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Show Page A8 - (Ehc Utmgg-htbgpgnhg- -- Thursday, March 24, 2005 nt Idle Thoughts from Mt. Waas by Ollie Harris I MEANDER CUT-OF- F felt a bit intimidated by it. Just under the rim is a series of ledges. It is very steep. As I cautiously descended I told Kay that I felt like an old, overloaded ore truck with really bad brakes. One misstep and I was going to be in serious trouble. Once safely in the bottom we started off to the right which was the downstream direction of the ancient river. We flushed two chukkars that went scurrying up into the rocks A couple of hundred yards from the river we began to encounter smooth cobblestones, worn and deposited by the prehistoric San Juan. When we reached the limestone ledge at the rivers edge, I got out my screwdriver, brushes and spoons, and cleaned out a crack in the bedrock. I brought a couple of pounds of cleanings home where I will run them through my gold pan just to see whats there. We continued on around the high, abandoned island, following the ancient channel back to where we intended to climb out. Interestingly, the channel now runs uphill from the river in both directions. It appears that, once abandoned, the channel began to accumulate detritus from the walls of the canyon. Since there is no longer a continuous flow in the channel, accumulation mounted to a point where the outflow now runs either direction from a high point on the back side away from the current river channel. The climb up out of the channel was arduous but uneventful. I still prefer hiking uphill to downhill. I may be an old, overloaded ore truck, but I have a good low gear. I just keep grinding along with occasional stops to cool off and to take on water. We saw lots of tracks wherever we went I Someday, perhaps in a few million years, the San Juan River will wear through the narrow necks of land that form the Goosenecks. It will take a shortcut rather than meandering in great loops as it does now. It will leave stretches of the current channel literally high and dry. It wont be the first time the San Juan has done such a thing. There is just such a cut-omeander of the San Juan two or three miles downstream from the mouth of Comb Wash. I first saw it in the late 1980s or early 1990s when I was poking around down in that country. I could still kick myself for not recognizing it for what it is. After all, I had sat up on the ff high rim and marveled at the strange canyon below. I had wondered how such a deep, looping canyon could have been formed. There are no significant canyons running into it. It was a great puzzle to me. In about 1997 1 selected a loop route for my bicycling buddies and I to ride that would take meander. We stopped at the us past the cut-orim of the strange canyon and I wondered aloud how it had been formed. Without hesitation, Kay Shumway said, Its a cut-of- f meander. I was both thrilled to learn what it was and furious at myself for not having figured it out. I mean, once you know what it is it becomes so obvious. My frustration at not having recognized it was compounded further by my inability to kick myself. My bicycling helmet likely saved me from trauma when the heel of my hand smacked my forehead. In the years since then I have made two solo hikes down into the abandoned river channel. I was out hiking alone on Tuesday and got to meander. Tuesday thinking about the cut-oI to mentioned it Kay and we decided evening to go there the next day. I am definitely on the downhill side of good physical condition. When we pulled up to the rim of the canyon yesterday my heart quickened. It was bigger than I remembered. Frankly, ff The way it . Sam Remembers by Sam Taylor For many years, Easter weekend meant the year's first campout. When our children were small, we always took the camp trailer or tent to the red rocks for a long weekend of fun. It was always a great family event, usually spent with friends with similar interests. Most usually we went to the Needles section of Canyonlands, and no matter how many times you go to the Needles, there is always something new to see. Those camping trips that are foremost in my memory are the ones like this year when Easter came early. You could always depend on cold nights and chilly days. If you were out for three or four days, there would always be wind and sand to contend with on at least one of those days. remember one windy day when we sought refuge from the wind in a shallow sandstone canyon in the Needles. What we found, when we got down in the canyon, was not only shelter from the blowing sand, but a beautiful Anasazi ruin tucked away in an alcove. The site is now marked, and the ruin has been named. But still feel ours was one of the earliest discoveries. remember the night on Cathedral Point when the wind blew so hard it pulled up the tent stakes, and the flapping canvas almost beat me to death. The next morning was clear and calm. waited patiently for my wife to return from a climb trying to find a way into upper Salt Creek Basin. remember the time when our camping companions agreed that we should try to explore Davis Canyon. At that time there wasn't a well defined road into the area. So after breakfast, we had Dick Smith at Canyonlands Resort fly us over the area so we could map our route. We werent disappointed. Davis Canyon is a beautiful place to visit, and so full of archaeology that it boggles the mind. Our favorite spot in Davis was what we called the Munitions Factory. There was one huge piece of ff sandstone where grooves had been worn in the rock, all the way from skinny ones, obviously for arrow shafts, to broad ones where rock axes could be sharpened. Also in that particular alcove were small potholes of varied colors. We guessed that they were paint mixing pots, creating pigments for pictographs. will never forget the Easter Sunday when all of our friends left Sunday morning for town and we decided to stay out another night. We were camped several hundred yards back in the sandstone fins from Canyonlands Resort. There we had a Easter egg hunt, replete with lots of chocolate bunnies which the kids devoured. Dick Smith came by our About tell to us was flying a contract pilot that he camp he had hired for the weekend back to his home in Page, Arizona, and would we like to come along for the ride. We jumped at the chance, forgetting that our kids stomachs were full of chocolate rabbits, which they promptly disposed of all over the plane on our scenic trip to Page. We all pitched in to clean the Cessna up before returning to Canyonlands Resort. Dick flew us over massive clusters of ruins on mesas near Navajo Mountain, and right up the middle of Grand Gulch where we could spot ruins on both sides of the plane. It was very late in the day when we got back to Dicks landing strip, and too dark to see very far. Don't worry,. Dick said. took the tractor out and plowed a long trench through the grass. When cross over that trench, know its time to turn the landing lights on. It has been a number of years since weve camped on Easter weekend. When look around town this week and see all the young families here to do the same thing, cant blame them. What a great way to greet the coming spring and summer seasons. y g, I I I I I I I I I I ISSN 1538-183- 8 (UPS) 6309-200Entered as Second class Matter at the Post Office at Moab, Utah under the Act of March 3, 1897. Second class postage paid at Moab, Utah 84532. Official City and County Newspaper. 0) Published each Thursday at: 35 East Center Street, Moab, Grand County, Utah 84532 address: editormoabtimes.com Postmaster: Send changes of address to: The or Member P.O. Box 129, Moab, UT Times-lndepende- 435-259-75- FAX 84532 435-259-77- MMTnATION AL NEWSPAPER ASSOCIATION and UTAH PRESS ASSOCIATION F. Taylor, Publishers Adrien F. Taylor, Editor Sadie Warner, Assistant Editor erroneously attributed to desert wasnt It until we were out of the cansheep. yon and began driving away that we saw three mule deer does. They stood obligingly still as we took several photos of them standing in the desert rocks. Writers on the Range Do you want fries with that mustang ? . . . by Shara Rutberg Ive threatened to turn Vinnie Barbarino, my horse, into mustang burgers. After a long day struggling with the stubborn creature, my toes swelling in my boots, I have stomped-upo- n to promised ship him off to France to be served with a side of pommes frites and a nice red wine. Of course, I would never do it. But because g of a recent revision of the Wild Horse and Burro Protection Act, at least 8,400 mustangs are almost certainly headed for European dinner tables. In November, Montana Sen. Conrad Burns slipped a rider into a federal spending bill that lifted the ban on selling wild horses for slaughter. President Bush signed the bill in December. The rule forces the Bureau of Land Management to sell every captured horse that is 10 years or older, or that has been offered for adoption three times. Most of them will be sold to slaughterhouses. When a wild horse protection act was being debated by Congress in 1971, an outraged public sent one of the largest outpourings of mail in the history of Congress, second only to Vietnam. As a result, wild mustangs were granted protection on publicly owned land and declared living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit of the West. My own living symbol of the historic and pioneer spirit ofthe West gets regular pedicures and has a penchant for sugar cubes. Vinnie has the high intelligence typical of mustangs, who have survived by their smarts and toughness, though he is scared witless of sheep, harbors a deep mistrust of cows and, also for some reason, striped poles. He lives a life of luxury on a ranch outside Boulder, Colo., where his days are mostly spent grazing in a large meadow, watching a parade of baby joggers along adjaparents push cent trails while sunlight twinkles on the solar r subpaneled-roof- s of the homes in the division. His greatest fear is that I will come at him with a bottle of fly spray. In a twist of fate and palate, Americans do not pull up to the drive-thr- u window and order McMustangs instead of beef McRibs. Although 50,000 domestic horses are killed each year in U.S. slaughterhouses, Americans retain a collective revulsion at the thought of Seabiscyit Stew and My Friend Fried Flicka. Not so in France. It is ironic that our president stands tall in Free-Roamin- ld all-terra- in next-doo- i his cowboy boots as special interests ride off into the sunset to butcher one of the remaining icons of the American West. That France will consume most of these wild horses adds another level of irony. In this country, even though my icon of the American West often encrusts himself with forelock sitting like a mud, a thistle-tangle- d tumbleweed between his ears, wild horses like Vinnie remain a potent symbol. Mustangs evoke freedom, tenacity and a rugged Western spirit. And as the Marlboro man wheezes off into assisted living and cattle get driven to pasture in rather than horses, the West is running out of icons. Opponents of wild horses say they are tearland. ing up the overgrazed, drought-stricke- n Thirty-seve- n thousand mustangs run on public lands. So do 4 million cows. I believe the numbers speak for themselves. Nonetheless, the herds clearly need to be managed in a better way. But, as one person who has struggled to manage one single mustang, I know that managing 37,000 of them is not an easy task. But nothing with mustangs is easy. What works at least in my experience is compromise. Vinnie Barbarino and I have a deal: I no longer tie him to the fence; he no longer stomps purposefully on my toes. I do not keep him in a stall; he allows me to catch him, radius usually. I do not come within a with a fly spray bottle; he no longer knocks small children off their feet with his head. It works for us. And compromise in the form of sterilization could work for wild mustangs. The Humane Society has developed a contraceptive vaccine that could help keep populations down. As for the animals already penned in BLM holding facilities, at least one group of cowboys has displayed American ingenuity. Theyre switching the focus of their cow-caoperation: Theyre going to ranch mustangs. Owners of Wild Horses Wyoming, who will support the horses through sponsorships, have adopted 200 of the captured mustangs and are hoping to lease enough land to accommodate 5,000 more. These kinds of creative solutions are better options for Americas wild horses than one that comes served with a side of fries. Shara Rutberg is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High Country News (hcn.org). She lives and writes in Denver, Samuel J. and Adrien Tom Taylor..; Zane Taylor Lorinda Applegate Carrie Switzer Lisa Church Jeff Richards Marjorie Miller Circulation Manager, l Maps Press, Production Manage Advertising Salesr Staff Writer Contributing Writer Contributing Writer Contributing Writer T-- Jeannine Wait Dorothy Anderson Jose Santana, Jed Taylor Ron Drake Ron Georg Oliver Harris A.J. Long Looking to fatten up your wallet? Contributing Writer Mail Room Supervisor Backshop Castle Valley Columnist Columnist Columnist i Distribution we High Country News I one-famil- that Place a classified ad in The Sell stuff. Times-lndepende- nt. Enjoy life. J 1 semi-traile- rs 30-fo- ot lf , |