Welcome to Moab Rockart
Mill Creek Hike - Part Two
The Peaceful Spirit of Mill Creek Canyon
Continuing our April 2009 hike
through the middle reaches of
Mill Creek Canyon in Moab, Utah, we
approached the farthest point on our route.
Soon, it would be time to turn back and retrace
our steps towards the point where we came in.
Wildflowers in the desert offer
us a rare look at how ephemeral life can be.
Even a solitary example of a
desert flower can make our heart leap.
What species of plant is it? Is it a
healthy specimen? What color and shape are
its flowers? Does it show any signs of
trailside abuse? If the plant is healthy,
we always stop and take a picture for our files.
Other than the few flowering
plants that make their home in rare natural
nurseries, most desert wildflowers lead a
near-solitary existence. If one finds
three or more examples of one species
congregated together, the place takes on the
feeling of a stand or perhaps a grove.
In contemporary society, we toss
words together, like “desert
garden”, as if there is a simple meaning to
that phrase. If you ask most readers what
that phrase means, they will tell you that a
“desert garden” is a residential or botanical
garden that features examples of desert-dwelling
species. This prevalence of thought stems
from the rarity of
natural desert gardens.
Perhaps it is fitting that we
reached the turning point of our hike in a
desert garden, surrounded by steep canyon walls
and several waterfalls along the creek.
Interspersed throughout this oasis were about
ten people, including the four of us. The
place felt used, but not over-utilized.
Each visitor was responsible for his or her own
conduct and enjoyment of the place.
Throughout our hike, we saw not one example of
litter or defacement.
As I photographed a flowering
desert paintbrush, a woman stepped forward
and introduced herself to us as a local Moab
resident. In the way typical of Moab
locals, she asked if we would like her to take a
group picture of us four friends. Of
course, we accepted. The standing portrait
you see on these pages is proof that nature
inspires humans. While out on a hike like
this, one tends to smile almost all the time.
Although we did not string our hands together in
a daisy chain, like
the Ancients, we felt the camaraderie of
being with friends, both old and new.
Many
Moab rock art sites are undocumented.
If you go to the
Moab Visitors Center, they will provide you
with a free self-guided tour map to Indian rock
art sites, both in and around Moab. Since
the panels on the self-guided tour are the
easiest to spot, they are easiest to deface.
Entire panels have been
lost to vandalism in the past century.
For most visitors today, their ethics preclude
“tagging” rocks or using ancient rock art for
target practice. As such, we are happy to
report that recent defacements in and around
Moab are rare.
The Moab Visitors Center is also
a great resource for hikers. If you visit
Moab, be sure to ask there about public hiking
trails, including those with active streams.
After taking the normal precautions, like having
plenty of water and telling a responsible party
where you are going, then get going, out of Moab
and into a redrock canyon.
Unlike Mill Creek Canyon, which
we accessed midstream, most canyon hikes start
at the mouth of a given streambed and then
proceed up-canyon. As you walk slowly up
the floodplain of your canyon, note if there are
any cottonwood trees alongside. Cottonwood
trees are analogous to canaries in coalmines.
If the canary dies, the air in the mine is unfit
for humans. If a stand of cottonwoods
dies, it is an indication that the water table
in the area has sunk below the level of a
cottonwood taproot.
After assessing the health and
beauty of your immediate environment, keep
walking, but now look for side-canyons, rocky
overhangs and dry watercourses. Pick any
one and
follow it to its source. Often the
source of a canyon watercourse is the remains of
a waterfall pool. Since many side streams
run only after heavy rains, you will probably
discover a dry story about a formerly wet
existence. It is in such relatively
well-watered spots that the Ancients camped.
To such places, they brought their
Stone Age incising tools. In the
spirit of their pictographs, they practiced the
art of storytelling.
Because of their relative
remoteness from paved roads, few seek out or
visit these sacred sites. Although easily
overlooked, Indian rock art sites are rich in
their abundance. Whether it is near a
watercourse as large as the Colorado River or as
small as Mill Creek, you will find undocumented
and undamaged Indian rock art, some of it
created at least 4000 years ago.
The
Clovis Culture, (named for distinctive stone
spear points first found near Clovis, New
Mexico) may have visited the Canyonlands around
11,000 BCE. Since they were
hunter-gatherers, without permanent homes the
evidence is spotty. If they did visit
here, is it not possible that they would leave
some form of rock carving as evidence?
After all, they were the undisputed kings of
stone spear-point manufacturing and usage.
Did they use their hard points to carve the
relatively soft sandstone walls of Mill Creek
Canyon?
If one looks at any well-watered
desert canyon with an eye for evidence of
Ancient activity, tracings and gouging in the
rocks may hint at prior human visitation.
The experts tend to discount human activity as
the origins of these shapes and forms.
During possible warmer times during the
Pleistocene, did human hands carve these
images? The presence of
desert varnish across the top layer of some
“carvings” might indicate that it was so.
On the other hand, did nature, as a subtle joke
on contemporary humans, create these fantastical
carvings?
Some examples look like
crosshatch patterns on the rocks. Others
look like galleries of figures that we might see
in a museum of contemporary art. As we
looked above the Ancient frescos, we spied a
lone cedar, standing atop a rocky monolith.
Later, when we gave closer attention to the
image, we noticed figures carved on the upper
flanks of the monolith, several hundred feet
above the canyon floor. Were the carvings
of human origin, or did nature create them on
the eroding fin of that escarpment?
At our farthest point downstream,
we turned to hear the sound of running water.
On the sunny side of the canyon, we saw a
waterfall, pouring from one sandstone ledge to
another. As we stepped back to take a
picture of the happy little waterfall, we
noticed that the shadow of the Other had
acquired a new friend. Both spirits stood
and watched the waterfall together.
Our return trip was along the
same path that we had so recently descended.
From the canyon bottom, we had a view up the
creek towards its source, high in the
Manti la Sal Range. As the first
European visitors, the
Dominguez-Escalante Expedition passed by
here in the summer of 1776. On their way
from Santa Fe, New Mexico towards their
unachievable destination of Monterrey,
California, they forded the Colorado River near
here. Although they did not reach their
California dream, they did
pioneer a trail that later became known as
the
Old Spanish Trail.
Overwhelmed by the September heat
in the
Spanish Valley below,
Fathers Dominguez and Escalante gazed up in
wonder at snowcapped mountains. Unable to
reconcile the snowy mountains and desert heat,
they assumed that these were mountains capped
with salt. In honor of the “Mountain
of the Salt”, they gave the range the
Spanish name, Sierra La Sal.
A range of mountains isolated
from its brethren tends to collect any weather
that streams by. Some say that
updrafts along their western slopes create
the frequent storms that shroud these peaks.
Between the 1776 European discovery of the Manti
la Sals and the 1848 European discovery of
Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, Africa,
seventy-two years would pass. With no
industrial pollution or dust from broken soil to
mar the whiteness of the snow, we can imagine
that Escalante and Dominguez saw on the Manti la
Sals an American equivalent to the fabled snows
of Kilimanjaro.
As we looked at the Manti la Sal
Range that day, a shiver went up our spine.
Escalante’s “Mountains of Salt” lay under a
wrapping of reddish dirt, laid down by a recent
dust storm of unprecedented size and power.
Was it the Spirit of Father Escalante or was it
the wisdom and experience of our friend Leo
telling us that something was wrong here? Where
was the purity of white snowfields that we had
witnessed only one year before? Was this
heavy coating of pink dust an anomaly, or were
even larger dust storms coming? Were the
snows of the Manti la Sal Range soon to
disappear, as have the snows of Kilimanjaro?
Our final effort that day
entailed scaling a low point along the wall of
Mill Creek Canyon, then over the ridge to our
truck, where our keys lay locked inside the cab.
Upon returning to our parking spot, friends
Tiger and Terry gently conspired to get a
locksmith to our location, half a mile off the
nearest paved road. Since we had no way of
controlling the situation, we let the
wizards of Moab work their ways. In
less than thirty minutes, our truck was unlocked
and we were safely on our way back to town for
dinner.
Email James McGillis
Email James McGillis
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