We hired Gregory six months ago as a seasonal technician. Standard procedure, nothing unusual about this. Many on our permanent staff here in Death Valley have started out in seasonal positions just like his. Greg’s responsibilities included, among other things, leading tours up at the Castle, policing the back roads between here and Ubehebe Crater, public relations work, assistance and information, that type of thing. Nothing elaborate, nothing unusual. We felt extremely lucky to have picked him up. He was quality seasonal help. I had talked to him on more than one occasion about making the transition from a seasonal tech to a permanent ranger. He had that kind of capability, and he had his college degree.
You may be aware that about three months ago we stepped up our efforts to rid the monument area of feral burros. They have been causing some serious problems lately – killing vegetation, creating erosion problems with their trails, and annoying our backcountry guests. We thought we had pretty much taken care of the problem last summer, but we didn’t realize how many burros were still in the backcountry. Well, when this last winter rolled around, those burros we missed in the canyons of the Cottonwood Range came down to lower elevations to escape the light snows and find forage and water seeps. We rounded up all we could find, and early this spring we began to reconnoiter selected canyons across the valley there to catch any we might have missed. These trips up the canyons usually took a couple of days. Greg was helping us with this project with his partner, Edward Wheeler.
I guess it must have been the second – no, the third weekend in March that these two took a trip up into Emigrant Canyon. It was a cold, overcast, and blustery day – you know how early Mojave springs can be. Winds musta been 30 or 40 from the west. The guys would be hiking right into the teeth of that gale. I tried to postpone the trip, but they wouldn’t hear of it – said they needed to get the hell away from RVs and such. Can’t say I blame them. We all get a little tired of our visitors at times.
They got back late the next day, just as we were starting to get a little concerned here at the station. The weather was getting worse, and we were glad they had made it back when they did. Greg looked a little haggard, a little strung-out, but I just passed it off to the hard trail days until Ed asked to speak to me alone. We came into the office here, closed the door, and Ed sat down right where you sit now. It wasn’t until he began to talk that I realized he was shaken up pretty bad.
Towards dusk, high in the canyon, we stumbled across an old Paiute ceremonial circle. We hadn’t spotted any stray burros during the day, and it was getting dark and cold – we were at probably about 6000 feet – so we decided to bed down there for the night. I built a fire in the circle, and Greg set about getting dinner ready. We ate quickly, threw some more wood on the fire, crawled into our down bags, and laid down to sleep around the fire.
I came awake around two. At first, I thought that the wind had wakened me, and it crossed my mind that this was unusual, ’cause I’m normally a sound sleeper. But then I realized that Greg was sitting cross-legged across the circle from me, shirtless and moaning some strange-sounding chant. I sat up in my bag. There wasn’t much light left- just the embers of the fire. But I could clearly see Greg’s eyes – they seemed glassy, open-eyed and staring, like he was in a trance, and he was looking right through me.
I just figured he was asleep, so I got up and tried to get him to get his top on and get back in the sack. No response. So I tried to wake him up and gave him a pretty vigorous shake —- and Greg let loose with this God-awful scream and turned his head towards me. I swear to you, his eyes were glowing red in the dark, like a coyote’s eyes when you hit them with a light. And he wasn’t facing the fire circle anymore, so you can’t tell me it was a reflection. Just a second, no more, and then he turned his head away and continued with this strange chant. Well, it gave me a start, I’m tellin’ you, but I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t shake him out of the trance. I didn’t want to leave him and go get help. And it was unsettling enough that I knew I wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep, especially since the guy was still up. So I decided to stay up the rest of the night and keep an eye on him. He sat in that trance the rest of the night, chanting and moaning and swaying with the wind all the while. By dawn, I was so tired that I drifted off to sleep. When I awoke, it was late morning, and Greg was preparing breakfast and packing up.
I thought I’d hold my tongue on the night for awhile on the hike back down, see what he would volunteer on his own, but my curiosity soon got the best of me. I asked him what the point of all of that had been. He looked surprised and said he didn’t know what I was talking about. I told him to quit pulling my leg; what had been going on? Greg swore up and down he didn’t know what I was talking about. Well, I began to reconsider what I’d seen; maybe Greg really had been asleep. So I told the story to Greg, leaving out the part about the eyes. Greg was astounded; he had no memory of any of it.
He did say he had an extremely vivid dream of a meeting with an old Indian shaman who told him he was about to begin an odyssey. Just before the dream ended, Greg said, the shaman handed him an arrowhead as a sign the dream was to be taken seriously. Greg looked at me and said, “I wasn’t going to mention it, but when I came to this morning, I found this in my hand.” He pulled out a black arrowhead.
The point was made of smoky obsidian, perfectly flaked with tapered edges and a wickedly sharp tip, maybe 4 to 5 inches long. It was one of the finest I’d ever seen. I collect them for our archaeologist here in the park, so I had a reason for asking to keep it, but I don’t mind tellin’ you that the whole episode was so weird that I wanted some concrete evidence of what had happened. Greg said no; he wanted to wear it around his neck. The rest of the hike out was uneventful, save for the deteriorating weather. I was sure glad to get out of there, and to get the guy back to the station without further incident.
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