Ugh. Such horrible outcomes, both of them. :-( But thanks for sharing the stories.
On Tue, Nov 6, 2012 at 12:35 PM, <bmorgan...@aol.com> wrote: > ** > But Nancy, your story isn't complete. Didn't the Arc narks try to have you > arrested for going to the cave in the first place? That has happened to me > three times in Belize. > > The first time a humorless jerk named Tom Miller tried to have me thrown > out of the country for visiting the Chiquibul cave without his permission. > (Logan can tell you all about it.) That didn't work because I was already > there. He wrote letters to the forestry department and the University of > Florida accusing me of being a temple looter and drug user who consorts > with known outlaws (specifically Arturo and Brother Moses of gales Point). > The first accusation is untrue but the second two are true. Upon exiting > the Vaca plateau but before writing the letters he burned down my friend > Santiago's house along with all of his meager belongings, then left a ten > dollar bill and a note saying "sorry". > > Then there was the time the director of the Belize Audubon society tried > to get the Belize Defense Force (BDF) to search for me in the jungle for > the crime of entering the Bladen nature preserve without his personal > permission. The BDF just laughed because they never go into the jungle, > there could be snakes out there! On my way out I ran into a so called > "Rapid Environmental Assessment" team funded by the Nature Conservancy and > supported by the British army (those damned helicopters again!) They had > catered meals with fresh salads and dessert yet denied me a pinch of salt. > Even though they could see I had nothing but a small pack and the clothes > on my back they accused me of being a looter. While saying this they were > standing next to large sack loads of looted artifacts. > > Then an archeologist named Dunham? took great exception to the fact that I > had explored the valley of Sleazeweazel branch, an upstream tributary of > the Bladen branch even further up the Monkey river. There is a small ruin > there and he wanted credit for being the first person to discover it (by > helicopter of course!) He apparently brought in a large number of Mayans > and utterly destroyed the place. His reported pilferage of a large amount > of jade may or may not be true. I can't bear the thought of it so I haven't > been back. I tried to cooperate by sending him photographs of what I had > discovered. Unfortunately the aforementioned criminals had in fact dug open > a grave, I caught them and reinterred the remains. Perhaps it was unwise of > me to take a photo of the king's skull with a snake crawling through the > eye socket. Dunham was eventually thrown out of the country. Some years > later a friend of mine who is a real (i.e. non insane) archeologist > attended a conference in Belmopan. He heard my name mentioned and turned to > say, "he's a friend of mine". For that they tried to throw him out of the > country too. > > Not all archeologists are insane. What about Logan? (although I have my > doubts) Why doesn't he pipe up? > > SW > > In a message dated 11/6/2012 1:23:25 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, > nan...@prismnet.com writes: > > ah always such a gust of fresh air. thought you might enjoy my experience > with 'legitimate' grave robbers. > > > > > BLADE CAVE > > I was suffering a surfeit of testosterone. We were midway through a 3 > month expedition to explore the massive Sistema Huautla, the multi > entranced deepest cave in the western hemisphere, at one time 13th deepest > in the world. We had rented 2 rock houses in the miniscule pueblo of San > Augustin, a collection of perhaps a dozen 2 story homes, a one room school, > a basketball court and a jail cell in the basement of the municipal > building. Between the cobblestone dead end road and the buildings all the > flat land was taken. Subsistence farming took place on the 45 degree angle > hillsides that formed enormous sinkholes or dolinas funneling the wet > season floods into the cave system, both carving it out and scouring it > slick. Where the hillsides steepened into cliffs, small boys herded goats > looking for vegetation or gathered twigs for cooking fires. The village > had no electricity, running water was a much repaired plastic pipe that > snaked from miles away and dripped steadily over by the basketball court. > Our 4wd schoolbus and assorted Toyota trucks filled to the brim with cavers > and caving gear were the only vehicles to bump down this road. Once a > week, a bus careened past the intersection of the cobbled turnoff, heading > even deeper into the mountains of Oaxaca, Mexico; occasionally a pipe bed > cargo truck could be flagged down for a scary ride on the one laned s > curved dirt road. Burros carried everything else that came in or out. > > > > The village had no sanitation facilities, using the flat ground that > doubled as main street. We hacked steps into the clay cliff behind the > house and constructed a marginal out house. > > > The inhabitants of San Agustin vied to surrender their homes to us for the > wealth of rent money, so we had a fieldhouse kitchen on the main floor, > with propane stoves, pallets of canned and freeze dried food, cartons of > local beer, whatever wilted produce and flats of eggs that were available > in the market town of Huautla, about an hour away on foot or by grinding > jouncing low gear in the trucks. The downstairs also housed duffel bags of > rope, the cave required thousands of feet, surveying and mapping gear, > barrels of carbide to power our acetylene gas caving lamps, kerosene > lanterns, well hidden explosives for enlarging recalcitrant rock passages, > digging tools, helmets, rock climbing equipment, a rescue stretcher, first > aid supplies and anything else we could imagine might be required. > > Upstairs 11 men, my partner and myself staked out sleeping bag sized > living areas in what was the family's corn loft. Upstairs and down was > shared with rats, fleas, village dogs and cats. At night the room was a > cacophony of belches, farts, and snores. The villagers went to bed at dark > and got up an hour or so before dawn. All night every night was punctuated > by crowing, braying, barking and wailing of the assorted populace. I was > in the constant company of men who were eating drinking and expending > massive calories, who had last bathed 6 weeks ago, and for whom delicacy of > feeling or conversation was not a priority. > > So that morning when a firsttimer asked if he could join me and Mark on a > day hike to an entrance Mark had found previously - I snapped No, go find > your own cave. And much to all of our amazement Frank did. > > > Mexico has some of the richest karst regions of the world. The massive > bedded limestone has solutioned over the millennia into vast underground > networks of huge passages and black rivers. These cave systems compete > with the known depths and complexities of Europe's best, the caves of the > Pyrenees and those of the Ural mountains, with a bonus. The tropical > temperatures of Mexico made exploration far easier and far less life > threatening. And the North American cavers had them all to theirselves. > In the '60's a motley crew of college students from around Texas began to > take their vacation breaks in Mexico, venturing as far as trains and 3rd > class buses could take them, to stand on the edges of breathtaking pits far > out in the jungle, to come home with stories that could hardly be > credited. The caving fever took hold of these few and those who listened > to their stories. Communal housing was established, old buses and power > wagons purchased, group forays were made deeper and further into the > mountains, always coming back with more extravagant finds. Deeper pits, > more entrances, big black beckoning wilderness all in the matrix of an > intoxicatingly foreign landscape and culture where the dollar went a long > ways for these underemployed students. > In the land rush to explore this vast underground wilderness fiefdoms were > gradually established, loose affiliations of cavestruck dreamers who > cooperated somewhat and competed more for longest, deepest. Against this > backdrop, one group had instituted a policy of hammering a small metal tag > at the entrance of each cave they explored. Nominally the numbers on this > tag were meant to let others know that the cave had been surveyed and > mapped, the data to be shared, not to waste your time here, to go on to the > next undiscovered cave. Effectively, the data was back in Austin, often > released reluctantly and worst case, cave entrances were sometimes marked > for future reference without ever being entered - a sort of finders claim. > I had decried this policy for a number of reasons: the attempted ownership > of areas, and the dismissive attitude of explorers toward a cave thus > marked. Despite the sure knowledge that there were often overlooked > passages and leads there was an obsession by cavers who wanted to be the > first into a cave, some special status conferred on the one who 'scooped > booty' as running headlong down virgin passage was called. Our group > didn't use the tag system. > > So it was on this spring day in 1987, that Frank went out from San > Agustin, wandered around the mountains until he found an entrance, and > explored it on his own, never quessing that the cave was well known, had > been mapped and was considered to be 'done'. > > When he reached the back of the two medium sized rooms, he poked into a > crawlspace following the air, that breath that the cave breathes, > exchanging its volume of space each day with the outside world: one long > inhale, then an exhale. Here the ceiling dipped down near the floor, > compressing the air and making its flow more powerful. After wriggling for > a body length or so, Frank came out into a room where he could stand up and > he must surely have gasped at what his light picked out. Everywhere he > turned, there was a jumble of sophisticated pots. A far alcove looked like > a dish drainer, dozens of pots stacked atop one another and glistening with > calcite deposits indicating that they had been here for a very long time. > The floor was littered with finely worked beads. The center of the room > had a single oblong rock oddly alone on the sandy floor. And on the rock > was a 6 inch obsidian blade. Alongside it was another longer blade. A > human skull lay there as well and all about the skull were the tiny squares > of turquoise tile that had once decorated it. > > He came back to the fieldhouse, bubbling with excitement, which was > contagious. All plans were set aside the next day and all of us in camp, > followed him to the cave. We explored in amazement, poking into corners > and exclaiming over new treasures. Very few of the caves in this region > were so amenable to human access. Most had entrance drops over 60 feet in > depth and took such vast quantities of water in the rainy season that there > was rarely any gravel, much less a stash of antiquities. Despite the > suspicions of the locals that we must be after gold or uranium or treasure, > this was in fact the first place we had found anything other than rock and > water. > > For several days there was no activity other than admiring Blade Cave as > it was promptly named. Photography, speculation, and solemn agreements all > around not to divulge the secret outside of the group. There was no > consideration of taking anything. One of the strongest taboos in caving is > taking anything from a cave. And the taboo is enforced with the tacit > understanding that anyone who broke it would be kicked out of the group. > It was a powerful threat. > > What happened next was worse. > > Some months after the expedition had returned to the States, we received a > formal note from the wife of one of the explorers. She was an archaeology > student and had found the perfect thesis. Without consulting any of the > rest of the group, she and her husband had returned to Mexico, had gotten > in touch with the authorities in Oaxaca City, had taken them to the cave > and all the material that could be, had been removed from the site. > According to the authorities, it was stored in the basement of the > government museum. I'll bet the items hit the black market before the end > of the day and are now displayed in the home of a smug collector. A gate > was constructed in the tiny crawlspace to prevent looting - unofficial > looting - of the pots that had been cemented in place. > > A thesis sits in a library somewhere unread, surrounded by hundreds of > similar ones; a collector gratifies his ego; an official pockets a payoff; > a sacred site undisturbed for centuries, is ransacked; and a little more > mystery and wonder vanishes from the world. > > > > > > > > > > > > > >
