Nine Sent by iPhone
On Nov 6, 2012, at 2:08 PM, Tim Stich <[email protected]> wrote: Ugh. Such horrible outcomes, both of them. :-( But thanks for sharing the stories. On Tue, Nov 6, 2012 at 12:35 PM, <[email protected]> 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, > [email protected] 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.
