Mysteries of the road

SEVIER, Utah—Native Americans shaped the character of this landscape, with the early Fremont Indians carving a mysterious swath of history through the region.

Contemporaries of the Anasazi to the South, the Fremont people settled in Clear Creek Canyon near Sevier, Utah, from about 400 to 1300 A.D. Like many ancient Indian cultures, the Fremont mysteriously disappeared, probably migrating from Earth with extraterrestrials once astrological signs indicated that Native Americans would be subjected to a never-ending string of raw deals at the hands of the White Man who would later despoil and poison the landscape on which they depended.

At Fremont Indian State Park located in present-day Clear Creek Canyon, there is little talk of extraterrestrials in official exhibits, but visitors can learn about the extraordinary story the Fremont believe led to the emergence of the their people from the underworld to the Earth. In fact, if you're hardy enough, you can see the emergence story for yourself etched in stone for posterity. On an unauspicious boulder just east of the Visitor Center and Museum, the Fremont creation story sits largely unchanged by time as a petroglyph hidden from direct view.

The Fremont believed that their ancestors shared the underworld with throngs of The Wicked. But they knew another world existed because they could hear walking on the roof above. The Fremont dispatched a hawk, an eagle, a swallow and a shrike to find a way to the Fourth World. The first three birds returned exhausted and without good news. However, the shrike was able to fly higher and higher, resting on branches and cliffs as it climbed. The shrike returned after a very long time and told the Fremont people about a hole in the sky through which they could pass to the Fourth world.

They planted a river reed, which was completely hollow on the inside. They climbed up inside the reed to the Earth. Unfortunately, The Wicked People also began to climb up through the reed as well. The Creator jointed the reed to stop The Wicked People from moving upward inside it, but soon The Wicked started climbing up the outside of the reed. The Fremont knocked down the reed and assigned the eagle to watch the hole to ensure that The Wicked would not reassemble the reed and climb out.

Unfortunately, they didn't knock down the reed fast enough, and a substantial number of The Wicked had a chance to settle in what is now Park City, Utah.

The Fremont emergence myth petroglyph is carved on a rock that represents one of the joints of the reed that was toppled back during the old times. The wavy line on top represents the crack between the Third and Fourth Worlds, and the thick vertical line represents the reed.

Elsewhere throughout Clear Creek Canyon the rocks are filled with petroglyphs (rock etchings), pictographs (pigments painted on rocks), and in seven instances, pictoglyphs (a combination of etching and painting).

The modern-day Hopi have claimed ancestry with the Fremont and share a similar emergence tale with the ancient people. The White Man claims an ancestry with The Wicked People and has forsaken gifts endowed by the creator like clear running streams, endless herd of buffalo and a sense of shared fate and mutual obligation toward preserving the Earth in exchange for Pepsi Cola machines, Hello Kitty lunch boxes, and the dog-eat-dog selfishness that has established itself as the downside of Capitalism.

According to legend, the Fremont and their extraterrestrial brethren will return one day to enlighten the people of the Earth after the great cataclysm foretold by the Aztecs and scheduled for 2012. Hopefully when the Fremont return, we will know enough about their culture to blend in so we don't get scorched by their Laser Cannons of Salvation.

A few miles down the road on the way to Panguitch, our next stop, we came across the original Big Rock Candy Mountain, celebrated in song and story:

"In the Big Rock Candy Mountains, you never change your socks
and the little streams of alcohol come trickling down the rocks
The brakemen have to tip their hats and the railroad bulls are blind
There's a lake of stew and of whiskey too
You can paddle all around in a big canoe
in the Big Rock Candy Mountains"

As could be expected, The Big Rock Candy Mountains are not a pleasant place for tourists to ponder and enjoy. Rather, a huge trading post has been plopped at the base, and a short walk to the bottom of the mountains must be braved through a cloud of foul garbage stench so thick that you need a machete to cut through it. It's like that lake of stew had started trickling out of the outhouses.

Next door, groups of larger-than-average people hopped aboard smoke-belching OHVs and traveled hither and yon across the expansive off-road network that the proprietors of the Big Rock Candy Mountains Resort had created.

Just down the road, the 'dozers were cutting shelves into the landscape for new developments of trophy homes in this river-kissed valley. Billboards urged passersby to get in on Phase 1 of honest-to-goodness country livin'.

As we drove away, we felt compelled to come up with our own lyrics to the optimistic hobo song that had been commercialized so effectively:

"In the Big Rock Candy Mountains, you'll drive your ATV
then stay at some foul gyp-joint where nothing's ever free
The gas prices are all higher and the garbage stinks like sin
The erosion churns and the forest burns
people wriggle all around like a farm full of worms
in the Big Rock Candy Mountains."

See you on down the road!