Death in Devil's Claw
Denny Harger submitted this Article 779 days ago
DEATH IN DEVILS CLAW
The day didn't seem any different when I stumbled from slumber at six o'clock. However tucked away in the canyon the way we were it's no wonder none of us could see the plume of gray and white smoke that was only twenty five miles away. We didn't have any reason to watch the morning news and with one hundred and fifty kids to take care of on a roasting summer day our minds were on the well-being of the children and not on the outside world.
Fire season in the rim country is just that, a season. Every summer, every year, we all go through the same preparations and make the same plans as the year before and pray to God we never have to put these plans into action. If you live in town there isn't much threat of 200 foot flames suddenly destroying everything you own . But if you live in a small hamlet deep in the forests then every May you would make preparations to evacuate quick. . My wife and I have little cubs to take care of so we keep a well-stocked box in each vehicle containing clothing , food and water, dog food, and other supplies for a two-week stay at some friend's house. We prepare as best we can with the essentials so that if the time comes to evacuate then we're not caught off guard and we have time to collect other things like guns and family heirlooms. About now you might be thinking "what an idiot. Why don't these people just move some place where this doesn't happen?" Well it's like this; It's our God given responsibility to take care of our forest and its animals. You see when our forest hurts then we hurt.
The Christian Youth Camp is located in a large canyon under the rim. Fires can consume canyons like these in an hour or less so we have an aggressive plan to keep campers safe. The highline trail went close to the back of the camp and it was my duty, in case of a sudden forest fire that blocked our escape, to string all 15 horses together and lead them to safety either up or down the trail depending on the direction the wind was pushing the fire. So far we have never had to put this plan into action.
BBBEEEEPPP...BBEEEEEPPPPP...BBEEEEEEEPP. Then a voice came on the truck radio "THIS IS A MESSAGE FROM THE EMERGENCY BROADCAST SYSTEM THE NAVAJO COUNTY SHERIFFS OFFICE HAS ISSUED AN EVACUATION NOTICE. THE COMMUNITIES OF HEBER, OVERGUARD, AND AIRPINE, ARE TO EVACUATE IMMEDIATELY. THE RODEO FIRE HAS JUMPED THE MOGOLLON RIM AND IS BEING WIND DRIVEN IN A NORTH EASTERLY DIRECTION". Then the message repeated and it all caught me totally off guard. "WOW" I said aloud as I realized that nearly five thousand people were leaving everything behind and running for their lives. Then I rounded the curve approaching highway 260 and saw a spiral of smoke so big and dark that it filled the entire eastern sky. Knowing that the fire was too far away to be any kind of an immediate threat to the camp, I sat for a moment and tried to comprehend the scene unfolding for our neighbors thirty miles to the east. Then the news came on the radio saying that the communities of Pinedale, Clay springs, and Linden were evacuated yesterday and that highway 260 was closed between Overgaard and Show Low. I decided that the supplies I was going to town after could wait a while and I returned to the camp to inform staff of the catastrophe at hand-nobody had any idea.
We all gathered around the television in the main meeting room and turned to news channel 3. We watched as Bruce flew his helicopter around the plume and filmed pine trees exploding as super heated gases pushed the fire straight up the rim and toward Pinedale.
Then we saw it and my heart sunk right to the pit of my gut. Bruce turned the chopper northwest and there was a second plume, Chediski Peak had erupted into a rage and was heading straight for the rim and the Overgaard area prompting the latest round of evacuations. We decided that the fires were no threat to the camp and probably never would be, however, the phone began to ring with concerned parents wanting their children to come home. We closed our camp and made preparations to house evacuees or firefighters if need be.
I returned to my journey to town for supplies and again when I rounded the curve close to Highway 260 at Kohl's Ranch the sky to the east was filled with so much smoke that I couldn't see anything else. It looked like it was only a mile away and so massive that I couldn't even see a column, just a mammoth bank of smoke engulfing all rim country east of Christopher Creek.
I saw their headlights as I pulled up to the stop sign. Then I saw their cars, their trucks, and their trailers. And I saw their faces. The children, stuffed quickly into the back seat along with clothing, papers, and pets. Their faces filthy with the residue of smoke and streaks of clean where tears had ran. Shocked little faces turned slowly to look at me sitting on the hood of my truck. Hundreds of vehicles all in a line were coming west on 260, the only escape. Trucks towing trailers left so quickly that the safety chains were unattached and bouncing along the pavement. I didn't notice the trucks that pulled up behind me until the folks driving them walked up and leaned against my hood. We're all friends, we all looked at each other and nobody said a word. Then the cars all came to a halt. Then we heard sirens, it sounded like thousands of them. The first fire engine was from Kingman then came ones from Prescott, Apache Junction, Pauldon, Mayer, Phoenix, from as far away as Las Vegas, Bullhead, and Needles. We weren't quiet any longer, our crowd had grown to better than twenty people and we all stood on the hoods of our trucks, on rocks, tree stumps, any thing to get a bit higher. We cheered, clapped, screamed, and pumped our fists in the air. Anything to let the folks in the cars recognize that we were all pulling for them. The fire trucks blew their air horns and continued east then the evacuees returned to their slow trek westward and they were gone. The silence returned as the men in our crowd lowered our sunglasses over our eyes and the ladies just used a tissue and didn't try to hide it. We all got back into our vehicles and left.
When I got back to the camp from town I had several emails from family all over the state. They wanted to know about the fire and how bad it really was so I sent them a recital of the events at the intersection. Everyone I sent it to emailed me back and said that I had to be exaggerating; it couldn't possibly be that bad. The next news I saw had Bruce flying over Pinedale and showing fifty buildings burnt to the ground. Two days later on June 22nd the Rodeo and the Chediski fires merge to burn 235,000 acres and well over two hundred more homes in Overgaard and Airpine. That means that at least two hundred of those families that slowly drove by us two days ago, they have nothing to go home to-nothing except maybe a stone chimney standing solo in an empty lot.
The officials told us that our camp was too close to the fire to be an evacuation center and too far away to house fire fighters. We spent the next two weeks or so doing little things around the camp and every time the news came on we all gathered around and watched. We watched as the fire grew to 462,614 acres and burned 426 buildings. We observed as Show Low and Forest Lakes were added to the evacuation list.
I felt guilty for my increasing sense of impending doom as I watched the fire run up Canyon Creek toward the canyons that I have known as Devils claw and the fish hatchery where I grew up and still spend as much time as I can. My wife brought justification to my worry when she asked me, "Are you actually worried about the house you grew up in, or those five beautiful canyons with all the huge Douglas fir trees, the waterfalls, and the brilliant green vegetation so thick you can't see twenty yards away?" All I could do was look at her as I plopped down on the couch and gazed out the window at the mountain behind our house. She said "You spent many years growing up in Devils Claw and not many people care about that place the way you do." She was right and I couldn't give these families their homes back and I couldn't stop the inferno from blowing right through Arizona's most sterile and pristine secret.
So I waited, and I waited, and I remembered my childhood in Devils Claw. Following our hounds as they chased a bear through the canyons and over ridge tops. Fly fishing as soon as the winter's ice broke enough to splash a leader. The huge pincher beetles that dive bombed us on summer nights while we tried to catch bats using a fly rod and a fly. And the deer hunts, oh the deer hunts. Back then there were few elk under the rim but we had tons of deer. Our friends and family would cover our yards with tents and tarps. They would stay awake half the night playing poker around a huge bonfire then crawl out of the sack at 4:30 am to hit the woods in search of anything with antlers. In those days the first day of deer season was considered a holiday and we weren't expected to be in school on that Friday. It was customary for the oldest boy in each family to go along on the hunt to drag the deer out of the canyon or over the hill, which ever the case may be. Back then folks hunting from the hatchery would kill fifteen to twenty deer in a season so I got lots of dragging practice along with gutting, skinning, butchering, and wrapping.... Still I waited and I wondered.
Sure enough the fire blew right off the reservation and up Canyon Creek. As Forest Lakes evacuated, flames branched off and began to consume Mule creek, Sheep's Canyon, as well as Canyon Creek. Hundreds of animals, all kinds no longer predator or prey, just trying to run and breathe, looked to the canyons for survival. Trying to stay ahead of the flames they ran upstream until the rocky sides were so sheer and the bottom so narrow that there wasn't much place for vegetation and there for nothing to burn. Still the flames kept coming.
Incident Command, in an effort to save homes in Forest lakes, decided to bomb the tops of all the canyons in Devils Claw. This was to burn and remove fuel that could take the fire into Forest Lakes.
So the animal's instincts took them deeper and deeper into the canyons where the oxygen was increasingly scarce, and the super heated gases didn't need fuel to suck every bit of air out of those canyons. The new fires at the top only ushered death by blocking any escape out the top and stopping fresh air from rolling down to the trapped animals. So they died, some of them burned but most suffocated, dozens of elk, bear, deer, turkey, and hundreds of smaller animals like bobcats, coyotes, and squirrels. I found them and I cried.
The very day folks were allowed to move back home to the hatchery I was there. With my heart on my sleeve I walked up Sheep's Canyon first and found piles of molten lead where our shooting range used to be. All the logs that used to hold targets were gone, in fact every log, stick, and pine needle in the whole place was turned to ash and all that was left were the burned out stalks that used to be the most beautiful trees in my world. On up where the sides close in and the trees grow high on the cliffs, I found a low place in the wash bottom where three bear, several turkey's and a bobcat, huddled together each gasping for that last tiny bit of life that might be left in the lowest spot in the creek. The turkeys were all melted together as their feathers couldn't take the heat. The snout on the biggest bear was burned but the rest of the animals remains were untouched. I sat for a moment then wiped my eyes and I remembered the lines the tears made on the little faces in the cars and trucks a week and a half ago. I gathered myself and I walked out.
When I got back down to the hatchery I decided that I still had time to check out Canyon Creek. I knew I couldn't leave not knowing what happened in the biggest, most pristine canyon of all in Devils Claw. I felt the wind beginning to kick up just a little as I started up stream. After a short while I got out of the creek bottom and walked along a flat on the west side of the creek. "Gray and black are the only colors in the forest today". I said to no one. Black shards of blue spruce and Douglas fir standing barren on a gray floor of ash. Chunks of huge boulders that were exploded by the immense heat lay covered with soot. In a forest that has been decorated by the devil him self, and with a sunken heart, I walked on.
It was the single most amazing thing I have ever seen and I never would have guessed that it was even possible. My heart jumped straight to my throat, I couldn't move, I couldn't breathe. All I could do was stare down at the outline in the ashes. A deer had been lagging behind in the escaping stampede and had gotten caught in the fire. So hot it was that it seemed to evaporate the hide, muscle, and organs right off the deer and left only the outline of the skeleton and skull in the ashes. No bones, nothing, the only evidence that this animal was ever on this earth was that outline in the ashes. I stood, and I looked, and I realized the power of a forest fire. I could see every vertebra, tooth, rib, and hoof. An x-ray in the ashes. Then I heard the low whistle of a gust of wind coming down the canyon. As it approached the hind legs began to disappear into the wind. I panicked. I threw my daypack down on the upwind side and ripped off my shirt in an attempt to guard this treasure. The wind blew harder, then it was gone. I never knew anything could be that fragile.
I trekked on. When the cliffs came together to make a deep gorge that is only a hundred feet wide or so I climbed back into the creek bottom. I walked a bit more and when the walls closed in tighter the wind began to make a new sound, the eerie howl of Devils Claw. I only hear it after wrongful death consumes my forest.
They were lying all on top of one another so I couldn't tell how many there were, somewhere around a dozen. I know that I could smell them long before I found them. They had come upstream far enough to find a large hole carved out of the canyon by a waterfall and there they were stacked like a pileup on the freeway.
Each elk trying to get its nose to the lowest place to get one more breath. I can hear their anguished bawl as the inferno raises the temperature in the gorge to two thousand degrees Fahrenheit. Rocks exploding, hair singeing, and their last breath had the stench of their own burning flesh. One cow tried particularly hard to survive; she had her head shoved into a crevasse in the bed rock and the fit was so tight that she ripped both of her ears off of her head. My hand started to move and I had to stop myself from kneeling down and caressing her shoulder like a father to his injured daughter. I had seen enough.
The summer rains came and washed away some of the ashes giving chance to locust bushes and tall grasses. Turkeys filled the canyons to harvest the tender new growth and I came with my homemade bow to fling arrows at the turkeys. I decided to visit the scene up the creek were the elk died. I found piles of bones picked clean by beetles and buzzards. I couldn't tell one elk from the other, except one; her skull was still lodged in the crevasse were she died, her bones yet held her shape and bleached white, and where her tummy used to be lies the tiny skeleton of her unborn calf.
I abandoned my quest for a thanksgiving Turkey and sat myself on a rock. Getting lost in reflection I contemplated the damage that careless, even selfish people cause only to resume their whimsical bounce through life. Seldom taking the time to notice the pain and scars left in their wake.
I thanked the Lord for allowing me guardianship of some of his creations and I asked him to help me to forgive. Then I left...for a while.
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