The Anomaly(8)

I’d told Molly where I thought we needed to get to, down at the river thousands of feet below, and she’d sorted out the rest—establishing that there were a couple of little-used descent trails from this area. The one we were intending to use was technically on the Navajo reservation, and so we kinda weren’t supposed to be here without permission.

“Seriously?”

A narrow and uneven trail clung to the edge of the crumbly, rocky cliff face, winding back and forth through striated fissures in the rock—looking down into a vast open space into which a sizable town could be dropped without touching the sides.

Ken whistled. “Now would be a bad time to reveal you get vertigo, mate.”

“I’m more worried about Pierre having to do it with the camera.”

Pierre jumped off the rim and landed neatly six feet down the “path.” He trotted along it, then back, casting an annoyingly professional eye at the route farther down. “It’s fine,” he said. “I go trail-running on worse than this.”

“Of course you do,” I muttered.

Ken smirked. “Okay, camera boy, get yourself in position twenty yards down and we’ll do a walk-to-you. Molly, mike Nolan up. Nolan, walk toward us and say something very interesting. And try not to fall off.”

“What should I do?” Feather asked.

“To be honest, love, what I mainly need from you and Gemma right now is to stay out of my way. So hold the fort up here until someone shouts up that we’ve got the shot done. If any Red Indian braves show up, tell them we’re with the government.”

“Really?”

“No,” he said. “Obviously don’t do that. Just…look, just stand there, okay? Both of you. And keep quiet.”

Pierre and Ken headed down the trail. I waited until they were in position, while Molly threaded the lapel mike into my billowy off-white shirt and dropped the transmitter in the back pocket of my jeans. Then she picked her way down the path toward Pierre and Ken, looking sure-footed and confident despite the awkward boom mike. I suspect her family hikes don’t all start at Starbucks and end in a bar.

When they were all together, Ken raised his hand.

I stepped down onto the start of the trail, gazing out across the eerie multicolored moonscape. Then I started walking, looking at the camera and trying not to think about the enormous drop only a couple of feet to my right.

“A long time ago,” I said, “there was a soldier, geologist, and explorer by the name of John Wesley Powell. He led the first passage through the Grand Canyon by Europeans, and went on to direct the Smithsonian’s ethnology department. His influence on the study of America’s prehistory is far-reaching, admittedly not always in positive ways. But whatever his bias, he’s responsible for recording a few of the Native American legends about the canyon.”

I indicated the gorge. “There’s a Hualapai legend which said all this was created after a great flood, when one of their heroes, Pack-i-tha-a-wi—and no, I’m not sure that’s how you pronounce it—stuck a great knife into the land, and moved it back and forth until the canyon was formed, allowing the waters to flow back out to the Sea of the Sunset.”

By now I was within a few yards of Pierre and the others. Ken motioned at me to keep going, however, and Pierre continued to film, walking steadily backward.

“Another legend claimed the canyon was created to solace the grief of a great chief, after his wife died. The god Ta-vwoats created a trail to a beautiful land—heaven, in effect—and the chief visited his wife there. Ta-vwoats made him promise never to tell of what he’d seen, in case people wearied of the tribulations of life and tried to get there early. The chief agreed, and Ta-vwoats caused water to flow over the trail, barring access to the other land forever. This is a sacred place. Powell said he’d been warned by local tribes not to enter the Grand Canyon, that it was disobedience to the gods and could bring down their wrath. It didn’t stop him. And it’s not going to stop us—though we’ll be visiting with due respect to the local tribes and their beliefs, of course.”

I was pretty much done now, but Ken and the others kept moving away from me down the path.

“So,” I said, with enough emphasis to communicate that if they didn’t stop backing away soon I was simply going to stop talking, “two different perspectives—and the advantage freethinking researchers have is that we listen. We also consider things like the fact that within the canyon are massive rock formations with names like the Tower of Set, the Tower of Ra, and the Isis Temple. The official story is the early explorers simply happened to like Egyptian-sounding names, which were fashionable at the time—and maybe that’s true. But let’s keep an open mind. And now I’m going to stop talking, and concentrate on getting down to the river in one piece.”

“And…cut,” Ken said. “Bit esoteric for the clickbait crowd, but history dorks will love it. Good work, everyone. Except you, Nolan. You were shit.”

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome. Okay, slackers, let’s head back to the car and gather up our crap. It’s time to boldly go.”





Chapter

5



I was just saying,” Molly said to me, meaningfully, as we started the walk back to the SUV, “how useful it is to have Feather with us.”