There are beginnings and there are endings and there seems to be no better way to start this than with an observation, made by Lao Tzo in the Tao Te Ching sometime around the 6th century BCE. We have all heard some version of this but I would like to go with the original because of its lyric beauty: A journey of a thousand miles begins beneath one’s feet.
One March morning my wife and I set out to take a hike into the Mustang Mountains with our two oldest grandchildren. This was to be a day to keep a promise that I had made to myself four years prior. In March 2021, in the company of our oldest friend, who was visiting from back east, the three of us, all in our mid to late sixties, found a petroglyph cave, high up on the formation that a local wag had told us was named Marilyn.
Finding the cave had not been an accident. In the long stretch of years between starting a house and finally moving here I had discovered and watched a YouTube video that revealed the existence of a petroglyph cave within the viewshed of our future home.
Perhaps a vision quest had taken place there. If this cave was the site of an ancient people’s vision quest, I vowed to find it. Once I found it I vowed to return there with my grands if only I could hang in there until they got old enough to make that hike. This bright March morning seemed like the right time. I’m 72 and the grands are 11, 9 and 5.
Years, like Social Security checks, are sequential. Math told me that if I waited for the kids’ years to advance more, my chances of participation might march off to the wrong side of infinity. If I was going to do it, this was going to have to be the year, at least for the two eldest. At five, the girl, filled with the spunk of someone raised with two older brothers, would stay behind with her other Nana. I’d have to extract a promise from her two brothers to bring her on her own vision quest.
We packed water and snacks. The older boy needed a sturdier pair of shoes for hiking, so we outfitted him with an old pair of Grandma’s boots, which fit perfectly. (My silent thought was: “When did that happen?”) We grabbed walking sticks and drove to the parking area for the non-trail.
Honestly, no trail in. This was going to be a bushwhacking scramble up what is perhaps a half-mile hike that gains 800’ in elevation. Nothing dangerous, but steep.
The older one seemed to dance his way up the mountain. He explored. He took side trips. He led the way, and, at times, he had to be called back. He found a wallet and an old sleeping bag in a ravine, evidence of a migrant that had passed through. He found a fossilized gastropod, the trace of its shell locked in a hand-sized piece of limestone. He found the delicate molted skin of a small snake that I pocketed for the trip back.
The rest of us hiked as best we could. After more than an hour, the young one looked up at me and said, “Is it much further?” I took this to be more of an honesty check on me than a complaint. The pass that we needed to get to was clearly above and beyond and we had only done the first half of the hardest part. I told him that there were still difficulties ahead. I think that I saw in his eyes that he appreciated my honesty. We forged ahead. He was in it for the long haul.
When we reached the top of the pass, there were 50’ high, fossil-laden limestone escarpments on either side and 50-mile views to the southwest and the east.
We continued along to the north at the base of the shear cliff. By the time I arrived the older grandson had gone over the top following a hawk or something we had startled, and down the other side. We called him back and, together, the four of us continued along the base of the cliff.
The older boy was way ahead by now and he kept shouting back at us at every hole or overhang that he saw. I told him that he will know the petroglyph cave when he sees it. After several more calls and responses, revival tent-style, I heard the call that told me that he had had a eureka moment.
The boys were on a dirt shelf at the back of the shallow cave when I arrived. The 15-foot opening necks down abruptly and what is left is a smaller opening that you can only peer into. Here a flashlight was called for because someone had stuck his head into the dark opening and seen two eyes looking back at him. There was a bird roosting in the deeper, barely accessible, cave within a cave.
Photos were taken, glyphs examined, water drunk and snacks consumed. We determined later that some of the glyphs were likely drawn during the Archaic Period and date from 8000 to 2000 years BCE. Other glyphs painted on the surface of the cave with what appears to be red ochre and black charcoal, depicting animals, might be from the Hohokum people dating from 300 CE to 1450 CE.
In an example of cultural misappropriation, I told the boys that I had spirit names to give them. The younger boy will be “Speaks With Thunder Stick” because of his baseball prowess. I wrestled with the older boy’s name. Will it be “Dances With Mountains” because of the way he made this day’s hike? Or will it be “Dances With Wolves” because I wanted him to feel our connection when he someday sees that movie? I settled upon the latter.
On the way down, gravity was my friend until it wasn’t. Slow and careful worked for me until I planted my right foot on the downhill side of a smooth limestone boulder. A dead yucca tore away from its roots and in an instant, I was on my butt and sliding towards unrecognized bushes. I instinctively twisted to get my ample belly into the mountainside to stop my slide.
I felt a twinge and thought, “I am going to pay for this,” but I didn’t. As quickly as the pain seared through me, it disappeared and I stood up, shaken, but seemingly unhurt. “I hope I make it out,” I said, half-jokingly. Speaks with Thunder Stick looked at me and said, “You will, Grandpa.”
The truck slowly eased into view and the pitch of the incline softened. Soon it was just another walk through the semi-arid landscape.
I was the last to return to the truck. We were all smiles. A goal had been set and accomplished. During the toughest part of the walk I remarked that as long as we got the kids back unharmed it could not be called child abuse. Now I was not so sure.
After the family was reunited, the boys revealed their new spirit names. Our granddaughter, not to be outdone, named herself, “She Rides Horses.” I announced my wife’s spirit name to be “Will Not Stand For Bull,” and we all had a good laugh. Dances With Wolves looked at me and said that Grandpa’s new name is “Rock Heart.”
The pain from the fall finally arrived and I spent several days close to my new friend, “Heats With Pad.” I swallowed 1000mg doses of Tylenol and took a half hour just to get out of bed to get a glass of water.
In my days of pain afterward, I did experience a vision, an insight: Those petroglyphs were most likely created by 11-year-olds. Who else can dance up a mountain and still have the energy to relax and make art?
My adventure is receding from me now. Every day I am a bit further from that cave opening. The back pain has receded too.
My next quest is a trip back east to care for a loved one. In the end, the only thing of value that we possess is family and those that we choose to make family. It is with those people that we can reconstruct a whole day, a whole adventure, with just the recall of a funny name.
If walking and digging can be said to share similar intentions, i.e. to get from one place to another, one on the surface, the other below, then maybe this hike to the ancient site was really just about my intent to try to unearth, for my grandkids as well as for myself, some deeper meaning about life.
Where our feet touch the ground is the best place, it is the only place, we can begin a trek.
Keith Krizan can be contacted at therealkbkkbk@gmail.com
