She looked at her watch to figure her position: another thirty minutes. The curved layers of sandstone wound past an arroyo, and beyond it was a section of cliff that curved under like something that should collapse but has refused to. She continued down a gentle slope following the cliff, and without warning a delicate stone structure with three dark square windows and a small rectangular doorway appeared. The sight of it raised the hair on her arms.
She unslung her pack and pulled out the paperwork, reread the description to see that it matched. The photocopied black-and-white photograph was identical, taken from almost the same vantage point. She double-checked the GPS unit. The reading also matched. Here she set about her work. She measured plants in the area, checked the soil moisture, took photographs with a digital camera, logged the image numbers on a printed spreadsheet, then sketched the features in the wall that would not show up in the photos. After she gathered the data requested by the NPS archeologist, she zipped up her pack and stood before the dwelling. This site was difficult to get to. She wondered why it was on her list. How could something this remote be at risk?
She put her head through the center window. On the floor, in a shaft of yellow midday light, sat an intact clay vessel, partially buried in the gray sand. It was pear-shaped with a faded zigzagging chain of squares and lines like the markings on a snake. In the dust alongside the vessel were the complete woven remains of a lone sandal.
She pulled a different notebook from her pack and drew more small sketches. They were quick but remarkably fine. As she drew, she noticed small Y-shaped disturbances in the dust. In the far corner of the room was the random stick assemblage of a pack rat nest. She wanted to get closer, and the door would give her access, but she didn’t want to indulge the temptation or explain herself to anyone about how she had damaged the site with a stumble or a wrong step. She would have to record her own impacts.
When she finished drawing, she drank some water and ate a granola bar. She marked the sun’s altitude and checked her watch. There would be just enough time to return to her truck and make the second stop. With the sun flaring behind her, she backtracked over the sandstone and through the canyons, this time thinking of the site and the quiet majesty of the remnants of these lives.
When she reached the truck, she was hot and out of water. She pulled one of the canned iced teas from the cooler and rubbed it across her neck in a way that would have been embarrassing if somebody else had seen her doing it. She drank half the tea, dropped her pack behind the seat, adjusted the GPS for the next stop, and drove on, sipping the tea until it was gone.
She drove for thirty minutes to the south, the smaller roads joining successively larger, smoother ones as the hills flattened out. The Hurricane Cliffs emerged from the horizon like a fleet of ships. At one of the triangular crossroads, Sophia came upon the turquoise Ford pickup that had cut her off at the grocery store. The wheel wells and rearview mirrors were over-sprayed with orange dirt. The tailgate was down, showing that the workbox in the back was open on both sides, with its tiny diamond plate wings frozen mid-flap.
During her orientation, she’d been told to always check on a stopped vehicle. It was an ounce-of-prevention approach, they said. Sometimes a pound of cure was too little too late. She slowed and saw that nobody was inside, so she parked in front of it and got out. This section of the monument was multiple-use land, so sometimes there were people running cows, buzzing around on four-wheelers, treasure hunting, flying drones, taking pictures. According to Paul, most of the people out here were looking for something they’d found on Instagram. They had no idea just how dangerous it was to be this far from the pavement in a part of the world the invisible tether of cell towers didn’t reach.
The cab of the truck was filled with paper cups and fast food bags. A small plastic skull hung from the rearview mirror. There was a deer rifle on a rack in the back window. She put her hand on the hood. The engine wasn’t ticking. She walked to the back and noticed a large map spread on the tailgate, weighed down on each of its four corners with a stone, a thermos, a boot, and an open can of beer in a foam koozie that said ASU SUN DEVILS.
The map was hand drawn with old, delicately inked contour lines of varying thickness that had been rendered with a nib pen. The landforms had been shaded with hairline hatch marks to give them a sense of solidity and weight. In various areas, there were carefully rendered crimson rectangles filled with dots of the same color. Next to each dot was a small number that corresponded to a legend on the left side, which named some sites on the lists given to her by the archeologist. There were two sets of initials—KT and PT—scattered across the maps, with dates next to them. Some of the dates were quite recent. Quite a few of the sites she did not recognize. The map was exquisite, and she felt a larcenous impulse to run off with it. Maybe she could just snap a picture.
“Hey,” somebody shouted. She looked up past the truck and saw the silhouettes of two men up on the rim of a layer cake bluff a dozen yards from the vehicles. One was tall and thin and off-kilter. The other one looked like a burnt stump.
“You guys need any help?” she called out. “Looked like you might have broken down or something.”
The short one spread his arms to each side and called back, “It’s all good. We’re prepared for self-rescue. How about you?” His voice was coarse and accusatory.
“I work out here, so yeah, I’m ready. I was wondering if you had a permit for—”
“Okay, lady BLM,” the short one interrupted, “if we were broke down, could you call out of here on your radio?”
Sophia didn’t want to tell them that she did not have a radio, but she didn’t want to remain silent either, especially if she could stop them from doing something that couldn’t be fixed. The truck outed her as a Fed, but they didn’t know she had no real authority. She looked back at her truck, then remembered she’d been told to leave the scene if there was trouble.
“It’s so easy to get hurt out here,” the short one shouted.
“Specially when you’re all by yourself,” the tall one finished. “Two’s better than one.”
Sophia stepped back so their truck was between them, offering some cover if the bottom dropped out of this thing. She considered getting out of there right away, but she hesitated, trying to work out a plan to get another look at that map.
After a moment, the short one barked, “She’s nobody. Get her away from the truck.”
The tall one stumbled down one side of the bluff, collapsing the ground under his feet as he went. He dropped, howling, in a cloud of dust, and in the confusion, Sophia ran back to her truck and drove off.
She checked her mirrors every few seconds, thinking maybe she could give these two the slip if she pulled onto a side road, but she decided it was safer to stay out in the open. When the road straightened out, she sped up but backed off when she imagined what getting a flat would do to this situation.
After thirty minutes of empty rearview mirror, she pulled over and wrote everything down, scribbling for nearly a page until she realized she didn’t get the license plate. There was no way she could make her report and get to the rest of sites on her list, which meant she was going to have to come back on her day off. Furious, she opened her cooler and ate while she drove.
Two hours later she walked into the BLM offices, and the only person there was a bored intern, who handed her an incident form.