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ALL ABOUT A TREE AND A POTby Gale Burak |
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Ponderosa Pine growing in the inner gorge (composite of several photos) click for larger image |
About thirty years ago, Emery Kolb told me about a ponderosa pine growing in the Inner Gorge that he had first seen around 1915. At that time, he and John Ivers took occasional day trips down the river as far as Granite and Hermit Rapids using a canvas boat they kept moored in an alcove between Pipe Creek and Horn Rapids. Then they would row and pole back up river, climb the steep scree slope to the base of the Tapeats sandstone where the tree grew, then ascend a two foot wide crack to the plateau using chock stones as steps and hike a mile back to Emery's cabin at Indian Gardens--quite a day's feat!
I found the drainage he described, but unfortunately, most of the chock stones in the opening had fallen out, so I had to scout around for another route. West of Plateau Point, in the first main drainage, there was an easy slickrock channel through the Tapeats that brought me past a short stretch of thicket and gravel into an open bowl, its west side strewn with huge boulders and the north edge dropping vertically to the river. The floor was striped with bands of brilliant red granite and contained many pockets of water.
By traversing west below the Tapeats, in contact with the Schist, I hiked out around a point where there was a tremendous view downstream of Horn Rapids and the Inner Gorge. Then scrambling up and down over loose scree a ways, I reached the tree. It was twice the height that Emery had described and had neighbors of a redbud shrub below it and a small pinon pine sheltered by its shade. Just west of the tree I took pictures showing its relation to Zoroaster and to the wide band of white quartz across the river. Since then I've told many people about the tree, and it now seems to be quite a landmark for river trips.
That first visit was about 1965, but I have been back several times since then. In 1975, on a jaunt as far as the open bowl, I found graffiti at the point overlooking Horn Rapids. On a bedrock panel of the Tapeats is chiseled in script writing, 'Apr. 1890' and on a nearby boulder was 'DV' and 'GL'. Later I read that a George Love had worked at the Gardens for the Camerons in the 90's, but who was his friend? Does anyone know more about this?
On my way back, poking along above the huge rock chunks, looking for more evidence of Canyon History, I spied a crudely formed spider web bridging a horizontal cavity between the Tapeats and the Schist. It seemed to be a black widow web, so, I gingerly pulled aside a small shrub hiding part of it and bent over to check. Boy, did I catch up on some history! There behind the bush, lying on its side with its bottom facing me, staring eyeball to eyeball at me, was the corrugated, coiled base of an earthenware jug. WOW! What a thrill!
Normally it should not be touched nor taken, but right along that bench between the cliffs I had seen the recent tracks of man-sized boots, traipsing along, that served to remind me that others go far off the beaten trails now too; I didn't dare leave this bit of history. After checking that Mrs. Black Widow wasn't about, and still gasping with excitement, I carefully drew the pot out. After examining my treasure, I found it was whole and in perfect condition except for a small hole on its down side with a ring of caliche stain around it. The jug was empty with no evidence of a lid, shards, charcoal, etc. and no spider either. It was heavy too, so I was faced with the problem of how in the heck I would get it safely to the Gardens. In my daypack was a long-sleeved cotton shirt and by tying opposite tails and sleeves together I made a fine sling to carry it.
It was tricky, swinging it carefully from arm to arm as I scrambled hand and foot up the slickrock gully to the plateau, but at that point I'd rather have broken an arm than that pot. From the top of the opening I still had a mile to go. However, I got lucky. As I trudged up and over the curve of the plateau toward the Tonto Trail I saw Wayne Paya approaching on horseback from a Salt Creek Patrol and I hailed him, "Hey, Wayne, guess what I've got in this shirt."
"Oh," he said eyeing the bulge I carried, "Let's see, a gold nugget the size of your head?" "Better'n that. Look." I pulled the pot carefully out to show him. "How about carrying it back to the Gardens for me?"
"Sure, hand it up," Wayne said. I put it back in my shirt and lifted it to him, and darned if he didn't pretend to drop it. My heart dropped too. When I got to the Gardens he and Victor Watahomigi, then the maintenance ranger for the pump house, were still examining it. Victor brought a big carton and several grain sacks from the tack shed, and we packed my find up later that evening. He said he would see that it went out to Bob Euler on the next helicopter, but he didn't. It was three weeks before I saw the pot again; he just couldn't part with it. I really wished I'd have been free to give it to them for the (then nonexistent) Supai collection of artifacts, as it was probably one of their tribal ancestors who had left it there.
A year later Bob hiked to the Gardens with some of us rangers, giving us a day of archeologic background in the area. At his request we went out to the pot site. He determined that this plain old utility jug had lain about 1000 years in that spot and was used as a water storage pot for hunters who had perhaps hidden among the boulders, waiting for a bighorn to come down for water in a tenaja (bedrock pool) among the granite dykes on the bowl's floor. As Bob said, if you find an object that is not extremely unusual, or not in danger of being taken, leave it in place for future experts. The latter seemed the important factor here to me and I am just glad that I was the one to put it the right hands.
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Used by permission of the Grand Canyon Pioneers Society.
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