Page 22 The Ogden Valley News Volume I, Issue IX June 1999 - Special Feature THE WIND, THE SHEEP AND CAGED CANARIES by Charlene (Charlie) K. Hasenyager Early this spring, I returned home to Delta, Utah to visit my parents. The far-reaching Sevier Desert wraps itself around this small Millard County city, and I hungered for the wide-open vistas, the pale, distant mountains and the smell of sage. I missed the wind. The constant swirling presence of wind fills and defines this land as much as the ancient lava flows, the sage and greasewood. I longed to see and feel once more the powerful southwest currents capable of moving towering walls of dust across the desert floor and through the scattered clusters of civilization at stinging speeds. The evening of my arrival, filled with homemade soup and conversation, soon transformed into the dark hours of nighttime. The phone rang. My mom answered the phone, smiled and handed the receiver to me. I was hearing the voice of a friend I hadn’t seen in almost 19 years. “Yes,” I answered, “I would love to see you tomorrow.” Sitting across the kitchen table the following evening, I looked deeply into my friend’s face as we exchanged information, past and present. We were both 45 and lined. She still had her slender form, wonderful dimples and beautiful eyes. It was, however, her smile which betrayed her — tight and not quite as full as I had once remembered. I pressed gently as to what she might be hiding. My heart sank with her utterance of two words — breast cancer. Separated from my friend by several inches of wood, I sat numbly in my chair as she recounted her careful years of nutrition. She had breast fed all of her children. She had found no family history to account for her malignancy. I knew her body had never known tobacco, illicit drugs or alcohol. She paused for my reply. Silence. I was desperately trying to slow a hemorrhaging of my heart and to be calm for her. I looked out the kitchen window and noticed a light breeze pushing a tumbleweed through a pool of light beneath a nearby lamppost. I pondered the right words to begin a story whose end I did not know. I only knew the beginning and the roller coastering of hope and anguish which defined the middle. I returned my gaze to focus once more upon her face. Slowly, I began to unfold the lessons which a long forgotten tale of dead sheep and the wind had bestowed. I would tell her of caged canaries. The Message of Silent Sheep January 27, 1951, three years before our birth, marked the day whereby many, many lives would be forever charged — some more drastically than others. On this date the first of over 900 nuclear weapons tests had been initiated at a massive outdoor laboratory which is the well-known Nevada Test Site. These tests, both atmospheric and underground, could only be conducted when the winds blew to the north and east. As early as 1948, the nuclear weapons establishment knew that this western test site would spread contamination across the nation. They had been well advised that the United States was predominantly under the influence of westerly winds. Over and over, from the 1950’s to the 1980’s, Utah was plastered with the radioactive fallout from a test site larger than the state of Rhode Island. Residents of Utah and Nevada had been repeatedly told by the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) that there was no need for concern. A flock of sheep traveling home to give birth would prove otherwise. In the early spring of 1953, the traditional roundup had gathered herds of sheep upon winter rangeland for the 200-mile trek back to the lambing grounds and sheds of Cedar City and Parowan. The winter range lay just east of the Nevada Test Site. By spring, the test series known as the UpshotKnothole series had already begun. A series which has been described as “exceptionally dirty.” Traveling north about six miles a day, the sheep continually foraged their way across the land. Soft muzzles pushed deep into the snow and porous, rocky soil for roots of salt brush, black sagebrush and galletta grass. Mouthfuls of snow quenched their thirst. The test shots continued, sending waves of clouds laden with dirt and radioactive fallout sweeping across the sheep and the land upon which they fed. Hazardous particles fell upon the snow. The natural feed and moisture carried the poison deep within the bodies of the sheep. Nearing the Utah border, ewes began to abort their lambs. Stunted lambs with strange pot bellies, no wool and often no legs dropped upon the ground. The ewes unnaturally walked away from their deformed young. By the end of May, in the vicinity of Cedar CONTINUED on page 23