The Resurrection of Fort Moki.

By Tom McCourt

With growing anticipation, we topped the last sandy rise and descended to the slickrock of the canyon rim. Below us, and far across the canyon toward Trachyte and the Henry Mountains, a wide expanse of deep, blue water laid flat and cold in the cradle of the canyon.

We were on the north rim of White Canyon Wash, at the place where the canyon dumped into Lake Powell. The sun shone brightly from a cool, winter sky, making us squint in the harsh, angled light. It was late November 2004, and the desert was empty all around us. We had Glen Canyon all to ourselves.

There were three of us on the rim of White Canyon that afternoon, leaving tracks in the sand where there had been none before. There was no trail to follow overland to reach that magic place anymore. All other visitors used the trail on the water, the lake itself, to gain access to this point.

Two of us were pilgrims that day; making a journey back to a place that isn’t there anymore. We were seeking communion, I suppose, with family and much-loved grandparents long gone. The other person was there to see it for the first time and to have the lay-of-the-land and the history of the place explained by those of us who saw more in the canyon than water, rocks, and sky. The new visitor was also there to try to figure out what it is about the place that holds some of us in spiritual bondage after many long years of being away.

There had been a delightful little frontier town at the mouth of White Canyon once, and across the Colorado River, a marvelous farm with orchards, vineyards, and melons in profusion. It had been a place of rare beauty and deep history. The town was named White Canyon. The farm was called Hite, and it was the anchoring point of the Chaffin, or Hite Ferry.

My maternal grandparents, Lorin and Bertha Winn, had lived in the town. My hiking companion for the day, Ms. Leslie Nielsen, had grandparents, Reuben and Beth Nielsen, who had lived at the farm across the river and had operated the Hite Ferry for several years. Leslie and I were both rooted in that magic place by warm, childhood memories, even though we had never met or even known of each other until just a few weeks before. Traveling with us was National Park Service Ranger, Brett Timm, a man relatively new to the canyon country, but charmed by it just the same.

We had been drawn to the rim of White Canyon by the promise of ghosts emerging from the dark water. Seven years of drought had lowered the level of Lake Powell by more than one hundred feet. Things not seen in forty years were again reaching up to the sunlight.

But, all along the contours of the lake a ghostly white "bathtub ring" stained the ledges with an irreverent, milky-colored residue. Everywhere it touched, the cruel water had washed the warm, red color from the stone. The bathtub ring was a pale and unsightly scar along the canyon walls … but there was hope. In several places, we could see where the natural earth-tone pigments of the native soils were again washing down over the ugly white watermark. The deep reds and browns were trying their best to hide the pale and lifeless stain with a blush of rouge and powdered ochre. We could see that with a little patience, prayer, and gentle rain, it wouldn’t take long for the tapestry walls to be restored to their former, fiery brilliance. Mother Nature was healing the water-wounds with patience and loving care. The very thought was encouraging.

The lake was still a hundred feet deep over the old town and ferry sites, and we expected to see only a few of the long-lost monuments from our childhood emerging from the cold water. But, there was hope and the promise that a magnificent Indian ruin might be sitting above the level of the water again, and just maybe, we would be able to see it in the sunshine one more time.

The place we sought was the most famous, and possibly the most impressive, of all the ancient ruins in Glen Canyon before Lake Powell. She had stood tall and proud on her sandstone eminence at the mouth of White Canyon, guarding the river valley and the "Dandy Crossing" of the mighty Colorado. She was the ancient Parthenon of upper Glen Canyon. Her walls were almost twenty feet square and had stood twelve-feet high. John Wesley Powell, Cass Hite, and dozens of other explorers, prospectors, cowboys, and river runners had marveled at her rustic beauty and her commanding presence on the rim of the canyon. Many had left their names there over the span of a hundred years.

The early explorers and gold miners had christened the site "Fort Moki." She was a thousand years old and a sacred monument to the ancient peoples of the desert. Unseen spirits had watched over her, haunting her inner sanctum, until she slipped beneath the waters of Lake Powell in the late 1960s. She had been a special, magical place of my childhood, and I had last touched her sandstone walls on a cold, December day in 1959. My heart had wept when I left her that last time, knowing that the cruel water would soon take her forever. No one ever hated Lake Powell more than me.

But now, miraculously, Mother Nature was draining the big swimming pool in paradise all by herself … and I cheered her on. It was exciting. Was it possible? Could it be? Might that wonderful monument to the Anasazi be standing tall and free again after all these years?

We stepped out on the rim of White Canyon Wash and peered over the precipice at the cold, flat water. And there, on the other side of the canyon mouth, on a thin sliver of stone and mud that protruded out into the lake for several yards, was the old Indian fort. She looked like an ancient shipwreck at the edge of the water, a pile of ballast stones with timbers long rotted away. Her proud, sandstone walls had buckled under the weight of the water, but they were still there - a pile of sacred rocks still struggling to stand tall. It was a powerful, spiritual moment for me.

The power, and the ancient spirit of the structure reached out and touched me from across the canyon. But, I could see that the old fort was different now. She had come back from the land of the dead, and she was the ruin of a ruin now. Only about four feet of the lower walls were still intact. The rest was a pile of rubble. The cruel water had pushed her stonewalls toward the center of the building where they had long ago collapsed. She had been battered, beaten, and brutalized by her watery ordeal, but it could have been worse. I was happy to see that she was not covered with mud. I had expected to find only a mound of silt, and I was pleasantly surprised. The crumpled stones were washed clean by the receding water.

Without touching, without disturbing, without interfering, we admired that stalwart old gravestone of the Anasazi from a distance. We reached out and touched her only through binoculars and through the viewfinders of modern camera equipment. It was the right thing to do that day.

The ancient temple sat in reverent solitude on her muddy sandstone causeway, closely surrounded by blue water. The rocky skirt of her spilled walls dipped down into the edge of the water as she sat in quiet dignity with the waves lapping around her. We could see that she was happy to be in the warm sunshine again after long years of slumber beneath the cold water.

And then, from somewhere far off and among the ledges, the haunting call of a desert raven rippled over the canyon and the water. The echo of that wild and primeval sound made me shiver - and then smile. It was like a sentinel’s herald from the depths of the ages, a trumpet call of adulation, welcoming her back to the land of the living. I could imagine the presence of angels, and ancient, native Shaman.

It seemed appropriate not to approach her on that day of her re-emergence. The ghosts of the Ancient Ones needed time to be alone with her for a while. From across White Canyon Wash, we took photos and rejoiced in her rebirth with smiles and happy, human banter. And then we went back the way we had come, overland, to the highway and the modern world.

Afternoon shadows were growing long when we left her to the red rocks, the raven, and the ghosts of Glen Canyon. The desert was reverently quiet as we walked away, and my heart soared with the eagles.