[For the first time in 32 years, I
returned to Spirit Cave. It looked better-preserved than I had
remembered, as there were some ruins that I had forgotten about.
This time, I brought my son with me and was able to show him the
actual location of some of my old adventures.
The following account took place when I
was twelve years old as a boy scout. I wrote it down a few years
later, so most of it should be accurate, other than some literary
license to fill in the gaps. I have slightly modified my old
account, but have left it mostly as-is. The story of the pipe-bomb
is 100% true.]
The first week of May we headed out of
town to Spirit Cave. It is a wide alcove at the mouth of a little
canyon covered in juniper trees, or as we would call them, “cedar
trees.” Ancient Anasazi Indian ruins are scattered along the
edges.
After unpacking, we built a fire and
began preparing the dutch ovens. This time we were having barbeque
chicken with dutch-oven potatoes. Very tasty! Along with a Pepsi,
it would satisfy any stomach.
After dinner, we stood around the fire,
warming our hands, when Damon suggested, “Let's make a pipe-bomb.”
“With what?” asked Courtney.
“A pipe. What else?! I saw one up on
the rim of the cave.”
“I brought some black powder in my
pack,” said Kevin, who was Damon's twin brother. (I think there was
a hint of conspiracy here.)
“I've got matches,” I added.
Walking over to get the the matches, I overheard Brother Lyman (our
Scoutmaster) tell Damon to be careful, and if he were him, he
wouldn't do it.
The pipe was one inch in diameter and
just over a foot long. Damon placed the pipe on the ground, while
Kevin poured in powder. Courtney stuffed cheat grass into the small
opening and Brook lit it with a match. We all ran and ducked for
cover. Nothing happened. Brook slowly walked toward it, hesitant
because of the possibility of it going off. “It's out,” he said.
He lit it again and ran for cover. Again nothing. We tried three
more times and finally gave up.
In the meantime, we had cleaned up
dinner and rolled out our sleeping bags. The sun went down and
darkness fell upon Spirit Cave. The only light came from the red
glow of our fire, and if you got far enough away, there were the pin
pricks of stars in the dark sky above. A sudden chill came with the
new night.
We decided to play flashlight wars. No
camp-out is complete without its share of games. For this game, we
would split into two teams. One team hides, while the other team
looks for them. If you shine your light on one of the opposing team
members and call their name, they're out.
I was on the team that had to hide.
There was no moon, so I decided to hide close-by. I laid down under
a cedar tree about fifty feet from camp. I was quiet. The other
kids, scampering to their hideouts, could be heard in the distance. I
waited. The wind whistled and leaves swayed back and forth.
At last, the opposing team had finished
counting and was now on the search. No one came close enough for me
to zap them with my flashlight. So I lay still. Once they had
passed me, everything was quiet again. The camp fire crackled while
crickets sang. The rising smoke above the cave looked eerie.
Courtney and Erik came walking toward
the fire. Brook was behind them, escorting his victims back to the
base. Here was a prime opportunity to free one. It was risky, but
why not? I sprinted in and touched Erik on the back of his shoulder.
Got him! I now had thirty seconds to find a new hide-out. This time
I went further back and hid behind a huge rock.
Once again, everything was silent.
There was little action taking place by other kids and the density of
the cedar forest blocked most of my view.
A pack rat ran out in front of me into
a hole in the cliff--or was it? At second glance, I noticed it was
not a cliff, but an Indian ruin. It sent a small chill down my
spine. Obviously, these ruins were evacuated hundreds of years ago,
but the possibility of skinwalkers roamed my mind. Skinwalkers were
the spirits of the Indians who used to live in these ruins. True or
fiction, I didn't know. But the thought of it sure was freaky at a
time when I was all alone at midnight with no moon.
Movements from behind startled me. I
remained still and didn't worry. Those were the sounds of the night,
and any harm they would do was all in my mind.
In the distance, I could hear Damon
calling, “Lacy . . . . you're the last one! You've got no chance!”
I put a smile on my face and told myself, “yeah, right.”
“We got you, Lacy.” Brook's voice
shocked me from behind. Tim followed closely. “We got you, John.”
I stood up and surrendered.
We all gathered around the camp fire
and shot the bull. “Let's try the pipe-bomb again,” Damon
strongly suggested. So, we did. Brook lit it again, and quickly ran
for cover. A dud.
“If it doesn't go off this time, I
give up.” Brook made a final attempt to set off the bomb. He
struck the match on a nearby rock. He lit the cheat grass and
half-heartedly trotted back.
BOOOOM!!!!!!
“Oh, crap!” Brook yelled, while
diving to the ground. A large ball of fire flashed and a bellowing
echo rang from the cave. Brother Lyman sat up in his sleeping bag
and muttered something toward us. I didn't hear a word he said,
because my ears were ringing like a telephone.
Once I could regain my hearing, I could
hear Brook exclaiming, “Oh my hell! I was only two feet away from
that sucker!”
“Dang, my ears are still ringing,”
Courtney shook his head.
“Is everyone alright?” Brother
Lyman came over in concern. “I warned you about this. Right now,
I think it's best that you all go to bed.”
“Let's head,” said Brook, leading
us to our bags.
“Where's the pipe?” asked Erik.
“It doesn't matter, as long as it
ain't in the back of one of your heads,” Brother Lyman replied.
We settled down into our bags and
started a conversation among us, not being able to sleep.
We talked of other kids at school and
told jokes. The night grew darker as the last flame died out. Only
red and black embers remained.
“Does anyone have any skinwalker
stories?” someone asked.
Everyone else shook their head, but I
piped up, “I've got one.” I then proceeded to tell my story:
“Remember Sister Redd, who used to
teach us in Primary? I heard this story directly from her mouth.
Many years ago when she was newly married, she had purchased an old
wooden rocking chair that sat in the corner of the living room in her
trailer. It looked as normal as the rest of her furniture. Late one
night she awoke to get a drink of water. She passed through the
living room to go to the kitchen, and traveled through the dark until
she reached the sink, where she turned on the light. She got her
drink of water, drank it, and dumped the rest out. As she heard the
last of her water disappear down the drain, a blurred object in the
living room caught her attention. An old Indian woman—very
old it looked to her, maybe 105—was
sitting in the rocking chair, knitting. The Indian woman was wearing
a traditional Navajo dress. She stared at the woman for
two minutes. Then she walked to the living room to turn on the
light. She was gone.
“Sister Redd went back to bed, but
couldn't sleep. The next day she went to the previous owners and
told them her story. They said that ten years ago an old Navajo lady
died in that very same rocking chair.”
“But I thought that skinwalkers were
supposed to be evil spirits,” said Erik confused. “That old
squaw may have scared Sister Redd, but her spirit wasn't evil.”
“Technically, from what I've learned,
a skinwalker is a witch that has the ability to transform into a half
human, half animal being. This witch may curse you in some way,
either during birth, or after. He may curse you with blindness,
deformations, cancer, or heart problems. Sometimes to curse you, he
will shoot a bead made of bone in you. The only way to break the
curse is to have the bead sucked out and shoot it into the skinwalker
and kill him. At least, that's what I've read. But I understand what
you're saying, Erik. Most of the stories I hear seem to use the term
skinwalker to refer to an Indian ghost.”
Eventually the discussion ceased. Each
kid lay in his sleeping bag pondering the subject of skinwalkers.
Was the story they had heard really true? Or was it a far-fetched
and out-stretched tale? It was hard to see the reality of it, but
there was a side to each of us that wanted to believe it. We thought
and visualized the subject until we got very sleepy. Then our
thoughts turned to dreams. The dead of night moved in. Nothing
around moved. Everything slept.
Before I awoke, breakfast was ready.
It was last night's dutch-oven potatoes with eggs mixed in, along
with bacon and sausage on the side. It looked to me like Courtney
and Kevin were the early-birds who got up to make it. We all stood
around the fire, holding our paper plates full of food.
The sky was blue, except for a white
streak left behind from a high-flying jet. The Anasazi ruins were
still there, and so were the cedar trees. I watched a rabbit scamper
off into the bushes. Then I noticed a huge sparrow land on th . . . .
BOOOOM!!!! It sounded as if the whole world had blown up! I was so
startled that all my sausages rolled off my plate. My ears rang. We
all looked at Damon, who was standing against the rock wall, chuckling. While we ate, he had filled a sawed-off Mountain Dew can
with black powder and lit it off! Obviously, he hadn't learned a
lesson from last night.
As the fire died down, I volunteered to
go out and collect more fuel. The only wood to burn was dead cedar
branches that had fallen to the ground. I walked a good distance
away from the fire and began gathering small sticks and a couple big
ones. The heap was carried in my arms while my eyes could barely
peer over the stack. I couldn't see the ground at all until the top
branch fell off the pile. And when it fell, they all fell. I looked
in amazement at an object nearly fifteen yards from my feet. Was it?
Could it be? I wasn't sure, but it had to be. It was the
pipe-bomb! And it had melted into a V-shape. Instantly I was
thankful that none of us were hit by this flying object when I
realized it was 100 yards away from the camp fire!
“Guys!” I yelled. “I found it, I
found it!” I sprinted back to camp, with the evidence in my hands.
My breathing rate was almost as fast as I was talking when I showed
it to the boys.
“That could have killed one of us,”
someone intelligently pointed out. We all stared in amazement at the
melted V-shape of the once erect pipe.
We had an hour and a half left to do
whatever we wanted before we left. I hiked a few hundred yards away
and clamored onto a huge boulder where I sat. It was a good enough
view where I could observe the entire place.
The temperature felt good unless the
sun was behind a cloud. Then the wind turned chilly, creating goose
bumps over my arms. Once the sun returned, the breeze was warm again
and the boulder on which I sat felt nice and warm.
I was surprised when I saw a doe and
fawn hop off into the trees. With all the commotion we had made, I
thought they would have been spooked off long ago.
In my sight were the ruins built
by the Anasazi. Their mysterious disappearance has inspired writers
and raised man's curiosity for years.
These bygone people once inhabited this
very land. Their name comes the Navajo, meaning “ancient one,”
or more precisely, “enemy ancestor.” They were farmers, growing
mostly corn, beans, and squash. They also built stone shelters,
usually against the side of a cliff-wall to protect themselves from
wind and their enemies. These houses were built of
rectangular-shaped stones, piled several feet high. The over-hang of
the cliff could protect against the elements, but they also used
timber to create a thatched roof. Apparently they had to use ladders
to get to some of these structures. There are some ruins that look
impossible to be reached because they are so high upon steep, slick,
and impossible-to-climb cliffs.
Not only were they master builders, but
beautiful artists also. They produced huge quantities of pottery
with artistic designs covering them, including artistic textures.
Some of their weapons such as spears, knives, and arrowheads have
been found scattered along the ground.
Although they seemed to have been a
progressing tribe, something happened that caused them to vanish. No
one knows exactly why, but many have their theory's. Some say a huge
drought came and forced them to leave. Others speculate that hostile
enemies chased them out. Some agree on both, but say they all fled
into a sacred kiva to escape the evils of this world. There, they
entered into a different realm, co-existing and sharing the same
earth as us.
There hasn't been a single trace of
where they might have went, although some think that they moved
south and are the ancestors of the Pueblo Indians. Numerous
questions have been left to ask. Why did they leave behind all their
pots, baskets, and weapons? Things look as if they left in haste.
Only from what has survived the last
seven hundred years can archeologists use to study the Anasazi's
past. The stone houses still remain, but they have been crumbling
for centuries. Broken pottery is scattered around the ground,
proving, once assembled, that the Anasazi were great artists and
potters. Grinding stones, mostly used to grind corn, can often be
found. Hieroglyphics cover many of the cliff walls, showing some of
their stories and beliefs.
As I looked at these ancient ruins that
were built in and around Spirit Cave, my mind tried to comprehend the
history behind it. The ruins had been abandoned for hundreds of
years, or had they? Perhaps their spirits still lived here. That's
sure how it felt the night before. Somehow the darkness has an
effect on the mind that brings unsettling thoughts. ♠
