Abbey called them "hoodoo rocks" and sandstone "hobgoblins." Fantastically sculptured shapes have always evoked images of the supernatural. Even monstrous phalluses leap at our imaginations as we climb the edge of the Great Wall to gaze over the vast expanse of redrock desert. Truly, Arches National Park is a strange place to visit.

But is there something more strange than just grotesquely twisted geological formations? Have we humans, as we’ve made our way over the land, created strange tales of our own? Tales that, in fact, complement the rocks themselves? Do the rocks seduce us with strange notions? Are there mysteries there that simply cannot be explained? And are there other questions, seemingly odd at first, that all make sense, once we consider the lay of the land?

As a seasonal ranger at Arches so many years ago—excuse me while I snap my suspenders and put my teeth back in—I saw many strange things. Heard many odd voices. Discovered odd freaks of Nature. Were they inexplicable at times? Yes. Memorable? Of course. Am I making some or all of this up and just having as go at you? Who knows?

But these are just a few of the stories I remember. Take them with as much or as little salt as you need to suit your taste...

THE MAN WHO SAW GOLD IN SALT VALLEY

If anyone could ever be called "The Scribe of Arches National Park," it’s Maxine Newell. She grew up in Dove Creek, came to Moab in the 50s and took a job with the Park Service at Arches in the early 60s. By the time I showed up, Maxine was a fountain of park information, from the trivial to the profound. Nothing missed her discerning eye.

Maxine eyed me warily when I first arrived, bearded and shaggy slob that I was, and quoting Abbey like a disciple gone mad. She may have even thought I was a Commie. But I clean up pretty well and our mutual love of history created a bond that lasts to this day.

One morning, Maxine was perusing the morning mail when one particular hand scrawled letter caught her eye. It was postmarked Chicago and its author was unknown to us. He said he was Frederick Douglas Johnson and he wanted to share a vision. Though he’d never been west of Illinois and had never even heard of Arches or Moab, he had been gripped by a psychic image so strongly, he felt compelled to write us.

Mr. Johnson wanted us to know that there was (and still is, I suppose) a gold nugget under Salt Valley, in the heart of the park. The size of the nugget is what surprised us. It was, by Johnson’s estimate, about five miles wide and twelve miles long. One nugget.

While we both knew the geology of the park and realized that finding gold in any size was highly unlikely, Maxine and I were intrigued. Still, as "NPS professionals," we couldn’t exactly engage Mr. Johnson in an official capacity, so I jotted down his particulars and dropped him a personal note, a few months later.

I was a smart ass, even then, so my questions to Mr. Johnson were mostly trivial and even silly. I asked him about the future of my marriage (any damn fool could have predicted that outcome) and I asked him if he could predict the name of the man who had recently murdered actor Sal Mineo.

A reply came just a few days later. He told me that a "tall black man" would be arrested for Mineo’s murder (a few weeks later, Frederick’s prediction proved true and he sent me the clippings to show me.) But he informed me my wife would not return. Instead, he predicted, "You will marry a blue eyed blonde in 1996. She will be a long haired blonde tall woman and you will marry a college graduate!"

I’m still waiting for that leggy blonde.

But Mr. Johnson had bigger fish to fry than my love life. He wanted to share his vision of the world and he thought it might become. Here are some of his predictions:

* In the year 2016 all of the races of the American Indians will bring back long hair and it will rapidly spread over all of this wild world. Men will have hair as long as thigh length! Cosmetics and jewelry will be in vogue. For men it shall begin with the Indians who will shave their legs and put on toe nail polish...So powerful will be this exotic popularity that all of Japan will be engulfed in it, together with Italy and Denmark.

* from the year 2008 to 2040 A.D. women of all ages will be going into space stations and this space city on the moon will be free from all forms of crimes and it will be because of this that women will build a city on Mars for women only.

* In the year 2014 A.D. it will be an Indian president who will get politics OUT of all schools.

* In the year 2040 A.D. there will be a freash new wave of UFO sightings and landings that will bombard and swamp the earth like 1947 but on a vaster scale. They may be hopping and jumping around but the unisexual aliens will solve the president’s problems and cure all ills and sickness and feed all the hungry in America.

* In 1980 President Carter will lose to Ronald Reagan (he got that right), and in 1984, Reagan will lose the election to a woman president. She will then have two terms easy. She will have dark eyes and black long hair and she will be tall." (Yes...if only Cher had run for high office in 1984.)

* In the year 2024 A.D. Chicago will be the Paris of the black world what with culture and arts and music and imports and history. And what have you, as well as various kinds of foods and wines and 96% of the Chicago police!

I didn’t hear from Mr. Johnson again for quite some time; then I found one last letter from him, in the mid-80s. It was hopeful for us humans, but it also carried a remarkable prediction about global warming that he might not have realized was so apocalyptic. In part, he wrote:

"In 2042 there will be an easy happiness and everybody will have fresh starts...Everybody will get their wish then. Gay rights, Indian rights, women’s ERA rights, black rights will all be passed and the government will beautify America! We will have green parks and earth’s climate will destroy winter forever due to the carbon in the atmosphere."

I never heard from Mr. Johnson again and I wonder if he’s still among us. I have all of his hand-written letters and his address—maybe it’s time I dropped him another note. I could congratulate him for his global warming vision and also ask him whatever happened to that leggy blonde.

THE DEAD MAN and THE THREE GOSSIPS

A quarter century ago, Arches could still see bumper to bumper traffic during the tourist season, but in the winter, the park was all but deserted. Rangers and locals alike breathed a collective sigh of relief when the hordes went home. The superintendent even shut down the entrance station and anyone who wanted to explore the Arches could do it for free, from late October to early March.

Ranger patrols were joy rides in the purest and happiest sense of the word. Early 1983 was just that kind of time. Staff was cut to a skeleton crew but a couple seasonals often stayed on as volunteers. And each winter the park was assigned one aid from the Student Conservation Corps. The SCA and the volunteers ran the daily operations.

In late February, Ranger Mike Salamacha had stayed on for the winter and was looking forward to a leisurely morning patrol. With him was SCA Jeannie Sifnios. She wanted a ride just as far as Park Avenue, at the top of the switchbacks; then she planned to hike down the Avenue and explore the side canyons west of Courthouse Wash. Mike planned to drive the park road to Balanced Rock and then to the Windows, hike out the trails and be back to pick up Jeannie by noon at the Courthouse Wash bridge.

Salamacha savored the silence of this cold late winter morning and knew that in a month, the roads and trails would rumble with the roar of traffic and the whine of travelers—he took his time getting back.

But he needed to rendezvous with Sifnios so he reluctantly turned the key and pointed the patrol cruiser downslope to the Courthouse Towers and home. When he reached the meeting point, however, she wasn’t there. The SCA didn’t have a radio so there was no way to call her. Mike kept going south when he unexpectedly found Jeannie sprinting down the middle of the asphalt road, toward park headquarters. Mike honked and pulled up beside her.

Sifnios was out of breath and could barely speak, but finally she panted, "I found a dead man!"

Salamacha, always one to appreciate a good joke grinned and nodded. "Sure you did, Jeannie."

"I’m not kidding!" she said. "There’s a dead guy back there, lying in the middle of a wash, below the Three Gossips!"

Mike was still skeptical. "Could it have been a dummy or mannequin?"

"NO!" she exclaimed. "I know the difference."

Jeannie climbed into the car and together they went back to the Tower of Babel parking lot and stopped.

"Come on," Jeannie insisted. "It’s right up there." She pointed to a sandy wash less than 100 yards from the pavement.

They made their way past some scrub oak and around some cactus patches and into the dry wash.

There he was.

"Well I’ll be damned," Mike swore.

There on the ground, sprawled on his back in the middle of the wash, lay the dead man. He did look like a dummy at first. Or maybe a mummy. The dry desert air had partially preserved him. His skin was shriveled and cracked and critters, ravens mostly, who rose heavily from the site just moments before Mike and Jeannie arrived, had recently discovered his eyeballs. Black empty sockets were all that remained.

He wore a T-shirt and pale blue jeans that were unzipped. Mike found a ball cap up the wash but the man had no shoes, just white athletic socks.

Salamacha called the visitor center and in minutes, Sheriff Nyland and his deputies were on the scene. They carefully loaded the body into a bag and transported it by ambulance to Salt Lake City for an autopsy. What they learned shocked us all.

Sometime that winter, perhaps as early as Christmas week, this man had been taken to the site where his body was found, and shot once, in the back of the head, with a .22 calibre hand gun. He must have died almost instantly.

We speculated that it might well have been Christmas week, almost 12 weeks earlier, when the moon was full and walking off road without a flashlight would have been possible. Whoever the killer or killers were, they might have made him remove his shoes, to limit his ability to escape. And if they knew the park at all, we wondered if this particular location had any particular significance. Had this man talked too much? Had he seen things he was not supposed to know about? In his last moments, had the killer pointed to the ghosty silhouette of the towering sandstone towers and said, "Do you know what they call those rocks? Those are the Three Gossips...people who shoot their mouths off...so now there’s gonna be four gossips, pal."

We’ll never know.

But incredibly, not only did they never catch the murderer, they could never identify the victim. Or at least that was always the official story. The man carried no ID and a cross-check of missing persons files failed to reveal anyone who fit the dead man’s description. Finally, authorities surgically removed his hands and shipped them to the FBI lab in Washington. But fingerprint analysis failed to find a match. Eventually the victim was reunited with his fingers and buried in a John Doe grave in Price, Utah.

As far as I know, the man’s identity remains a mystery to this day.

THE MAN WHO COULD NAME ALL 50 STATES IN 23 SECONDS...

WHERE IS ROGER MAKI???

He was a quiet man of unquestionable honor and integrity. A handsome seasonal park ranger, tall and blonde, and totally unassuming, Roger Maki was (and we hope still is) a cornucopia of worthless but entertaining information. He helped make Life tolerable for the seasonals at Arches for several years in the late 70s. Though he may not have invented the phrase, it was Maki who introduced us to the truism, "Life is a shit sandwich and every day is another bite." He later amended that to, "Life is a shit smorgasbord and everyday is all you can eat."

He could name all 50 states in 23 seconds. Roger was always trying to get a permanent job with the federal government and applied constantly. Consequently, he’d memorized the addresses of every national park, national forest, and BLM district office in the United States. He knew who won the Oscar in 1937. He was the Man who knew Everything.

But where is he today?

Where is Roger Maki? None of the ‘old gang’ at Arches knows what became of him. This is one mystery I want solved. If you know Roger Maki and can lead me to him, contact this publication immediately and we will give you a complimentary Zephyr subscription for an indeterminate length of time.

Come back Roger!

There are other stories, other mysteries, like the mysterious communist who roamed Courthouse wash, invoking the memory of Che’ Guevarra, or the case of the cobbled petrified sand dunes, or...was it real, or fake? The naming of Tillie’s Nipple.

But they must wait for another time. Until then, watch the rocks.