From The Literary Review

THE GRAND GULCH EXPEDITION OF 1897

by Wendy Bishop

                -Marietta Palmer Wetherill
We traveled three days below Bluff, Utah,
mules bracing then rocking and swaying
as they rolled eyes and tore at pinon and small
red stones tumbled down to meet cottonwood,
willow, and box elder. We set main camp near firewood;
for water had the melting snows of the San Juans
that flung wide winter storms. We worried. We could
eat the horses if we had to. The workmen rose before dawn,
entered caves in early darkness to shovel and sift
the ruins, shards of pots, baskets, and Anasazi longhouses
of fine stonework. So many snowdrifts.
And always our fear of blizzards. Evening campfire, biscuits
hot to hand, hands that pulled and unpacked and lifted
the collection to my work desk. I kept the records, lists
of the expedition, numbers and measurements.
At night as the snows fell silently, I couldn't resist
asking Mr. Wetherill (who was twice my age) what sent
these Anasazi from canyon to canyon, from field to cave,
from cave to new fields. Snow washed and tired, he bent
toward me. I was nineteen. I had determined to be brave
on the narrow trails, during the cold short winter
days, in my bridal bed. We talked and guessed. I lay
safe, but again the snow fell, fell wet. They had disinterred
six rare mummies that day, withered ancients,
coffee-colored, desert people, buried with some care.
"They'll get wet:' Mr Wetherill said. Went away
as I slept. He came back, left, came back and said
finally, "Where would you like them?" He'd planted
one each in his embrace, the others around me. "At the head
or foot of the bed?" "At the foot, Mr. Wetherill, at the foot."
Our unholy ghosts leaned there all night, six blessed,
wild-haired, slack-jawed witnesses, of this, our first year.