Up on the Rim

In Arizona everyone talks about going up on the Rim.  The rim is the escarpment that creates a basin.  The Rim surrounds Payson and Cottonwood.  Yesterday Ned and Kadizzle set out to find an ancient Indian Ruin up on the Rim.  Kadizzle was not real enthusiastic about doing 25 miles on paved roads with the Yamaha 250 XT, but we did.   The gravel roads leading to the top of the mountains were dusty. 

Once on top we took a side road that was paved with miniature boulders the size of watermelons and footballs.  The road was one of the nastiest level roads ever invented.  A car could never have driven the road and even a truck or jeep would tear itself apart at any speed.  We had the right mode of transportation.  It was like constantly avoiding the worst and sharpest rocks.

Using the GPS Ned said we were withing 300 feet of where the ruin should be.  After a lot of fruitless searching we reexamined the map and decided to try another close by area.  While the first search was being conducted we heard a chainsaw operating nearby.  On our next search we encountered the chainsaw family.  A tall scraggly guy with three children and a wife was gathering cedar wood for the winter.  The kids looked to be about 12 to 14.   The two youngest children a boy and girl were trying to split the short pieces of cedar their dad had cut.  The girl was doing a good job of using a large maul to do her task.  She was so skinny, yet tall.  Seemed like if she turned sideways she would disappear.

Kadizzle engaged the desert hillbillies in conversation to see if they knew of any Indian sites in the area.  The father related a story about how some relative had accidentally come upon an Indian cave with artifacts and skeletons in a snow storm.  Of course they were never able to find the cave again and it took on the air of a local legend.

When things seemed hopeless Ned spotted a pottery shard.  Soon Kadizzle noticed the ground was littered with pottery shards.  No remains of any significant walls could be found which struck Kadizzle as strange.  Ned said the area had been chained.  To make fields modern man put a chain between two bulldozers and drug the chain to destroy all the trees so a field could be made.  Ned speculated that the chaining had destroyed the walls.   If it did, it did a damn good job.   The amount of white pottery was unusual.  This is the first time Kadizzle ever recalls finding white potter shards in great numbers.  A few pieces had faded designs still visible.

Every time Kadizzle goes on one of these expeditions he is amazed how widespread people were and how extensive the civilization was in the time of the Indians.  Around 1200 to 1500 there must have been tens of thousands of ancient people living in this area.