An adventurous day as spacemen, anthropologists, and volcanologists

By Staff Sgt. Whitney Houston  
     
This past week, I was driving the unit ATV south on a surprisingly dusty paved road east of the flight line on Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan, to pick up Spc. Ariel Solomon from an interview he was conducting with a Native American man in preparation for National American Indian Heritage Month. It had just rained and I couldn’t understand why vehicles were throwing so much dust. It made it extremely difficult to see anything in front of me because the sun's rays were hitting the dust just right to obscure anything farther than five feet in front of me. When I finally got through the worst of the dust I turned east, and the mountains came into view.

The suns’ rays cast shadows on the mountain's peaks at just the right angle and displayed all of its beautiful features. I had to pull off the road for a moment to appreciate what had just come into my view out of dust's obscurity. Solomon’s story theme on Native Americans and seeing those jagged cliffs of the Hindu-Kush mountains evoked a vivid memory of an adventure I had with my boys a couple of years past, to the Arizona Strip in search of the elusive Paiute Cave, which is packed with vibrant Native American history.

Weeks before we actually made the trek I researched the cave, which is something I always do before taking my kids into an area that I don’t know much or anything about. I made sure that Saturday’s chores were done on Friday so my kids wouldn’t be voided an opportunity to work, and we prepared everything that we would need for the following day’s adventure.

            
We woke up shortly after the sun came up to ensure that we’d have time to find the cave because although I had researched it, wikimapia describes it as, “not easy to find.” But I had all of my general directions printed out, and notes from many websites to help us find this remote location on the Arizona Strip. We drove through Apple Valley, Utah, which gives you a beautiful view of the south side of Zion National Park. We then drove on through to Colorado City where I eventually turned onto an old county dirt road.

            
For those who don’t know much about Colorado City, it’s home to a Mormon fundamentalist group that practices polygamy. The women and young men’s apparel is often old-fashioned, like something you might see in the 1800’s or early 1900’s. Their hair is also done in old-fashioned manner, braded in thin strands, and the men’s hair is usually parted, but both styles do vary. All of my dealings with them have been positive, and they seem to be a very hardworking people. In fact their presence added to our experience that day.

             
I turned onto that dirt road and traversed the next 30 miles, occasionally passing teenage kids from Colorado City dressed as I mentioned and meandering in what seemed to be the middle of nowhere. In any other circumstance one might ask, "What on earth are these kids doing out here?" But they seemed happy and carefree, and were probably tending to fences and helping with family cattle that many families run on the strip. It seemed like a scene from Little House on the Prairie.

            
In my directions to the Paiute cave there were landmarks I had to look for that would point me to the correct lefts and rights to take to get there; a remote house, several cattle guards, and the last landmark was an old shack at about mile 29, from which I knew that I would need to turn left and head east.

           
I turned on that road, which took me over a little hill and onto what opened up into a wide-open valley with a few rolling hills and some lava beds protruding from the barren landscape. It was beautiful, but I was stumped from there as to where I would look for the cave, but I knew I had to be close as I had followed every direction available. The Paiute Cave isn’t what you would typically think of as a cave. It’s essentially a collapsed lava tube, said to be anciently formed by ice. I thought to myself "How am I going to find this collapsed lava tube in such a huge valley?" I was a little frustrated at first, because I thought I might not find it, and I had my boys very excited about seeing this awesome cave with Paiute pictographs in it, which was perhaps a little foolish to do in the first place, not knowing the area.

         
To my left was a lava bed of decent size that would offer a better look at the valley, and I thought I might see some kind of depression. The kids up to this point were happy to be out of the car and had a lot of energy, so going up the lava bed was fun. After all, even if we didn’t find it, at least we were outside and the boys weren’t cooped up at home all day. So when we got to the top of the cinder hill we noticed three depressions that we determined had to be the cave.

         
The first depression turned out to be an old dried up watering hole, strike one. I was starting to get frustrated again. The next depression was indeed a depression nothing more nothing less, strike two. I was really nervous when we were headed to the third and last depression, because in my mind it was our last hope of finding it. That valley was huge and we were 30 miles away from any kind of civilization. It had to be here! But much to my disappointment it was not, strike three I was out! 

The boys on Mars.

            
I was more disappointed than my boys were. I watched them playing on a completely barren piece of ground that had red dirt and black volcanic rock all over it. They were playing out a scene of space men exploring on Mars. The Paiute Cave couldn't have been more distant to their minds, and watching them play was actually really therapeutic to my current state of mind, and I quickly got used to the idea that we probably wouldn’t find the cave. 

         
After some playtime, we started walking back to the vehicle. We approached the vehicle from the west and I noticed a post sticking out of the ground a ways off to the south that I hadn’t noticed before. A surge of excitement came over me, and I thought that’s got to be it! The Bureau of Land Management often marks historical landmarks or areas they are in charge of with some kind of post. I pointed it out to the boys and we all ran to it! Sure enough, the closer we got  the cave's mouth came out of obscurity. On the rocks above the cave’s mouth there were three faded pictograph symbols that made me wonder. What did it mean? Could it mean shelter, or was it a tribal or family symbol, a warning to a competing tribe to stay away? The possibilities were endless as we looked at the old writing that had no key for translation.

The boys next to the rainbow pictograph.

         
As we entered I could already see really vibrant red and yellow paint. The cave wasn’t very deep, probably fifty feet in, but it was a pretty steep decline. As we got further down in, the cave displayed it’s treasures. Paintings of red beings surrounded with a yellow outline as if they were some glowing heavenly being. There were also yellow men, and even a white man. Three of them looked like they were adorned with a crown and mantle on the shoulders. A similar painting to the ones we found in the Paiute Cave is located about 35 miles away, near the town of Apple Valley. It’s been dubbed the Yellow Man for obvious reasons. The road to the Yellow Man pictograph has since been completely washed out by flash floods, and would definitely require 4-wheel drive, but I couldn’t help but notice the resemblance between the two paintings. Similar crowns, similar anthropomorphic men, similar mantles on the shoulders, the only difference really was the size, and shape of feet and hands. The yellow man is about three feet tall, and the other man-like paintings were about six to twelve inches tall.

The Yellow Man pictograph, which looks
like it had arms similar to the ones in the
Paiute Cave, the only difference are the
hands, feet, and size of the paintings.

A red figue with white crown and
mantle, another red figure with a
white crown with a red and white
mantle, and a white man with no
crown or mantle. The Yellow Man
has a white crown and red mantle.

After about a half an hour of examining and photographing the pictographs and listening to the boys come up with ideas of what the drawings meant, we loaded up and started the drive home. The sun was on its descent and the day was almost over. The kids had plenty to talk about on the way home, and the day was topped off as we noticed a crater off in the distance, which I knew to be a dead volcano. I saw it on the map, but didn’t expect it to be such an obvious terrain feature. My boys were more excited than I expected them to be, and it gave me a little bit of a chuckle. The experience made me grateful to be present for just a few of their firsts in life. Volcano chatter ensued for the next little while, which faded into deep sleep despite the bumpy dirt road. Who wouldn't be tired after an exciting day of being spacemen, anthropologists, and volcanologists? What a great day for my memory bank! 

My older boy laughing at me, when I was trying to get him to smile in front of the pictographs in the Paiute Cave. 

My younger boy thought it so funny to make his eyes look magnified through the water bottle. Fun times on the Arizona Strip!