Hiking here near Roosevelt is outstanding. You can literally hike until your legs fall off if you so wish. There are countless trails to transport you away from the 21st Century. The best trails feature exhilarating views of the Basin and the Roosevelt Lake as well as the possibility of transecting a former Salado site. Canyons colors change throughout the day as the Sun’s rays are bent and pick out the subtleties of multi-colored rocks. During this time of year, and especially this year, as the amount of rain has been generous, the mountainsides and arroyos and plains are green with life. Even in this desert all you need to do is just add water and boom... life happens. Water is the thing, the ultimate essential. The water here can be mercurial. It disappears underground at times and then reappears later. Sometimes, if you just dig in a certain area, up comes the stream of life.
The Salado people who once inhabited this area knew where to find water at any time of year. If you can find a water source, preferably near a strategic and protected lookout point, you will find evidence of their time here. The same holds true for the Apaches. They could hide out here in the mountains of Arizona while the whites were befuddled as to their whereabouts. It’s easy to hide in these mountains...IF you know where the water is.
I had heard about a Salado ruin up in the mountains that you could hike to on a trail. Not many people knew about it apparently because there were still pottery shards and an occasional arrow head lying about. Diane and I had a notion to find it. We jumped into Tank, our Jeep, and began heading up this mountain road, actually, more of an exaggerated trail than a road, for 5 or 6 miles until it just ended at a small plateau. Looking back down the valley below, the view was illustrious. Wind was rushing up the valley wall and sweeping towards us. The sun was a brilliant furnace in the impossibly blue sky. Though it was 50 degrees of so, the Sun’s intensity made it feel 10 degrees warmer. The land above and below us had a glow to it. There, at the road’s end, a path began. One way went down into the internal valley hidden from Roosevelt Lake. The other way climbed up towards the Four Peaks area, snaking its way around minor peaks and out of sight. Which way to hike?
We decided up was the answer. After all, it’s better to end a hike coming downhill rather than climbing up hill. And, my friend who told us about the site we were after put a dot on a map that looked as if it were up rather than downhill. Loaded with water in our back pack we trod up the long climb. The hike was strenuous but manageable for us. Diane, ever the trooper, was doing great out here. Here hip has been bothering her a lot and my back has been especially painful lately, but this hike was too much fun to pass up. We may be old but we’re pretty tough. Each bend in the path brought new views too splendid to describe, really. Manzanitas covered the hillsides and were in the early stages of blooming. Thousands of bees were getting high in the trees. The only sounds up here were the wind and the bees...such a concert. There were signs of animals, mostly coyote scat. We wondered if there were Pumas up here. Probably not enough varmint life up here to sustain them for very long, but you never know. We kept pushing up and up the trail, but finally we gave out and turned around back down the trail. Though we hadn’t found the site, we were more than happy with our hike.
That evening as we sat around the campfire I kept thinking about that hike and that site we didn’t find. I knew it was up there. Maybe we just didn’t go far enough? Maybe we walked right through it and didn’t see it. Of course, I had to go back. So, the next morning I lit out to try and find it once again. I followed the same course we had the day before, but I kept going. I finally got to a point, the highest point along the trail that I could see for a few miles around me and saw that the trail bent along a bluff to the left of me about a quarter of a mile ahead. It cross-traversed a steep ravine. I could hear a small waterfall, even though it was a good distance away. Water! That had to be near the site. Here, you had a clear view of the valley below. You could easily see other vantage points where perhaps the Salados had built their chain of fortifications and communication points. The high point, the water, that waterfall had to be the site! Only a quarter mile more. I was sure.
I looked down at my feet instinctively to be sure of my footing as I was about to set out again along the path. What is that? I stared intently at the ground, at a small reddish piece of what looked like clay right next to my foot. There it was. A pottery shard. I had found it. All around me were pieces of broken pottery. Sometimes I would find several pieces within inches of each other that were obviously part of the same pot, a 700 year old jig saw puzzle. Mostly, the shards were scattered here and there with no relationship to each other. Several that I found were of the upper edge of pots and they had beautifully formed rims. I found some run-off ditches and followed them down hill. Surely running water would carry more shards along downhill. I was rewarded. I guess that I saw hundreds of pottery pieces during my hour long stay at the site. I was so engrossed in the pottery that I failed at first to see the actual site itself. I couldn’t see the forest for the trees.
Focusing my perspective on the greater area and away from the ground proper, I could see it now. This was not a pueblo built into the side of cave as the Tonto National Monument was. This was a rock structure that, over the centuries, had fallen down. Only the outline of the rooms was visible to me. Manzanitas had overtaken the structures and investigating the internal areas was really difficult. Too many bees I determined. I searched the horizons and the perspectives you can see from this site. I imagined what it had been like those hundreds of years ago. Were the people huddled against the night sky waiting and watching for a signal from another distant pueblo that all was clear and they could go back down into the valley in the morning? Were enemies creeping up the hillside to try and rob them of their valuables, their wives and husbands? Their children?
This was not a full time living arrangement for the Salado. This was a place of refuge. The food they desperately needed grew down below along the Salt River and the canals that they dug to irrigate their fields. They would stay up here as long as needed to avoid detection and then return below. But, while they were here they had water, they had stored food, they had the high ground. I held a piece of pottery and searched the horizons and wondered. 700 years ago, someone did likewise.