Sanford "Sandman" Owen, Kolob, Utah, January 2011

I joined on with the survival school summer of 2009, probably late spring I think.  This is all pretty new to me even now.  I don't even remember exactly how I became a guide.  I have some buddies down in New Mexico and I had just lost my lease on the record store and wanted to get out of Tucson, so I packed up my stuff, all of it except the vinyl, and drove up through the Chiracahuas and dropped in on them just over the line past Duncan.  I've been camping in that general area for years, and my plan was to spend the summer camped out and reading and maybe fly-fishing a bit and think about my business and if I wanted to go back to Tucson and find a new store location, etc.  Anyway, I dropped in on my friends at the retreat center, this Tibetan Buddhist place up above Duncan, and we hung out for a couple of days and then went camping.  I've always liked camping and my dad was big into Indian skills, he called them.  Trapping, archery, some flintknapping, stuff like that.  So when we were camping I set some snares and caught us a few rabbits and stewed them.  Nobody likes wild rabbit that much, but with enough green chile and cooking them all day they're just fine.  But my buddies were pretty impressed even though they're strictly no-harm Buddhists now, and one of them mentioned having worked up in Utah and having several friends who worked as guides in a survival school and who taught primitive skills, he called them, to paying customers. 

I did end up going back to Tucson when it got cold up high, but without the store I got pretty fidgety, and I had developed sort of a mania for small game snaring, so I was just kicking around, sleeping on couches, trying not to impose, which can be very exhausting, and thinking all the time about living off the land in the desert and in the mountains.  I really caught the bug.  I went down to Native Seed Search one day to see if I could hook up with some garden work, which in Tucson is most enjoyable in February and March, and I found a notice for a trip into Copper Canyon in Mexico, with classes and demonstrations on Tarahumara crafts and hunting and farming skills.  I looked into it and pretty soon I was gearing up to join the trip.  I was gradually selling the remaining vinyl on e-bay, but I had basically nada, so I finagled a barter: I work cooking and packing gear and assisting the trip leader, and I get to sit in on the demos and classes for free. 

So off I went to Mexico with a bunch of divorced middle-aged women who all looked like they'd discussed their gear ahead of time: wide-brim hats, huge shorts with many pockets, hiking poles, huge packs, and brand-new hiking boots.  I won't bore you with details of the following two weeks.  What happened is that I learned a few new things about how to use gourds, but most important is that I learned that I know a whole lot more about wilderness survival than most teachers do.  I guess summers with my dad exposed me to more real practice than I'd ever realized.  I got pretty chummy with the course leaders and one of them invited me to join him on a course in Utah the following summer.  That was this last summer now. 

So I arrived in Kolob last spring.  I managed to unload almost all the records, and I pared down my belongings so I could travel pretty light in my Toyota.  No furniture, no vinyl, no girlfriend, no rent.  I love heading out to a new adventure without anything hanging over me, especially when my destination is southern Utah, which for me is God's country.  There is not a lick of decent-paying work here, but all I really need cash for is gas, beer, grass, and sugar.  Or so I thought.  Actually, it turns out I can get all these things in work trade.  I go up to the store and clean the bathroom and break down boxes and wash the windows and get a case of beer.  I take the case down to Thompson's and give him a couple of cans and he gives me this crazy banana bread made with pine nuts which is like candy.  Then if I want to chill, I walk up the creek a bit and trade another couple beers with Lauro for some home-grown.  For gas I got a $300 credit for cutting and splitting a cord of aspen, which I'd have done for entertainment.  I don't really drive anywhere, so $300 of gas lasts a long time.  So I fell into the Kolob underground barter market within like a week of arriving.  I love it.

So anyway, like a month after I got here I met the survival school folks and went through the interviews and tests and stuff and they hired me to guide a course.  I led a one-week, and I helped out on a four-week.  The pay is shit, but, like I said, that isn't a problem.  The courses are actually pretty strenuous, not like lazing around thinking about supper like I used to down in AZ.  We cover a lot of ground, and you're responsible for the customers, but I enjoy it.  Mostly they need to learn how to find water, which isn't that hard here, though I would have got lost in the canyons alone.  I also taught them snaring and rock-traps, and firestarting [which, honestly, I am not that good at] and basic knapping and shelter construction [which I really love and is my new mania for this winter: how to make a nice little house out of nothing much].  It was really fun.  I learned a ton from other guides about brain tanning and eating plants.  I like the weirdos who work here and I like the low-key life, and the long stretches of time off.

So here's what I know about what you're asking:

When I was in the middle of the 4-weeker, one of the students rolled her ankle, and I was the only guide on duty.  This was during the part of the trip when everyone is separate and fending for themselves and the guide on duty walks the cycle and finds everybody and checks on their health, etc. So I walked in on her camp, which was on a slickrock ledge in Black Bear Hollow, a very pretty place with easy water, but not much wildlife to kill and not many cattails to choke down.  Pretty good pine nuts.  Anyway, I walked into her camp, calling ahead like we're supposed to and she comes upstream to meet me looking healthy and smiling and just rolls her ankle right then, bad.  I heard the pop.  She seemed like a tough girl, but she was in tears, just on the ground rocking and all clenched.  It swelled up and turned blue right away.  I got her down to the water to soak it, but the water's pretty warm there, not really an ice bath.  The procedure is that if a student has an incapacitating injury the guide on duty has to notify the school and then we debate what to do about it.  So I set her up in her shelter as comfortable as I could and I headed out.

But we were two weeks into the backcountry.  This is country like nowhere else.  Hardly anyone but survivalists and ranchers ever make it that far out.  Not for lack of attractions, because this could very easily be a national park it's so pretty, but because it is wild, wild country, and so rough and twisty you have no way through except by hard work and clear-headed routefinding.  Like the Apache Stronghold, but hundreds of square miles.  So when I say that I headed out, what I mean is that I started a very long walk back to town through a maze of canyons and sidecanyons and side-sidecanyons and ups and downs and all manner of rocks and bewilderments that ended up getting me thoroughly lost.  Within a few hours I could not find my way.  I kept climbing up to orient myself relative to the mountain, always there in the north, but every path ended in walls or dropoffs, and I could not find my way back to her camp.  I know it sounds lame to be in a huge canyon in a place you've studied on maps and have spent two weeks walking around in, but there I was, in a huge network of canyons that seemed to have no outlet.  Also, I was carrying less than most stockbrokers carry to lunch, as I imagine it.  Small blanket, a knife, my shearling Tibetan coat, my clothes, a quart of water, some of those goddamned cattail pancakes I have learned to hate, a couple of promising looking pinecones, and an OK-looking strip of venison jerky.  Less than I ate for breakfast this morning.  I spent that night in the sand feeling pretty spent and cold and hungry.

Next day, I tried heading north again and turned into what I thought would be a small sidecanyon.  After a while it opened into a wide wash with a massive arcing wall facing the sun.  I figured I had walked a big squiggly loop south of the girl's camp and then ended up north of her camp and considerably higher.  What got my spirits up was that I found footprints.  Lots of bootprints in the wet sand along the stream.  It looked like several people had come here for water and then returned the direction I was walking, so I picked up my pace and hoped to meet someone with a map.  That's when I met Jeff [sic] Prince[Geoffrey Prince, the University of Utah archaeologist.  -Editor] and his crew.  Halfway up the wash I saw a group of people sitting in what looked like a living room made of tarps.  Very weird thing to see out there.  They had poles and tarps and a folding table and folding chairs and solar-powered everything and they were eating lunch when I walked up.  They looked as surprised as I felt.  After hellos they offered me a chair and I explained the situation, and they got out the maps and we figured out where the girl's camp would be, and we made plans for getting here out, etc. It wasn't as bad as I'd imagined, and they knew how to get there and Prince was okay letting two of his guys go and help.  So that was settled.

But back to your original question: did I meet Geoffrey?  And what was he doing?  So, yes, I did, and I think seven of his crew.  And what he was doing, as far as I can tell from having been there maybe one hour mostly sitting under a tarp eating tuna sandwiches and taking a load off is that they were doing archaeological work.  They told me they couldn't give any details but that they had been there all summer and were working on a dig and that was that.  I was really curious, but they were solid and kept saying that the location and the details of the dig were secret and that they couldn't discuss it.  That's all.  I tried getting the two guys who went with me back to help the girl, but they apologetically declined to discuss it.

Long story short, we did get the girl out, her ankle was not broken, I couldn't have done it without the help, and I really hit it off with one of the guys, named Anton, and we swapped contact info and agreed to hang out back in Kolob when he got time off.  Turns out that it was right after the course that I saw those guys in town getting mail.  Geoffrey was out with the truck running errands and had left Anton in town to wait and we had lunch at the Escalante Trail and he let slip that it was a big dig and that they had found some very valuable pots and some intact granaries up that cliff.  So that's all I know.  I spent maybe one hour with Geoffrey.  Since you're asking, he struck me as sort of a hard-ass, really anxious and uptight and straight-faced.  The crew seemed to be students or laborers, I think.  Prince was the oldest.  There were I think five other guys and two girls maybe about my age, which is 26, so maybe graduate students.  All tanned and looking like they'd been out for a while.  Prince was fussing with a schedule on his laptop and mostly I talked with the others.

Only contact I've had with any of them since then is with Anton.  We're Facebook friends.  He's at U of A [the University of Arizona, in Tucson. -Editor] working on his anthropology Master's thesis.  I also got the number of one of the girls, from Anton, but I don't have a phone and I haven't gotten around to calling her.  She'd probably remember me as the bearded reesty fellow who was lost and who hadn't brushed his teeth in two weeks and ate three sandwiches so fast it was embarrassing.  I love the wandering life, but it is hard to pick up girls.