The Turquoise Ledge (14 page)

One Star Being insisted on a necklace of the whitest shells with delicate cobalt blue figures of stars linked by bars of light. Another Star Being was not satisfied with the bloody skull he held, so I changed it to a freshly killed head with a clean face. A gentle cool rain from the Gulf said thanks to the painter for making the head of the enemy look presentable. Certain beings instructed humans on what must be done to call down the rain; apparently this involved an enemy's head.

They return to Earth every seven or eight hundred years from another region of the Milky Way. Or maybe it is a parallel world. To prepare for their return, they send dreams and visions to artists of all kinds all over the planet so they will begin to make images of the Star Beings. In this way the poor slow-witted humans might be somewhat prepared for the reappearance of the Star Beings.

It is a natural tendency of humans to interpret the large mouths of the Star Beings as “smiling” and “inviting” or “friendly”—we all want to believe that because these beings project such power. But the mouths are big, and not so much smiling as showing their sharp incisors.

I was so enthralled by Comet Hale-Bopp in 1996 that I watched it for hours on end outside my west door. It was the single most beautiful and seductive visitor to this solar system in my lifetime. I felt an odd affection for the comet and looked forward to gazing at it night after night. I lived alone here. The comet was my evening companion. As the comet began to recede I experienced a strange desire to go along, to never let the comet's beauty out of my sight.

When I heard the news report I understood how it happened that the Heaven's Gate cult members committed suicide to board the giant space ship they believed was hidden behind the comet.

T
he unique geology of the Tucson Mountains makes the place a rock hound's paradise. There are a number of anomalous formations and rocks that indicate metamorphic activity, but geologists still argue over exactly what happened.

Some sort of volcanic activity took place that formed a number of round dark hills of basalt and prominent ridges or hogbacks of basalt. The rounded dark hills or cerros are not volcanic cones but rather the remains of volcanic structures; some geologists argue that leaks in faults allowed the molten rock to extrude and form the cerros and hogbacks. Other geologists think the great explosion of a giant volcano left behind only the volcanic ridges that form the Tucson, Tortolita and Rincon Mountains.

When I walk the big arroyo I pass a large flattop boulder of dark gray basalt. Years ago from my vantage point on horseback I saw the top of the boulder had been worked by human hands to form a rainwater cistern. Someone had patiently carved the basin by removing only small amounts of stone at a time. To do this the carver had to use a stone harder than the dark gray basalt—maybe a fist size chunk of the meteorite iron like the one I found in the big arroyo. It appears to have been used as a hammer.

I don't often pick up or carry back very large rocks because most days it is all I can do to carry myself up the big arroyo and home. But one day I saw a rock I couldn't resist: a chunk of gray basalt the shape and size of a book—a perfect altar for my turquoise ledge stones. But by the time I got home with the rock, the muscles of my right shoulder and arm were so sore I had to visit the acupuncturist.

Now I don't try to carry back the tempting rocks I see; instead I check on them each time I walk and I imagine how I might get them home without crippling myself in the process. Gunny sacks, backpacks, a wheelbarrow, even a burro might be what I need.

There is a flat smooth white quartzite, very hard and fine-grained, that is about two feet long and six inches wide. The water carried it to the side of the big arroyo where it snagged against other rocks and now the white stone is almost vertical. I don't know what attracts me to this white rectangular stone; is it because the stone would work well for grinding corn?

If I put my hand on a rock and it does not come loose from the earth the first time I try to pick it up, then I leave the rock where it is. It reminded me again how the old folks used to admonish us children to “Let it be!” To leave things as they are, all things in this world—animals and plants and rocks. Human things had to be respected too and the special places where the ancestor spirits resided.

 

Turquoise is the ritual color of Tlaloc, the Nahua God of Rain. In the surviving codices of the Nahua people, Tlaloc usually appears dressed head to toe in feathers, clothing and adornments all the color of turquoise.

The Hopi language is closely related to Nahuatl. Many words are identical; the word for “ear” is one. The old Spanish maps that label northern Arizona and northern New Mexico “Aztec territory” are not fakes. All this territory is the realm of speakers of the Nahuatl-related languages, thus those Indians and mestizos who travel or migrate from Mexico need no permits or visas to be here—this land is theirs too.

At the beginning of the eleventh year of the drought, in 2006, a group of Hopi traditionalists decided to make a run from northern Arizona all the way to Mexico City to the carved stone monolith of Tlaloc, to ask for the rain and snow that were desperately needed. Tlaloc is Lord of the Rain as well as one of the Nine Lords of the Night. He is often portrayed wearing goggles formed by two live rattlesnakes.

To bring their prayers to Tlaloc, the Hopi runners followed an ancient ritual trail from Hotevila village in northern Arizona through New Mexico, El Paso and Ciudad Chihuahua to Mexico City. Along the way, they made stops at certain sacred springs and rivers where the runners and those who accompanied them offered prayers and pollen or corn meal to the water before they collected small amounts of it which they carried in a ritual gourd canteen.

The sacred run ended at the fork of two small rivers not far from the Anthropology Museum in downtown Mexico City. A Hopi elder prayed and poured some of the water from the gourd canteen before the great stone statue of Tlaloc that stands outside the museum; then the elder went a short distance to the fork of two small rivers. The small rivers were as polluted as the sky above the great city but no matter—the elder poured the water into the river fork and just as he did, a big eagle appeared out of the smoggy sky and circled overhead calling loudly before it flew away.

The Mexican people who joined the Hopi group in Ciudad Chihuahua as interpreters saw the eagle appear in the sky that day. As they described it to me six months later, they were still excited about what they'd seen and what then happened later. They'd been educated, as we all have, to expect no miracles from Tlaloc. But in the Americas, the sacred surrounds us, no matter how damaged or changed a place may appear to be.

Three months after the Hopi group completed the sacred run, on June 16, 2006 the rain clouds began to roll in from the eastern Pacific, to Sinaloa, then the clouds moved up the lovely backbones of the Sierra Madre and the Sierra Madre Oriental all the while pouring the precious rain that brought relief from the drought.

In Tucson where the drought had lasted so long even the desert vegetation was beginning to die, the rain smell was intoxicating—I couldn't work on this manuscript. I stood outdoors on the porch and watched the rain shimmering from ridge to ridge in the wind; sometimes in the mist I thought I saw tall figures of rain beings. I put out buckets and tubs to catch the rainwater for my plants and then I tried to videotape the rain until my hair and clothes were soaked.

For the next six weeks, the rain clouds gathered every day from Mexico City to as far north as the Hopi villages. El Paso and Las Cruces, New Mexico were flooded again and again. Chihuahua got more rain than anyone had seen in eighty years. Over and over the storms followed one path, the reverse of the path the Hopi runners took in March, from Mexico City through Ciudad Chihuahua, El Paso and Las Cruces. I noticed that oddly, Palm Springs, Las Vegas and Salt Lake City got no rain at all during that time.

Winter came and so did the snow; Tlaloc sent snowstorm after snowstorm—more than an inch of snow fell here in the Tucson Mountains. People drove up from the city to show their children the snow and I reached for my video camera.

It snowed in Phoenix for the first time in forty years. There was more snowfall than Albuquerque had seen in more than forty years. Denver got buried too. The airports were shut down and the interstate highways out of Albuquerque and Denver were closed.

A
lthough it is late September, the days are still very warm. The other day my search for evidence of a turquoise ledge took me up the arroyo to the point where it narrows dramatically to down-cut through solid basalt and limestone. Nearby there is a spring that bubbles to the surface for a week or two after the rains come; for years a cottonwood tree lived by the spring although the location is outside the natural range for cottonwoods. The tree lived near the spring for years, but died during the early years of the drought.

Now a mesquite tree grows in its place. The tree is large and robust but it grows horizontally just above the ground across the arroyo from side to side. I had to crawl over the mesquite's trunk to get past it.

I could see that the mesquite tree had grown vertically for many years. But then a heavy rainstorm must have come with runoff water that roared through the narrow rock gorge with such great force that the tree was flattened to the ground but not uprooted. Now it grows horizontally, safe from floods.

I continued up the arroyo. On a bar of sand and gravel I found two rocks with a few streaks of turquoise. The rocks didn't really fit in my pockets and felt uncomfortable there but I carried them anyway.

After the arroyo passed through a ledge of the basalt, it forked. I took the right fork, which was much narrower and was overgrown with catsclaw bushes and mesquite branches with thorns that tore at my clothes. The erosion wasn't as deep and there wasn't nearly as much rock debris and gravel here. It didn't look promising for turquoise so I decided to turn back. Next time I would take the left fork of the arroyo; it was wider and I knew it passed the site of an old mine shaft where water dripped from the ceiling and flowed out the shaft entrance—just the environment needed to make turquoise.

Sometimes early in the morning when I walk the trail the air is cool and faintly scented with rain. Just before the sun rises over the mountains, incandescence floods over the bright greens of the mesquite leaves and the jade greens of the tall saguaros. A breeze stirs and there is a silence as it might have been five hundred or a thousand years ago. No sound anywhere in the distance from a train, jet, car or even a dog. Here the desert is as it always was.

Up ahead a small arroyo intersects the trail. The branches of catsclaw and mesquite that overhang the arroyo make a delicate shade with shadows in diamond patterns. Suddenly I realized there was a giant rattlesnake there in the shade and shadows, stretched out twelve feet long, its body as big around as a bread loaf. I stopped in my tracks; my heart pounded. I looked again to make sure I'd not mistaken a long mesquite root in the sand for the huge snake.

Alert and motionless, the snake watched me. The eyes were pale yellow and its head was bigger than my two fists put together and at least five feet above the ground; the black forked tongue flicked out level with my chin. The rattles on the end of its tail were the diameter of a man's thumb.

I saw the black forked tongue move more slowly, and felt the sun's light on the right side of my face. The shadows in the small arroyo shifted and the shade receded, but I could still see the snake's head slightly turned now as if to look back.

I took a few steps closer up a short incline and I lost sight of the snake for only an instant. But when I looked again at the intersection of the trail with the small arroyo, bright sunlight filled the space. The shade and its shadows were gone and the giant rattlesnake with them.

 

I didn't notice the great ant palaces in the desert until I began my walks. The first ant palace is under a square of basalt the size of a book in the middle of the trail up the hill. The trail and the slope of the hill divert the runoff after storms from the ant palace entryway. The overhang of the square basalt protects the palace entrance from foot traffic. Why build the ant palace in the middle of the trail? Because the passers-by—human and otherwise—drop bits of crumbs or seeds that enrich the ants' storehouse.

The second ant palace I saw was a short distance past the Gila Monster Mine and the flat grassy place where the deer and javelina dance at night after rain. This ant palace is on the low ridge that parallels the trail; I noticed it because there is a perfect circle of small stones around its entrance. The rocks look as if they landed there like meteorite fragments. I thought of the Star Beings.

Today I left on my walk much inspired by the two little notes I wrote about the ants and their mountain palaces yesterday. But as I walked I realized that I didn't remember exactly where the book-size basalt was, except that it was on a slight ridge of rock higher than the trail. I had the camera with me the day I noticed the ant palaces but something stopped me from taking their photographs as I passed them. The rhythm of my walk determined part of it—I didn't want to slow down. Also it was because photography or video distracts me so I prefer to remember being in the actual presence of the rocks rather than recording them electronically.

Today I discovered a wonderful ant palace in the dark basalt bedrock below the blue gray limestone; it was outlined in small stones in a semicircle. Did the ants remove the stones from their nest? Or did the ants move the rocks there to divert runoff from the palace entrance?

I thought I was more certain of the location of the ant hill with the circle of stones. I must have missed it because I was looking at the large egg-shaped rocks as big as a man's head. One of them was cracked open by prospectors searching for geodes of silver or gold.

 

Today I noticed many of the ant palaces have plants growing near their entrances and I realized this was not accidental. This is a result of the ants intentionally leaving a seed out to germinate. When the plant goes to seed, the ants will only have to carry the seeds a short distance.

The ants by the gate outside the national park made a new pile of stone granules to repair the mound that washed away in the rain after horses and people trampled it. They excavated fine gravel first then formed it into a steep-sided cone to protect the ant palace entrance from floods.

Not far from the ant hill, on the left side of the path, so the morning light illuminated him, was a small silvery blue rattlesnake, maybe a Mojave and not a Western diamondback. He made no sound or move. He pressed himself flat in his pancake posture to be less visible. He seemed not to mind that I mumbled “Hello!” as I stepped around him.

This morning I walked the same path as the day before. Overnight dark rain clouds had blown in from El Golfo, and the air was damp and sweet with the smell of rain and greasewood and wet stones.

On my walk yesterday I didn't see any turquoise stones but today suddenly almost as soon as I stepped off the trail into the big arroyo I spotted a large turquoise rock right where I'd stepped the day before. The rain brightens the turquoise color but still it seems strange that I saw the stone today but didn't notice it yesterday. I found a tiny hard turquoise on the road to the Gila Monster Mine. Did someone bring it from the arroyo and drop it there?

This morning while I was out back feeding the military macaws, I heard a squirrel chattering incessantly at the water trough in the back above the old pool, and when I went to see what was happening, there sat a big bobcat nonchalantly lapping up water. He knew I was watching him but he didn't care. This bobcat lives in the neighborhood and isn't afraid of humans or dogs. He is the same height as my ninety pound pit bull but the bobcat's head is twice the size of the dog's.

 

Today's March shower—the first storm since the end of January—was enough to fill the small cisterns carved into the boulders along the arroyo. There was a bright blue turquoise rock in plain view where I walked yesterday. It wasn't there yesterday. Did the rain bring it? On a previous walk without the rain's help I found a round nugget of pale blue turquoise on the trail I'd walked dozens of times before. Later when I held this piece of turquoise against my cheek, the stone felt heavier and cooler than the others.

Does Turquoise Man travel with the rain? Well of course. He calls for the rain so the runoff water comes to the arroyos where deposits of copper, aluminum, iron and the calcites drink in the moisture to become turquoise.

I always assumed Mexico and the land to the south had deposits of turquoise. Macaws and macaw feathers were brought north, but I used to wonder what it was those rich Mexican Indians wanted badly enough to walk a thousand miles with live macaws on their backs. It wasn't until I found a book about the turquoise mosaics at the British Museum that I learned they had jade and jadeite in Mexico, but turquoise was rare and thus the most precious stone, most desired by the deities for their ornaments and ceremonies.

During the classic period of Teotihuacan, the Nahua Empire sent out traders with macaws and feathers north along the turquoise trail to Arizona and New Mexico to bring back the turquoise so highly coveted. The turquoise exchange accounts for the well-traveled trade routes the Spaniards found as they followed their captive Indian guides north.

Turquoise is a favorite color for ka'tsina masks. The paints on the ka'tsina mask are what make the mask alive. When the old paints are scraped off prior to repainting, the paint scrapings from the masks are taken to a ka'tsina shrine for disposal. Otherwise even the paint scrapings have the power to harm someone.

The Long Horn ka'tsina's turquoise-colored mask has one long horn because he brought long life to the people. His right eye is short so that “witches” or “the two hearts” who pretend to be kind but secretly crave violence and misery, don't live long. His left eye is long so the people of one heart will live a long time. Turquoise is worn to ward off witches.

Years ago at a Zuni Shalako ceremony, a housetop collapsed with many spectators on it. Apparently they'd failed to place turquoise under the floor of the new room being blessed by the Shalako dancers.

Xiuhtecuhtli, Lord Turquoise, is also the God of Fire. He wears a mask studded with turquoise cabochons for moles on his face. He is also known as Ixcozauhqui, Old God. His turquoise mosaic mask survived the conquistadors and ended up in the British Museum.

Xiuhatla means turquoise water.

Xiuhatl is the turquoise waters of Paradise.

Xiuhcalli is the house of turquoise that belongs to Quetzalcoatl in Tollan.

Xiuhuitl herb is the color of green turquoise; xiuhtoz means “turquoise parrot” and is a fictional name used to designate a ghost warrior.

Xiuhtzoneh is the name of the mountain at Tepozotla where the Toltecs mined a turquoise lode, the only source of turquoise inside Mexico.