Looters typically focused on sites that were likely to yield artifacts with high market values. Visitors, as opposed to serious looters, tended to be less selective, collecting small sherds and waste flakes, which over time could result in a serious depletion. And though picking up arrowheads wasn’t something a person would get charged with under ARPA, it could be considered a misdemeanor. Oftentimes when conducting my work, I’d think back to my brother and me when we’d looked for arrowheads and picked up flakes. Most people, like us, had no idea that kind of activity was illegal.
At eighteen years old, when I took the job as a seasonal worker, my duties involved anything from spraying ditches for noxious weeds, to repairing roads by filling in potholes, to assisting geologists with field surveying. I spent my days outdoors, sometimes walking six to ten miles in ninety-degree heat, hot dust beneath my feet, and skies so blue I was certain heaven had never felt as close. And when I was alone, I’d talk to Brody, I’d talk to God, I’d talk to myself. When I arrived in Colorado, my capacity for grief was like the Grand Canyon. Some people don’t make it out of the Grand Canyon. The rapids and the terrain can be highly unpredictable. And yet there is something about exploring an area by oneself. When I took my grief to Colorado, I found the space I needed. I found the wind and the sky and the sun and the rocks and the high desert pinyon and sage to be the most effective balm of all. It was there that my grief became quiet and allowed me to hear the whispers of something much greater than myself, and I couldn’t get enough of it. And sometimes when I was working alone on a road, shoveling dirt and hauling rocks, feeling the muscles in my arms and legs and back, I’d feel Brody all around me as well.
The BLM was low on housing that summer. The two bunkhouses were already full with seasonal firefighters. Three other seasonal workers were sharing an apartment in town. I was going to be on my own to arrange for my living quarters. I’d brought basic camping gear: a tent, sleeping bag, foam pad, cookstove. I picked up a bear canister at the hardware store and a couple of other items, including a folding chair and a large cooler. I had over a million acres to choose from for my summer home. I studied the maps and looked for natural springs. There is not a lot of water in the high desert, and many of the brooks dry up in the summer. That was when I met Ray. He’d been working as a geologist for the BLM for over thirty years. He told me about an area at the base of Danforth Hills, up Cabin Gulch, where there was a spring that would provide plenty of fresh water and a nice swimming hole. He said there were lion and some bear in the area, but he doubted they’d pay any attention to me. And so I set up camp on an embankment just above the spring, with an unbelievable amount of sky above me. I’d never really thought of a place as home before. I had simply been a child who’d been growing up in her parents’ arms, and who’d been moving into the arms of another. But lying underneath that big sky, the grief that had been winding itself tight inside me started to loosen, and I found myself settling into the depths of that land and sky as if it were the place I’d been born to find. My days consisted of waking up before dawn, working hard all day, and then driving up the four-wheel road to my gold tent and chair. I would sit in that complete quiet and peace and comfort, and I’d feel something infinite going on inside me. I knew I was home, and there was no way I could walk out of there come summer’s end. I didn’t want to be inside college walls, or working in my parents’ store. I wanted to live with this vast beauty around me. I wanted to feel the fatigue at the end of the day from my bones and muscles having worked hard. I wanted big stretches of space to talk out loud all the thoughts going on in my head. The solitude I found that summer became my greatest companion. I’d already lost Brody. I wasn’t going to lose this companion, too.