© 2010 Vaughn Hadenfeldt

In 1980, Jim Archambeault, a college buddy, coerced me into joining him for my first canyon country backpack adventure. Jimmy had previously been the seasonal BLM ranger for the Cedar Mesa/Grand Gulch Primitive Area. Up to this point, my outdoor worldview revolved around mountains. I had devoured books by Colin Fletcher, the first man to backpack the Grand Canyon, and Ed Abbey, the master desert storyteller. I was intrigued with their descriptions of red rock country but my sense of place was still in the mountains. Jimmy’s persistence that I expand beyond my mountain ways finally forced me to relent and get this canyon thing over with. Thanks to Jimmy, my world changed forever.

Jimmy and I loaded up our packs and left my wife, Marcia, to keep the cash register churning at our mountaineering store in Glenwood Springs, Colorado. We drove his VW Bug 350 miles to Cedar Mesa in southeast Utah, where a particular canyon was waiting for us. Jimmy had chosen this canyon that he hadn’t yet explored. He knew it hid many archaeological sites including a kiva with an intact roof and entry ladder. He only had a vague sense of its location: somewhere on a high ledge in one of this canyon’s upper forks.

Once on Cedar Mesa we turned off the pavement onto a dirt two-track road. After several miles we parked before the rough road crossed a wash. I remember when Jimmy bought this car and drove it from the dealership to my house to ask me what color his new car was. Jimmy is colorblind and he was too embarrassed to ask the salesman the color question. “Red,” I said. “I thought so,” said Jimmy. The wash by the car quickly cut down into a canyon that eventually merged into the one Jimmy had chosen to investigate. Days later we planned to return across the mesa and find the car.

As we backpacked down our access route we frequently discovered ruins, rock art, and artifacts, both in the canyon bottom and high up the 500-foot walls. Through the following years, while exploring and guiding, I would discover many more prehistoric remnants that my untrained eye missed on this first visit.

It wasn’t that I didn’t have a keen eye for recognizing evidence left by prehistoric cultures. My eyes were already precisely honed to spot stone tools left by early man. While growing up on the Eastern Slope of Colorado I had been introduced to “arrowhead” collecting by the local ranchers I hung out with and occasionally worked for. I was so into searching for lithics that I remember an embarrassing moment that occurred while walking along a downtown street with my new college girlfriend, Marcia. A broken piece of glass on the sidewalk triggered an automatic response of reaching down and picking it up before I could stop myself. Marcia gave me a perplexed look as I quickly tossed the glass shard. Not only would she come to understand my curious habit, she would also eventually become my wife.

Those early years of “arrowhead collecting” would be replaced by the appreciation of leaving artifacts in the outdoor museum where they belong. Fueled by my interest in early man, I was inspired to choose anthropology as my college major. I became focused on hunter-gatherers at high altitudes and had little interest in those Puebloan “farmers” of the Southwest. After this trip, however, I’d regret my lack of interest in Southwest archaeology while in school. It was especially a missed opportunity considering that my two anthropology advisors were Elizabeth Morris and Jim Judge. Dr. Morris is a highly respected Southwest expert ,and her father, Earl Morris, was one of the most famous pioneers of Southwest archaeology. Dr. Judge is not only a renowned Chacoan archaeologist but also the father of Mike Judge, the creator of Beavis and Butthead.

During the next days, I became irreversibly hooked on both the landscape and all the cultural remains. Red rock country is the perfect compliment to an above-tree line world. They both share the stark, rocky, exposed characteristics that are interplayed with light across magical expanses. Archaeological evidence found in the alpine is limited to stone tools. Here, this desert “dry cave” environment preserves perishable materials, habitation dwellings, and other human remains. But best of all is the abundant rock art that highlights and elevates a human connection of the past to the present.

Our entry point into the canyon put us about a third of the way from its head. Camping here for the next couple of days offered a good base for our up-canyon exploration. This canyon is about 20 miles long and has numerous side canyons, endless ledges, walls, and alcoves to investigate. Our methodical search negotiated challenging slickrock, chaotic strewn boulder fields, steep cliff faces, and brush-choked streambeds. At this time Cedar Mesa was not yet “discovered” so route finding was challenging and visitation impacts were minimal. The opportunity of self-discovery seemed unlimited.

After searching many disappointing ledges, our hopes of finding the kiva were dwindling. We entered yet another alcove with standing walls, milling bins, and small granaries. Somehow in our initial moment of discovery we didn’t notice a kiva ladder protruding above the alcove’s floor. Our kiva quickly came into focus. Upon close inspection we saw the ventilator shaft, shredded juniper bark roof matting protruding from the ground, and most exciting of all, the ladder uprights extending from the entry hole. Today this kiva is even more obvious with a ring of stones placed around the roof perimeter. These form a boundary in hopes of keeping visitors from walking on the fragile roof. It is on the roof, however, that I occasionally see the footprints of clueless human beings and their dogs (even though this canyon is off limits to dogs). Few kivas remain intact. Most have collapsed over time. Some were torn down or burned both in prehistoric times for reuse of building materials or ceremonial abandonment or later by cowboys and looters to keep cows from falling in, campfires fed, or to gain easier access for excavation.

We carefully lowered ourselves into the subterranean chamber. The deflector stone is still upright, the fire pit and sipapu is well defined, and there is still plaster on the walls with painted images. We would learn later that before we had gotten here, an unknown looter had removed the floor fill in his quest for artifacts. The ladder was first discovered buried in a thick layer of windblown sand deposited over the last 800 years. We will never know what, if anything, was plundered by the pothunter. Years later, the BLM removed the ladder due to increased visitation and the impact of climbing down its rungs. A replicated ladder replaced the original, which was taken to be preserved at Edge of the Cedars State Park Museum in Blanding. Eventually, it was moved from the repository and put on display in the Visible Storage exhibit area. I’ve been lucky to discover a few other well-preserved kivas, but it’s very rare.

Jimmy and I returned to camp elated with our kiva find. Our sleeping bags are in line foot to foot on the ground under an overhanging ledge. It’s dark and we’ve had a long day. We exchange the usual conversation of the day’s highlights and tomorrow’s plans as we drift off.

Sometime in the night a skunk decides to check out our camp. Jimmy is sound asleep but the skunk and his noisy inspection of my backpack calls me to action. I voice my disapproval of the skunk’s poor manners and fling a handful of sand in his direction. He quickly scurries off, but soon reappears so I toss a rock this time and accidentally nail him. Instead of running away he jumps onto the bottom of Jimmy’s bag and back-pedals, with his tail at attention, right up to Jimmy’s face. He pauses then hops off and disappears. Thankfully, Jimmy slept through the whole event unscathed.

~ ~ ~ ~

In 1988 Terry Tempest Williams published a story titled “Perfect Kiva,” which is based on this same kiva. Her story revolves around her discovery of the kiva and the BLM removal of the ladder. This beautifully written portrayal enticed even more people to seek out this special place.

In 2001 Fred Blackburn and I guided fellow members of the Wetherill Grand Gulch Research Project back to the kiva. They hadn’t been here since Fred and I had brought them here many years before. It was a nostalgic get-together with the old group. Entering the alcove with them, my eye was immediately drawn to a bright red metal ammo box chained in place near the small granary. I had passed through the site a couple of weeks earlier and there had been no box. Opening it, I found an information booklet and a new, unused visitor sign-in log. Judging from the date on the logbook, the rangers had just placed the box here on the previous day. The information packet stated all the usual ethics concerning archaeological site visitation: the dos and don’ts of “leave no trace.” For the first and definitely last time, I decided to write a comment in the register. My statement was relatively short and bitter. I commended the effort of educating people about site visitation. I ended with how I hated seeing this red box and people should get their education well before they actually come to visit a site. A month or so later, I returned and popped open my favorite red box. There were numerous comments directed at the one I had left. Comments that implied—or outright stated—that I hadn’t spent any time in the area and obviously knew little about it; or how I didn’t understand how pristine this site is and how the BLM is doing a great job of management. Thankfully, I hadn’t left my name with my controversial statement so I avoided any potential death threats. Amazingly, some people who have vandalized sites have stupidly signed their names in some of these registers, allowing law enforcement officers to identify and sometimes punish the perpetrators.

Perhaps if those making the comments had visited this site with me 30 years ago, they might not readily accept how things are turning out. They wouldn’t have to choose which of the multiple trails leading to the kiva was the best one to follow. The real ladder would still be there to greet them. There would be no obtrusive ammo box in their photograph and the surrounding, patinaed sandstone wouldn’t be a white, pulverized powder from careless foot traffic. Ruin doorway sills wouldn’t glisten with grease from visitor hands. Grinding slicks wouldn’t be newly ground by clueless Anasazi wannabes. Once intact granary door slabs wouldn’t be shattered by constant handling. The incessant gathering and displaying of artifacts to one-up the last visitor’s collection wouldn’t scream out that the outside world has already counted coup on the site. The sense of self-discovery might overpower the need for guidebook directions, GPS coordinates and cairned paths. For all my nostalgic remembrances this kiva still remains an archaeological gem. Many of the blatant visitor impacts I notice are subtle to most that come here. It’s still a special place that evokes for many a rewarding, if not spiritual, experience.

~ ~ ~

The final days were spent exploring and camping in the lower reaches of our canyon. I experienced my first flash flood and would never shake the lure of seeing what’s around the next bend. On the last day we found a route out onto the mesa top. I remember the uncomfortable, uncertain, semi-confused feeling I had as we wandered miles through the pinyon-juniper forest hopefully heading back to the car. Our gut feeling of bearing in the right direction paid off when the red VW came into view.

"Not So Perfect Kiva" is published here courtesy of Vaughn Hadenfeldt of Far Out Expeditions, who read the story at Celebrate Cedar Mesa. All rights reserved. No part of this story may be reproduced or otherwise transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or otherwise, without written permission from the author.