a pattern like grasping, shadowy fingers. In desperation I reached out and fumbled with
the door zipper, finally managing to rip it open. I sprang out of the constricted space just in
time to see the ring-eyed raven take flight from the roof of my tent, where its
great, extended wings had cast their black shadows in the moonlight.
Stunned, I looked about.
There was no stain on my tent.
All was as it had been before.
There was no inky rivulet on the rock, no pool under the sack; in fact,
the bag looked quite itself, with only my foodstuffs bulging out its
sides. All was in perfect order.
And yet, the raven had been here again. Somehow, in the midst of all the motions of
the wild creatures I had discerned with my heightened senses, I had failed to
detect it landing mere inches above my head.
The thing was surely some hybrid mixture of both physical creature and supernatural
phantom.
I looked in the direction that the raven had departed—for this I
had plainly observed—and was dumbfounded to notice something remarkable that I
am almost certain had not been there before: following the bird’s path in a
straight line across the canyon, on the wall of the north side, was a large,
vertical white slab of sandstone. This I
had undoubtedly observed without taking particular notice previously, as the
banded red and white colors interchanged frequently in the towers of the canyon
rim; but now, in the moonlight, it had taken on such distinctive
characteristics that I found myself rubbing my eyes in disbelief.
There, staring at me from the huge rock face, was a face—and not just any face, but the
selfsame visage that had moments before been protruding from the inside of the
food sack that was hanging from the juniper tree, just feet from where I
stood. I could not have mistaken it; as
I mentioned with the sack, I could discern every contoured detail of the face,
laid out in perfect human detail. And
just like the sack, it looked as if the face was inside the rock, straining with all its might to get out.
As I stared at the apparition, I saw the moonlight shadow of the raven
rise from the canyon bottom, shooting up across the white face until it vanished
at the apex, as the raven flew into the shadows just above the top of the cliff.
I fixed myself with a sudden determination to investigate the spot
where the raven had disappeared. I felt
a strange compulsion, as if I were being called to the spot by some
irresistible urge to know what was there.
Almost without hesitation, only taking time to put on my shoes and grab
my headlamp and twenty feet of coiled webbing from my backpack, I descended
from my campsite to the shadowy bottom of the canyon and crossed to the north
side where the rock face stared down at me.
I have always loved exploring the craggy cliffs and spires in
canyon country, in part because there is so often a way to get to where I want
to go—not always an easy or obvious way, but it seems that Nature has, in her
playful way, provided just enough of
a path to make it possible to penetrate to whatever heights or depths the human
mind sets its sights on. So it was with
this canyon wall. Starting from the
canyon bottom, I was several hundred feet below the white rock face that was my
objective to ascend. But using my
headlamp to illuminate the topography, I was able to pick my way around the
alternating layers of rubble and cliffs and slowly work my way up towards my
goal.
My meandering path took some time to forge, but after thirty
minutes or so I found myself at the base of the great white cliff. Here was the real challenge. I traversed the base back and forth a dozen
times, but could find no weakness, no obvious path that would lead me up to my
destination. Flustered, I sat down with
my head in my hands and began to assess my own mental state for being out here,
looking for a way to the top of a sheer sandstone cliff in the middle of the
night.
I had just determined to go back to camp, when I heard a faint
sound coming from above. I thought it
was the wind at first, but then it came into focus and I could tell that
someone or something was up there, speaking. I strained my ears to hear it, and then heard
a second voice responding:
“…this is my place…”
The first voice answered with something unintelligible. As I listened, I began to distinguish the
qualities of the speakers’ voices. The
first was an older man, with a lower tone and gravelly timbre. The second belonged to a man who seemed to be
much younger.
The old man accused, “…and now I find you up here, with your own
little camp.”
“I ain’t never done any wrong by coming here on my own time,”
protested the younger man.
“Well, we’ll see about that,” replied the older.
There was a distinctive quality of the voices that was hard to
discern; they were certainly real, yet they sounded not quite human. It was as if the volume of their speech rose
and fell with the gusty breezes that raced down the canyon. My heart raced with a keen interest in the
midnight conversation of these two visitors in this barren place that I had
previously been convinced was deserted.
Frantically, I paced back and forth again, looking for some way up that
I had not seen before.
I rounded the corner opposite where I had climbed up to the base
of the cliff, and, following a narrow ledge and proceeding further than before
and looking up, I noticed a small crack behind a boulder on a ledge above. It didn’t look even wide enough for a child
to squeeze into, but knowing how deceiving the crags in a rock face can be, I
climbed up to the next ledge to investigate.
Sure enough, immediately before the part of the crack that was
visible from below, there was an opening in the ledge floor, about three feet
deep and three feet wide, which penetrated through the boulder directly under
the crack I had seen before. The opening
extended some twenty feet to the far side of the boulder, running beneath the
crack I had seen from below, where it opened out into a space that was
perfectly hidden from the base of the cliff face.
“I knew something was wrong,” cried the younger voice, “and now I
know exactly what’s going on.”
“You don’t know nothing,” shouted the older, his pitch rising in
anger.
“I can prove it. It’s all
right here, in my space, which you can leave now! You don’t own me up here!”
Though I could only hear snippets of the argument, it was obvious
that some great drama was unfolding above.
Frantically, I looked around me, and could now see the answer to my
problem of ascending the cliff: there was a vertical chimney, about two feet
wide without much variation, extending from where I stood, all the way to the
top of the rock face. I estimated that
it was probably a hundred feet high, which meant that if I climbed rather quickly,
it would take me the better part of an hour before I reached the top. I wished that I had brought some bolts with
me; as it was, I would have to free-climb carefully.
I began my ascent, finding strong enough holds in the minor variations
of the chimney walls for my back and feet so that I could push myself up with
my legs and sometimes pull with my hands.
Every few feet I would pause, and when I did, could often make out the
conversation above.
“I have records of everything.
All the ones that died, and all the new calves, all the ones you took
from Christensen’s herd. Don’t think you
can hide it from me or anyone else.” The
young man’s voice was shrill with energy as he accused the old man. “I know what you’ve been up to, Quincy, and
I’ve got all the proof I need for the sheriff.
It’s all up here, safely out of your reach!” There was the sound of metal patting soft
earth. “The game is up!”
There was a long silence.
Then, barely audible, like the low moan of a breeze, I heard the old man
slowly reply, “You’ve got nothing, Jake.
I’ll see to it that…”
A series of grunts and moans erupted as the sound of blows spilled
down from above. With wild excitement, I
accelerated my progress up the chimney.
I could hear no more words between the two men, but imagine my horror
when I heard at last the sharp clang of metal striking something hard, and a
loud scream of a man in desperation: a piercing, unearthly shriek that rose in
pitch until it became the shrill cry of a raven. The sound echoed across the canyon walls,
coming at me from every direction at once; then it abruptly ceased and its reverberating
ring dissipated into the black night sky.
All was still. I inched my
way higher and higher, pausing to listen every minute or so, but could hear
nothing, until a new sound began: the dull thump of a metal shovel digging in
soft sand. I could hear each shovelful
of dirt being thrown aside as the digger made progress: first in one spot, then
another, then another. It sounded as if
he were digging a series of holes, perhaps working systematically; perhaps
looking for something.
I continued to make my way upward, and the digging continued from
the top. After thirty more minutes or
so, I heard a thump of metal on wood, and then the scraping sound of the shovel
clearing sand off of wood. Then a series
of grunts, all made by the older man’s gravelly voice, followed by a single
thud, and the sound of a lid being pried off of a box.
I hurried as much as I dared to.
My arms and legs were beginning to shake under the exertion, and looking
down, I saw that I had over fifty feet of open air between my body and the
bottom of the vertical chute. This was not
the time to behave rashly; I needed to concentrate on the task at hand.
My thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a sudden, terrible
series of sharp blows, as if the shovel were being used to hack at something
furiously. The old man’s grunts and murmurs
indicated his exertion at whatever task he was about.
During this time I had gained another twenty feet or so towards
the top of the cliff. Above the sounds
of my own body scraping the sandstone walls of the chimney as I worked upwards,
I heard the sound of the lid being pounded back onto the box. This was followed by a large thump, as if the
box had been dropped, and then, pausing for a moment, I discerned the distinct
sound of sand being dumped onto wood, followed by the softer sound of sand on sand,
as the old man replaced the earth he had previously dug out.
I had almost reached my goal, and he was nearly finished! Somehow, I knew that I needed to hurry in
order to see the terrible conclusion of this mysterious chain of events, or I
may never know the truth behind it. The
desert, for all its fragility and unforgiving habits of showing the scars
humanity has inflicted on it, yet has a remarkable way of swallowing certain
secrets whole; of sweeping clean the traces of some events with the sand and
stillness that pervade it. I ascended
the last twenty feet or so of the chimney, hand over hand, foot over foot, in a
remarkably smooth rhythm, until at last, I pulled myself up onto a ledge at the
summit of the white rock face.
Once on top, I scrambled further up a steep incline and found
myself peering over a sculpted sandstone border of a circular depression some
thirty feet in diameter, whose bottom was filled with sand and strewn with
desert vegetation. Most of the pothole
was bordered by vertical sandstone walls, almost perfectly smooth, varying from
a few feet to over fifteen feet in height.
The only variation was on the far side, where the wall was broken by a
dark crack, some four or five feet across, marking the boundary between two red
towers that rose high above the circular wall.
I could see in the moonlight that there was a slight drainage in the
sand towards the opening, so that it must be at the low point of the
depression. It was from the black space of
that chasm that I heard the final sound of the fantastic events I had climbed
up to witness: the distant clang of a shovel bouncing on sandstone. Then all was again still.
I strained for more, but my ears discerned nothing. Shining my headlamp around the perimeter of
the pothole, I looked in vain for the obvious signs of the digging I had overheard. I was astonished to observe that the whole
area was completely undisturbed. There
were no footprints, no evidence of a shovel having been at work, nothing at all
but windswept sand, desert shrubs, a few small, hardy trees, and some patches
of wildflowers, gently fluttering in the light breeze.
Perhaps somehow, incredibly, the noises I had heard came from
beyond the crack. I circled the
perimeter of the pothole until I reached a point where the wall was low, and I
jumped down and ran to the place where the chasm broke the otherwise smooth
wall.
Pausing to adjust my headlamp, I stood at the opening and shone my
light inside. I could see that this
crack was indeed the boundary of two towers that not only ascended high above
the pothole, but also appeared to extend down some fifty feet or more, nearly
vertically, marking the outer border of this side of the little plateau. From here, I could see moonlight and shadow
on a rock wall across a gaping void. But
there was no trace of any human activity, nor any glimpse of the bearers of the
voices I had so plainly heard. Mindful
of the drop-off at my feet, I ensured my hand- and footholds, and carefully
stepped into the blackness of the crevasse to get a better look.
All at once I was barraged by the deafening din of a hundred
shrill raven calls, as a cloud of the oily birds rushed at me, and through me,
from the darkness. They brushed by my
face and limbs as they poured out of the inky blackness like a swarm of angry
hornets. I cowered in the gap, my arms
shielding my head from the onslaught of chaos.
I covered my ears with my hands until the last bird had disappeared into
the sky behind me.
I found myself, extraordinarily, still with firm footholds that
prevented me from plummeting down the crack to my doom. Deeply shaken, but otherwise unharmed, I
regained my bearings and peered down the crevasse beneath me. About fifteen feet below, the beam of my
headlamp caught an object wedged in the crack between the towers. The shovel!
I backed out of the chasm to see if there might be an anchor I
could use with my webbing to fetch the shovel.
The only thing I could find was a pinyon pine log that was long enough
to extend beyond both sides of the opening, and appeared solid enough to hold
my weight. I anchored my webbing to it
and laid it across the opening, hoping that it would stay put with my weight
pulling against it.
I descended the crag until it became too narrow, and then, relying
on the integrity of the pinyon log, worked my way to the outside edge of the
towers and dropped a little further to where the shovel was wedged between
them. I was astonished at its condition:
it was rusted completely over and showed no signs of having been recently
used. There was no sand clinging to its
blade; no sweat or oil on its rough, warped wooden handle; no sign of having
been touched by human hands for a very long time.
With some effort, I wriggled it free with one hand while I held
myself in place with the other, and, with some exertion, managed to climb back
up. When at last I emerged from the
chasm again, I beheld an amazing spectacle.
The birds had formed a swirling mass in the sky above and were holding
steady in a uniform pattern. They seemed
to circle around and around a central point just off to my left. I stared in awe at the singular display, and
noticed that the shadow of the birds on the sand almost completely blocked out
the moonlight, except for one small spot of brightness in the center, about
three feet across, which shone brightly about ten feet from where I stood. It was here that I knew I had to dig.
The shovel worked quickly, and within a short time I hit something
solid. It wasn’t rock, but it didn’t
sound like the wood I had overheard earlier, either. It was softer and denser, and made a duller
sound when I struck it, like an axe in rotting timber.
I anxiously widened the hole until I could clear away enough sand
to find the edges of an old, wooden box, about two feet by three feet. On the lid of the decaying box I could still
make out a large “Q” that had been painted on it. I feverishly worked the sand around it until
I was able to pry off the lid. Much of
the wood crumbled under the strain of the prying shovel.
At the exact moment I cleared the hole of the pieces of the lid,
allowing the circle of moonlight to spill down into the white and jumbled
contents of the crate, the swirling raven cloud above dove upon me in a body,
with a sudden, deafening clamor. As in
the crack, they paid me no heed, but brushed past and went straight for the box
in the bottom of the hole, each one picking up an object and then disappearing into
the sky. At first I could not see what
they carried away, but then I noticed the familiar shapes I had studied for so
many years: a femur; radius and ulna; a clavicle; an angled, flat scapula; a
hand, with most of the fingers still attached; pieces of spine; ribs; and every
other part of human skeletal anatomy. I
even saw two ravens ascend together, carrying a hip bone. It seemed that after the bones had been
removed, they started flying away with rags or scraps of clothing, trailing
grey dust in the night air. The birds
rushed upon the crate with such intensity that within a minute or so it
appeared to be entirely devoid of its former contents.
I looked up into the sky to see where these mysterious birds were
carrying their loads, but could find no trace of any of them. For a moment I simply marveled at this
paranormal wonder, and then I peered down into the shadowy recesses of the box,
where there was one item that was yet untouched. I flattened myself on my stomach and reached
my arms down into the crate to remove a smallish, canvas sack from the
corner. Standing, I examined it: its
mouth was tied tightly and a faint, but legible “Q” matching the one on the lid
of the box was printed on it. Its bottom
was stained with a sickening black ooze.
Its sides bulged with the unmistakable marks of a face—the same human face
I had seen before—pressing against it from the inside.
I recoiled at the thing and leaped back, dropping it to the ground. Upon impact the bag split open and the skull
rolled out onto the sand, stopping at my feet, its hollow eyes staring up at me. A lone raven with a white-ringed eye swooped
down silently from the air and picked up the skull in its claws. I watched it ascend towards the stars until
it disappeared into the blackness from whence it came.
I picked up the stained sack and found a lone object which the
birds had left behind. It was an eyepiece;
a monocle. The single lens was framed by
a silver ring, which, remarkably, was untarnished and shone brightly in the
pale moonlight. This I pocketed.
I had plenty of time as I carefully descended the chimney and made
my way back to my tent to ponder this most extraordinary adventure. I knew not what to make of it. Upon reaching my camp, sleep had long since fled as a possibility for the night. Consequently, I hastily packed up my things
in the darkness and was back at the trailhead by sunrise.
As I mentioned at the commencement of this narrative, I declined
to share what I knew with any of the local authorities. I have no plausible proof of any part of my strange
tale, and I would not expect any sane person to believe it. I found myself over the following weeks and
months withdrawing even further from the society of mankind which seemed to
throng me at every turn. What I had
experienced weighed upon me like a great burden. I began to lose hope of anyone ever
understanding what this extraordinary manifestation had done to me.
And yet, the monocle served as a tangible reminder of what had
happened, high in the lonely cliffs of the canyonlands. Ever after, my dreams were frequently haunted
with the sound of black, fluttering wings and the discovery of bulging sacks in
strange locations.
These visions eventually drove me to launch an investigation in
the microfiche reserves of the Grand Junction library. Therein is a relatively complete set of local
newspapers, spanning from the early 1930s to the late 1970s. After months of searching, in the June 14,
1968 issue of the Grand Junction Times, I finally stumbled across a two-page
spread chronicling the history of ranching in the Needles area of what is now
Canyonlands National Park. A few paragraphs
of particular interest told the peculiar story of how in 1914, while off with
the herd in the Needles, a young ranch hand by the name of Jacob Hamilton had
come down with a desert fever and had wandered off into the wilderness, never
to be heard of again. His employer, one
Martin Quincy, had already had a difficult year with the sudden onslaught of a
cattle disease that wiped out a good portion of his herd. After this final misfortune, Quincy had sold
the remaining cattle to the Christensen ranch, whose herd often grazed with
Quincy’s lot, but had somehow been spared the disease that had so crippled his
neighbor’s headcount.
Underneath the article was a photograph with a caption that read
“Martin Quincy and Jacob Hamilton at the Quincy ranch before it closed.” The grainy picture showed a gruff old rancher
standing next to a young man with a silver-rimmed monocle. They stood by a gate painted with the same
“Q” I had seen on the lid of the crate and the canvas bag. I can only conclude that the slain young man
could never rest at peace while buried in a box bearing the mark of his
murderer.
As for the raven with the white-ringed eye, I have never seen it
since.
