Watching Shavano

Antler Dream by Phillip Hoyle

All my life I’ve lived in buildings whether a single-family home, duplex, dormitory, or apartment; always a building except for a few days I lived in tents. Then I cooked over a campfire, slept on a thin mat on the ground, snuggled into my bedroll, and yearned for more comfortable accommodations. I’ve endured few days without running water, central heat, or electricity, days that taught me to appreciate my life of relative physical ease.

     But now in Shavano Valley, I sit alone on a low sandstone outcropping looking across to the desert-painted escarpment that defines the valley’s northern edge along Spring Mesa. I can make out the old Ute trail that climbs the steep slope amid boulders black, red, and tan that for centuries provided shelter to people who camped there. The people came and went, staying a season, chipping stone tools, hunting deer and elk, processing nuts and berries, weaving baskets and mats, and making ready for the challenges and opportunities of the seasons to come. They followed predictable migration patterns year after year. These people, who included the precursors of modern Utes, found reasons to return to this spot on the eastern edge of the plateau lands that stretch far to the west. While they camped, they marked their habitation not only with castoffs but also with hundreds of petroglyphs. I sit here trying to imagine their lives.

     I know my contemplation is hardly more than speculation. I have little experience in common with my subjects except to know how the desert sun burns, the rocks hurt, and the cacti prick. Summer days here are usually hot; the nights cool and sometimes chilly. The daytime sky is almost always sunny; the nighttime sky brilliantly full of stars. Daytime reveals grasshoppers, dragonflies, black flies, bees, and small clouds of gnats; nighttime swarms with mosquitoes. I guess without screens, the place might become pretty uncomfortable. I live here in a house with screens.

     For nearly forty years I have read about Native Americans but don’t know much about the Utes, particularly the Uncompahgre band, who lived in western Colorado near the San Juan Mountains and used to stop here. So this summer I’m supplementing my knowledge by reading all the books Montrose Public Library offers on the tribe and its several bands. That’s not much. A 1920s study, Western Colorado Petroglyphs, includes a chapter about the stone carvings in the valley where I now sit. On my first try to locate its reported petroglyphs, I found a group of two carvings un-catalogued. The author, W.C. McKern, and his team of archaeologists and anthropologists probably needed another day in the valley. He reasoned both early and late Utes were nomadic, but the eariler limitation of foot travel made for more consistency in technique in the pre-horse society. The later petroglyphs display a great variety of techniques indicating for McKern changes in Ute culture due to the increased mobililty provided by horses. The new hurry-up society took less time for artwork and borrowed time-saving techniques from tribes they had never before known. I have gained perspective for my consideration from this and other books and recalled two titles about Utes I read when I was young: Ouray the Arrow and The Last Indian War. Books and my memories from books are aiding my understanding.

     Place names on maps and in local lore have provided a few clues for my consideration. I’ve walked the Indian trail up the side of the mesa, gazed at Indian Lookout on the edge of the valley just a short walk from where I sit, drove the ten miles up Colo. 90 to Arrowhead Springs picnic area, and visited the city of Ouray about thirty miles to the south. I’ve looked trying to imagine the Utes there but think this valley is my best place for contemplation. So I’ve clambered over the boulders around Picture Rocks and made rubbings of many petroglyphs. I’ve searched other outcroppings in the valley hoping to discover more petroglyphs. I didn’t find any. None appeared at Indian Lookout, but I did discover great views of the valley. I climbed another, taller butte about half a mile away where there was no evidence that anyone else had climbed it (well, this is a fantasy of discovery). A shed snakeskin lay beside a small pool of water, an observation that brought caution to my steps and the good idea to climb back down to the road. But first from this high point I took in the vista that included the valley’s far north end. A scout could sight intruders or visiting friends from sufficient distance to alert anyone living near Picture Rocks, but he’d have to run.

     Sitting here on my low rock, I wonder if the concentration of petroglyphs across the valley ever served as a place for vision quests. I imagine I am an older man (not too difficult for one in his mid-forties) who watches from the distance to be sure the young man in his charge doesn’t get into trouble during his vision quest. I am alert to the possibility of other tribes moving through the area and want the youngster to be safe. I sit in solitary far across the valley out of sight in the shadows of these rocks. The young man has no idea I watch. At that distance he appears to be about the size of a tiny ant.

     I realize the fantasy is probably off course. Any young man seeking the power of the spirits would surely be unafraid of other possible dangers he might encounter. He seeks power for protection, motivation, and personal strength and would not tolerate the unnecessary care of some tribal elder. I don’t have any idea if this is true and wonder how customs varied from tribe to tribe. Did the Utes even have vision quests?

     The books. I’ve read nothing actually written by Utes. I have found some traditional stories collected by ethnologists and several accounts of Ute encounters written by early settlers. These latter were mostly observations about how different and primitive the Utes seemed to them, stories about fears and about meeting fears. I hope someday to find more such resources and possibly tribal histories written by Native authors.

     Although there were few written records, there are things the ancient residents left behind. I look for arrowheads on the hillside above the canal road. After a rainstorm a couple of years ago my nephew found a beautiful point just below here on the road. I search the top of the hill where some large rocks and a scattering of junipers and piñon pines could have sheltered a family or two. About halfway down the hill I find a rock that may have served as a pestle. Its river-rock shape and igneous origin differ from the sandstone all around. I’m sure someone left it here. I search under trees, among boulders, in full sun and shade, and find several chips of hard rocks that contrast with the sandstone. Finally I locate half of a broken arrowhead. Did a lone watcher sit here making points for his arrows while a young vision-seeker or a cluster of families lived across the valley beneath the escarpment? I don’t know the reasons why, but I do know someone was here. Perhaps many people over the ages called this valley home.

     History depends on things read, things found, and ultimately, things imagined. I wonder how to envision what is not here and how to see what I cannot imagine. My wife’s uncle, a very successful Paleolithic point collector, once told me he always went collecting with a buddy who could see the tiny points that he himself could never see. His friend always overlooked the larger points. Between them they reaped a generous harvest of things left behind by an older culture. I’m out here alone and wonder what I’m missing; surely it must be plenty.

     In this valley, white settlers enthusiastically erected buildings, dug wells, strung fences, and planted fields once the Utes were forced to move away to Utah. Yet these pioneers were latecomer recipients of the valley’s fertile offerings. Before their exploitation began, the valley had given up harvests of reeds, succulents, and cacti; flowers, herbs, berries, nuts, seeds, and roots; deer, elk, beaver, and rabbits; and much more. The petroglyphs on boulders and cliff faces celebrate the plants and animals along with other wonders. People had been coming here to hunt, harvest, socialize, dance, and thrive for centuries.

     Shavano Valley had many artesian springs and, still sixty years ago, according to my father-in-law, lots of wetlands. Beaver lived here, but farmers wanted more land to plow. They filled springs with rocks, drained bogs, and otherwise prepared the flattest portions for cultivation of crops: potatoes, onions, corn, beans, and grains. They killed off the beaver, but before long more of them would move in and burrow into the banks of the drainage undermining valuable farmland and damaging roads. The farmers here continue to wage war with nature to wrest out an uncertain living. That’s one of the things farmers do.

     Now as a citified adult on sabbatical from my life-long church-related career, I am in the valley considering the past and my own past. I write, read, hike, and help out with Grandpa, who is afflicted with some type of senile dementia. I refinish furniture, keep the yard and flowers near the house, and even chase the cows out of the green alfalfa. I am pleased to be doing all these things. The leisure of it has taken me back to childhood, to my early loves as I walk the valley and simply watch.

     With too few facts and too much imagination, I sit here weaving images. I really can’t imagine myself living in a brush wikiup or in the shelter of huge boulders with a roof of sticks overhead, a rush mat beneath. I don’t know what I am looking at. If people lived a few feet away from where I found this arrow point, just where did they build a fire, erect their hut, or lay out their blankets? The attempt to picture it seems the proper outcome from my having lived as a wanna-be Indian, but I realize I cannot know. The problem with my efforts is the superimposition of my own experience and values. I wonder if there is any validity in my ideas, and I wonder about my theme of protection. Probably this latter is a projection related to the fact that from my rock I can see the house where my son, daughter-in-law, and several grandkids live. Part of my vision includes my intergenerational concerns. I want my kids and grandkids to gain visions here for their lives, to gain dreams of possibility and hope.

     I feel small in this valley with its huge boulders, steep escarpments, and awesome breadth. I feel unprotected. Who is watching out for me? My father died a few months ago, and my mother and in-laws are aged and frail. I sit on the cusp of becoming an elder watching a generation pass as a new generation grows here. I wonder how often this ancient place has watched such developments. It’s seen the change of ages, the archaeologists’ Archaic-, Proto-, Prehistoric, and Historic Utes, then Whites, and now my wife’s family’s fifth generation! But this last is little, as small as I am in the landscape.

     I think of my months here as being an in-between time similar to the Native vision quest. I am nearing the end of my career. I’ll give it one more shot hoping to work in churches until retirement. But I know I will never do this work in the same way, with the same meanings, or to the same ends. My Shavano break is for me definitely a visionary time for gaining a renewed personal insight into what I have and have not done, a chance to explore other themes of importance. It offers me power to live in a new way. I laugh at my self-important language. I am simply having a plain old midlife crisis. I really love not going into the office, not attending endless meetings, and not delivering sermons and speeches. I like tramping around the hills with little schedule or responsibility.

     Watching Shavano, I experience the exhilarating excitement of imagination mixed with the dulling realization of not knowing. My attempt to correlate these experiences has been a life-long try. Had I never lived in a house with electricity’s advantages, I think I wouldn’t question myself so thoroughly. I view Shavano, the valley’s shortening then lengthening shadows, its contrast of desert browns with plowed field greens, its variety-filled landscape, its constant flow of water, its maturing crops, and its abundant native plants; its changes minute and large. Watching, I place myself in a landscape of possibility and change.

Denver, 2010

Shavano Valley's Spring Mesa escarpment, home of dozens of petroglyphs