The Inhabited Wilderness

Abstract

The sky was filling with clouds as I left my vehicle at the trailhead. Through the tall tops of the ponderosa pines I could see the cumulo-nimbi massing, building in the early afternoon above the Abajo Mountains in southeastern Utah. It was August, the season of thunderstorms and flash floods in canyon country. The mounting clouds gave me pause; was it a good idea to begin an eight-mile hike into a deep, narrow defile this late in the day? I would be dropping about 1500 feet in elevation, and vaguely disturbing thoughts of getting trapped in a slot canyon roiling with muddy water and debris filled my mind as I walked through the pine glade. My goal was to locate a cliff dwelling of the Anasazi, or Ancestral Puebloans as they are now sometimes called, indicated on the map of the Manti-La Sal National Forest, some four to five miles down Hammond Canyon. I was eager to explore more remote ruins of the Ancient Ones, having tired of the institutional, impersonal tours of famous Anasazi sites in national parks such as Mesa Verde, Aztec Ruins, and Bandelier. Not that these places had not been impressive or educational, but what I now longed for was a more intimate connection with the past, a more rigorous physical challenge, a more satisfying sense of personal discovery.