The Family at Serpiente

by Raymond Tolman

  Hidalgo’s mind flashed back to the present, some living creature was creating sounds; a deer, raccoon, bear, cougar, or homicidal manic. Worry momentarily set in, then vanished. A deer, that perfection of stealth, wandered through our camp, apparently unaware of us, as its ever so slight sounds were masked by the churning, bubbling waters of the Rio Grande River. In our enthusiasm to see the meteor showers and evening wildlife, we were emulating the deer herself, so quiet and stealthy.

  We all knew of course, it was better to plan canoe trips to coincide with known meteor showers, but if anyone travels into the thin clear air of a desert or mountain top, away from city lights, will be entertained by the numerous meteors that fall through the night sky on any given night.

  This was a great night. In the high desert mountain regions of the southwestern United States, beach camps in deep dark canyons with sheer surrounding walls provide shelter for the camper from the glare of light sources from nearby cities. There, in the deepest of shadows, burrowed into a warm sleeping bag looking skyward with clarity of vision we laid there and enjoyed the meteor shower. Without the aid of flashlights, lanterns, televisions, or even a lowly campfire, each of us had time for our own contemplation.

  The next morning over the campfire where a breakfast was cooking Corey asked Hidalgo, “What did you think about the meteor showers last night? Penny and I were listening to a radio broadcast from PBS about them on the way down here. It said that meteorites can range in composition from snowballs to vast chunks of metallic rock, reminiscent of the nickel iron core of the Earth. Did you know that some meteors survive the impact with the earth to become meteorites, which are collected usually in places like polar ice fields or deserts? They are studied by scientists. When found, they are worth their weight in gold.”

  “Curiously, when fragments of meteorites are heated in a test tube, large amounts of gases are liberated, mostly hydrogen and oxygen, which condense to form water, a basic prerequisite for life. There is water, tied up chemically, in the most distant and bleakest of rocks out there. Some of these meteoric fragments have been examined for the presence of fossilferious carbon based organisms, namely meteorites which are thought to have been blasted off the planet Mars by some earlier asteroid impact there. Fossilized microorganisms have been found on those rocks, causing skeptics to demand an earthly origin for these pieces of meteorite.”

  “That’s fascinating,” I interjected, “but what do you know about comets? Have you heard that three comets will be visiting the earth before the year 2000?”

  “Comets are very different from meteorites” answered Corey. “Comets are astronomical precursors of change, and this seems to be a time for astronomical signs.”

  Hidalgo started clearing up the breakfast as we talked. “If that is the case perhaps we should all work a little faster on these dishes, otherwise those comets and asteroids may hit before I get these dishes done and we will never get back on the river.” Everyone laughed and picked up the pace.

  As we all rushed around packing our canoes and getting ready to get back on the river, I thought about how strangely things worked out. Hidalgo, and Corey as well as I were from different worlds. I was a small town, Tennessee girl, Corey was a New Mexico boy, and Hidalgo was raised on a Navajo reservation, yet we discovered that we all had a deep interest in ancient peoples of the world and interest in the heavens and what could be learned from them. All of us had acquired complimentary knowledge in different ways, and each could learn from the other.

  Back on the river, Hidalgo took the lead in his canoe because he was more experienced and paddling solo making him more mobile than Corey and me. I sat in the front of the tandem canoe with Corey in the back. This made me the lookout and Corey was the one who actually steered the canoe.

  As we neared a bend in the river we heard the tell-tale roar of an upcoming rapid. Hidalgo pulled to the bank of the river to scout the rapid and Corey and I pulled in behind him. We walked around the bend and saw a rapid that extended as far as we could see, with several large rocks scattered throughout. There was one particular large rock right in the center of a wild section of rapid. Because of this rock, I was inclined to walk around the rapid, but when I scouted the way around I found that there was dense brush blocking the way.

  We walked back to the bend and discussed the best way to get around the big rock. “I think the right channel is deeper,” I conjectured, “It also seems wider than the left passage.”

  “The left channel is closer to the bank,” interjected Corey. “If we tip the canoe, it will be easier to get out of the water from there. What do you think, Hidalgo?”

  Hidalgo thought for several minutes, looked at the rock from as many angles as possible, and then hesitantly replied, “It’s hard to tell how large the rock is or how much of it is hidden underwater, but I think Corey may be right.”

  “I bow to your experience,” I said to Hidalgo. “I think you are both wrong, but you have been running rivers longer than either one or us.” It was a lie and I knew it. We were all learning together.

  Having made the decision, Hidalgo pushed his canoe into the water and started toward the rapid with Corey and me following in our tandem canoe. All went well for Hidalgo as he approached the rapid making his way past the rock that formed the rapid, but the back of his canoe scraped the rock on the way. With a chill he realized that the heavier, tandem canoe would not make it over the edge of the rock that he had scraped. He tried to wave to us and let us know that we needed to swing to the right, further away from the rock, but it was too late. Corey could not turn the canoe in time to miss the edge of the submerged rock.

  The canoe caught the rock just close enough to the middle to broach. Corey immediately jumped out of the canoe and was trying to push the canoe off the rock, but the fast water swept him off his feet and only by holding on to the side was he able to keep from being swept on down the rapid and away from the canoe. My end of the canoe was raised out of the water. I tried to get out of the canoe but when I tried to put my feet on the rock, the only thing I felt under my feet was water. Frightened, I jumped back in the canoe. By this time Corey had managed to pull himself up to the upriver side of the canoe. He tried again to push it off of the rock, but it would not budge. “Get out of the canoe,” he hollered to me, “I can’t get the canoe off of the rock with you in it.”

  I hesitated only a few seconds, then dived into the back of the canoe, which was now in front. As I did, the shift of my weight caused the canoe to lurch off of the rock. At the last second, Corey dived into the canoe and off we went down the river. We were out of control, going down the rapids at a terrifying speed and full of water, but we were off the rock. Corey finally got the spare paddle loose from under the seat of the canoe and steered us to the bank where Hidalgo was waiting with a rescue rope after fishing Corey’s lost paddle out of the water and ready to fish one of us out if we fell out of the canoe. I was laughing and crying at the same time as we pulled up to the bank. The adrenaline rush of the adventure made me feel like I was drunk. “Well,” I laughed, “I guess that I was right after all.” Corey and Hidalgo just sighed, knowing that they would never hear the end of this.

  Since everything in our canoe was soaking wet, we decided to camp where we were on the river bank. We hung up the sleeping bags to dry and put out some fishing lines to catch a catfish for dinner. Luckily it was a hot day and the sleeping bags dried out before it was time to get into them.

  Hidalgo built a small fire so that I could dry off and we all sat around and continued our morning conversation. Hidalgo said, “Most ancient Americans; the Clovis and Folsum, Anasazi, and later the Pueblo cultures and much later the tribe called the Navajos, witnessed and made attempts to record astronomical signs in the southwest. Those records can be found in the form of petroglyphs throughout the Southwest. A close examination shows that many of the larger ruins were built along astronomical orientations. In South America it is thought that the native cultures based their entire ci
vilizations upon astronomical observations with the locations of ruins being found close to water sources.”

  “Records were kept throughout the world of such observances. Haley’s Comet was visible in the skies over Jerusalem when that city fell to the Romans in 66 B.C. The comet must have sided with the Romans, because they defeated Attila the Hun, in 451 A.D. The comet attended the Norman invasion of England in 1066, early in the present millennium. Mark Twain joked that he came into life on a comet, because he was born in 1835, the year of a visit by Haley’s Comet. He left this life on its next pass, seventy five years later, which has prompted some to take his kidding seriously.”

  “The heavenly bodies in the solar system that fascinate me are asteroids,” said Corey. “My teachers at the university said that according to geological and astronomical calculations, an asteroid about 1 mile or 1.6 kilometers across, strikes Earth once every 300,000 years. An asteroid this large would leave a crater over 10 miles across. Nobody really knows what effect it would have on the planet as a whole, but the pall of dust kicked up by the impact might block out the sun long enough to bring on a nuclear winter. Agriculture and commerce would probably cease, and most people in the world would die. I’ll bet that the real consequence of such an impact would be far greater than any cinematic re-creation. The consequences of a real impact would be felt for generations, assuming that there was someone left around to experience them.”

  Conversations About Asteroids

  Corey found himself talking while we all unpacked everything making sure water had not gotten into anything. He talked about asteroids based upon what he had learned as a student of geology. “Ever since photographs of the earth and the moon were taken from deep space and made available to the public, much to the credit of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration; many of us have been fascinated by the thin membrane of living matter on our earth known as the biosphere where life recycles itself. From space, with the deep vast emptiness behind it, this biosphere appears to be alive. Indeed, much has been written concerning the Gaia Hypothesis, which hypothecates that the earth is a living organism. In the vastness of space, we ponder whether there are other biospheres out there that would support life. The earth as seen from outer space is strikingly beautiful, constantly changing, however, if I were the operator of that distant camera, I would be looking over my shoulder.”

  “Consider the following: Our planet resides in an almost invisible swarm of meteoroids and asteroids, with thousands of objects orbiting our sun that periodically cross the Earth’s orbit. During a meteor shower, hundreds of small ones can appear and leave their fiery trail in the night sky. The vast majority of them are rice size, and even they leave an impressive trail in the sky. Larger ones do hit the earth, and occasionally hit houses and even people. In some areas of the world, collecting these extraterrestrial objects is the basis for lucrative hobbies. Only rarely does one hit that leaves a crater such as meteor crater in Arizona. According to the paleontological records, very large meteorites impact every few million years, which causes nature to have to start over. An asteroid impact seems highly unlikely since one has not fallen in historic times. However, there is evidence that an impact was observed on the moon and documented by the Chinese, Native Americans, Egyptians and many other sources.”

  Hidalgo started to enter the conversation but Corey cut him off.

  “For weeks after an impact, the moon probably appears as a larger red orb. In the geologic records, massive die-offs have occurred in 26 million-year cycles, corresponding to earth’s orbit and probably due to asteroid impacts. This is what apparently happened to the dinosaurs. It will likely happen again. We have some 15 million years or so before the next major predicted die-off episode. In the meantime, a rogue asteroid, one that appears out of nowhere leaving us little time to prepare could most likely hit us. If such an impact occurred, dramatic changes would occur to the biosphere. Life, as we humans know it would certainly have to start over.

  I asked him, “What are our chances of being killed by such an asteroid impact?”

  Corey answered me, “Some astronomers consider your odds of being hit by an asteroid impact may be as high as one in six thousand, greater than your chance of dying in a plane crash. If of course you do die unexpectedly, it is far more likely to be from very earthbound causes, such as automobile accidents, high blood pressure or gunshots. Does all this worry you?”

  Hidalgo and I looked at each other both rolling our eyes and continued setting up tents.

  “You probably wouldn’t, you are probably not as fatalistic as I am. But let me tell you something, a quick glance at a New Mexico road map will immediately remind you, of the geological features that this state is set in. That large line which goes north and south is the Rio Grande Rift Zone, and right next to it, just above Albuquerque, is Jemez volcano, the largest caldera type volcano in the United States. Obviously it is unique to the state. Was an asteroid the precursor, the cause of the Jemez volcano? What about many of the worlds other volcanic sites? Was Hawaii formed as the result of an asteroid impact, a precursor to its current hot spot activity, which due to plate tectonics, has resulted in a string of volcanic islands, like a string of pearls. The oldest islands have eroded flat while the geologically younger islands have tall peaks. The next Hawaiian Island is currently being built, still thousands of feet below the ocean surface. The same questions are now being asked about Yellowstone super volcano. Did the geological disturbance that created these volcanoes originate deep within the earth or from more lofty places?”

  I finally turned to Corey and simply said, I don’t know about getting hit by an asteroid tonight but you are going to get hit by me if you don’t help us set up camp!”

  White Rock Canyon

  That next evening we camped along a beach underneath a vertical wall of lava that soared straight up a couple of thousand feet. At the top of the cliffs was an entire town. The town of White Rock is the home of many scientists who work at Los Alamos Laboratories yet they were separated by the vast cliff. We could just as well have been a thousand miles apart. As our camp became enveloped in darkness we again extinguished all sources of light in order to consider the night sky. Discussions again centered upon the metaphysical.

  Corey’s seemed determined to continue his earlier conversations. “The American Southwest is currently experiencing a rash of reports of strange lights at night, metaphysical locations, cattle mutilations, disappearances, and unidentified flying objects of every shape and description. We even get reports of crashed UFOs with dead occupants that the Air Force immediately whisks away, covers up, and denies; thus creating a media feeding frenzy along with the creation of assorted television shows devoted to the subject. Historically the Southwest has been famous for its unsolved mysteries, long before there were aliens to worry about. It seems to have been a center of unexplained occurrences that baffled the Native Americans, the Spanish, and is certainly perplexing to the peoples who live here now.”

  Hidalgo grinned as Corey burned his hand on the coffee pot but that didn’t keep him from talking. “Phenomena will often occur leaving the observer in a quandary as to what it was, which upon later examination reveals itself. In fact, almost all supernormal phenomena can be explained enlisting the resources of universities, police, and laboratories throughout the world using modern scientific methods readily available to the public. There are, however, a tiny percent of real phenomena that cannot be explained by anyone, therefore the challenge of the mystery persist. Until the end of the millennium and well into the future, there will be an unending parade of disaster films, earthquakes, killer bees, volcanoes, asteroids and comets; and perhaps there are alien spacecraft, riding along on the comets, watching us. Many of these ideas manage to entertain us, but life rarely imitates art. Real environmental change is anything that has an effect upon us, whether positive or negative. When there is apparently nothing we can do about catastrophic change, most of us demonstrate a fatalistic attitude.”
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  I added, “A little like the gallant mouse that was last seen shaking a tiny defiant fist, just before the hawk snatches it up”.

  Certainly that was the way Corey and I along with Hidalgo approached difficult rapids, especially with fully loaded canoes. It was also the way we approached our lives. We were all new to the science of river running, but we were learning fast. All three of us were experienced with the outdoors with years of experience with pack animals but canoeing was new to us. We knew that we were going for many swims. It was our fate. But running rapids was our choice. We could choose whether or not to put ourselves in this situation, and we must deal with the consequences of our choice. But some things are simply beyond our control, we became fatalistic. It was in our nature as humans.

  Corey, who was just about to doze, noticed a moving object just at the horizon. Quietly he whispered to me to watch. “There’s another airplane from Denver landing at the Albuquerque airport.” But it didn’t. Instead it just sat in the sky for several minutes then suddenly darted away.

  “What in the world was that, I asked being as puzzled by the light show as Corey.” Rising up on his elbows to get a better view, the hair on the back of Corey’s neck began to rise as he realized that what he was watching was impossible. Corey whispered, “This all reminds me of the story of the alien spaceship that arrived in Washington and the alien stepped out of it with a book. Everyone was panic stricken by the appearance of the alien until they read the title of the book, ‘To Serve Man,’ everyone relaxed. They relaxed until they realized that it was a cookbook.”

  The Gallina Canyon Mystery

  A month of ranch work later and after Corey had returned from Los Lunas, New Mexico where he had a mail box at the post office, he walked into the living room of the ranch house and made an announcement. “I may have a new mystery for us to solve.”