The Actual Fish Mouth: Pt.2

Bears Ears XXIV

2024-05-31

We are on a hike, exploring ruins and the cave in Fish Mouth Canyon in Bears Ears National Monument in southeastern Utah. Part 1 is here:

The Actual Fish Mouth

We have arrived at the second ruin site of the hike and it looks extensive. Among it, there are a series of granaries in a different style of construction. 

Smoke soot blackens the ceiling of the overhang that has sheltered these communities’ efforts since the beginning.

Scientific excavation is going on. A boundary of steel posts and chain has roped off a portion of the ruins. In there, a hole reveals another lower wall, perhaps once underground. These remains have rounded corners, which are coated with adobe stucco. Fingerprints of the makers can still be seen where they smoothed the goopy covering onto the rough stone walls. I remember a chard of pottery that I unearthed on my Tortolita property, as I dug out the patio. As I felt the texture, I could trace the fingertips of the maker. I felt a connection to someone who shared my home, perhaps hundreds of years before. These finger marks today, bring a sense of the fellow humanity across an even longer time.

This may have been ceremonial. Rounded corners in walls make a more resonate sound, as it echoes. Perhaps deep low toned drums, or flutes were played here. A well contained rounded structure usually makes a sound resonate more like singing in the shower.

Curiously, some of the interior walls are left rough and the outside of them is smoothed out.

This is a stark contrast.

Perhaps the thinking was to keep things out, so sealing the outside smooth was enough and easier to identify gaps.  Perhaps is shows just a practical use of intensive labor and precious resources, during the wet season when farming was most intense.

There is a mysterious basement, or so it appears.

It may have been a fireplace, a chimney, or a small hidden stash, or a maybe a burial place. It needs to be dug out more to reveal the secret. In me, it jars a memory from 1975 along an Inca trail in the Bolivian Andes. Flat stone structures looking like this were along the ancient stone roadside on the way to Corroico.  There was one that was cracked. I bent down low to look inside, to discover myself face to face with a small Inca skeleton. A child’s tomb.

Generally, we have found flat rocks piled. Here, there are many rocks treated the same, but some are set on edge, presenting a smooth solid surface. They knew that a thin tall wall of a flat rock on edge can be just as strong as a thick pile of these flat rocks lying wide edge upon each other, save lateral shift. They have made good use of the local sandstone sheets.

We notice grinding rocks, metate, for corn, grain and other meals, collected and alongside tools.

There are some artifacts laying on a flat fallen rock. Someone has created a display table.

Pottery chards with various styles of decoration and a very old ancient grain corn cob sit before us.

Straight, apparently cobbled rock work helps to form these structures. We give our compliments to the masons.

In mostly rubble, it is as if a cannon had attacked it.

Still, there are plenty of significant pieces of the puzzle to imagine how this was a significant habitation for many kin.

A two story building is impressive.

The third ancient set of handprint pictographs that we have found, are on the natural cave-like walls.

There have been taller buildings.

The architecture has been changing, as time has evolved talents to build these structures. Older walls are reinforced. A newer wall is attached to an existing wall. The two styles are drastically different. The masonry is very impressive.

Peaking behind a wall, I find the floor of a very small room. It is filled with what I believe to be shredded corn husk. They are long enough to make the sandal shoes that I have seen in the museums.

Then on the trail later, when returning, I find natural cottonwood bark lying near on the canyon floor. It is the same. I was mistaken about the shoe maker’s materials.  

Fish Mouth Cave:

I can see the fish mouth cave high above us. It is time to journey and explore that.

Fascinated, one clue, one discovery after another, I’m scanning the flat area around this community, imagining sheltering huts and crops near and away from the buildings. A deer trap and water retention cross my mind, as we begin walking further up the path.

There’s that cave up ahead.  Last night, it appeared huge from camp, better than a mile away, through the binoculars. If this place is so populated and rich, there may be more signs of natives up in there. The valley’s floor isn’t getting much, if any elevation, when a bald hill of stone shoots up out of the ground.

I’m curious and a bit excited. I have concern about a slip and a slide down this surface on bare hindquarters, but I soon find that it is more of the gripping surface that we have encountered so much in the area. Still the slope causes me to be cautious and consider that the trip back down may have to be on all fours. It is quite a distance up there.

I try some switchbacking, to get a more confident grip. I see DF below, following. The next bend is always an intriguing curiosity on a hike. Ultimately, the big fish mouthed space is just a somewhat shallow cave where debris has fallen from behind, inside.

We turn around. The view between two cliff-sides out into the valley and our camp, keeps us sitting at rest for one of those long moments of appreciation.

We take our time downhill and arrive safely at the trail. This must have been a wonderful place to live on days like this. It is like a wild park walk, the gentle lack of slope with plenty of green around the light orange sand. Birds chirp amongst quiet and the light sound of my footsteps is all for me to hear. Before the denuding of the landscape and subsequent flooding and erosion, there had been water conservation measures. This dry creek would have moister flowing through green flora much more often during the years and there were periods of time with more rainfall. I have been enjoying the sensations of my nude stroll, when I hear voices.

I turn to DF and put a palm up and finger to my lips. We stealthfully whisper, discussing whether to get dressed, or not, for these people. There are at least four of them. We dig into the daypack. I place a kilt around my waist and DF slides into her tie-die white shirt. We’ll be legal.

Continuing on, crossing through the tallest of florescent blades of reeds and dainty flowers, we cross the main channel of the empty creek.

We resume up the complimentary opposite hill as four individuals come around a corner in the thick of trees and taller desert brush. They look well into middle age and upper middle class, but not the usual hikers. I would imagine them staying in a resort hotel and hiring a guided tour, rather than trekking along in this remote place. The guy in the lead gets visibly startled, when he suddenly sees us. We probably look odd to them, as we don’t look like the usual hikers, either. I can see his mind in gear, “What’s that guy wearing and who wears a shirt so short? What’s she got on under there anyway.”

We greet them and let them know that the hike will be worth it. A hundred feet down the trail, we are bare again, our pleasant walk continuing. My thoughts wander and imagine that our unusual garb might not be anymore unusual than none at all…maybe less disconcerting.

Flowers pop up, giving a little color to the walk.

We have to walk around a swarm of ground bees that have taken up residence right in the middle of the path.

A buzz emanates around a community of tiny sheltering holes. These are seldom a feisty species where we live. Hopefully here, too. We none the less walk around their busy activity.

We reach the tall cottonwoods in the Butler Wash and our SUV, which is just up the tall embankment. We’ll probably spend a relaxing nude afternoon after a naked lunch at camp, or maybe we’ll walk again. We can do as we feel. Right now, I feel like just sitting a spell.

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