On Exploring

--by Thales Hastings Haskell

[Included in the Journal of Thales H. Haskell prepared for publication by Juanita Brooks, printed in Utah Historical Quarterly Vol. XII January-April, 1944.  This song was written by Thales H. Haskell and was sung often among the pioneers. I have never seen the music written but have heard the song many times--J. B.]

We bid farewell to Gould's place-- Exploring we were bound

Instead of taking a straight course--We circle round and round

The rocks they are so high--The hills they are so steep

We can hardly find a level place--To lie us down to sleep.

When we find a level place--In rains so like sin

You might as well be in the creek--At least up to your chin

And when the rain is over--There comes the deuced guard

Who calls you out to duty--I think its rather hard.

This thing they call exploring--Looks pretty in a book

But if you follow it up boys--You'll wear a disappointed look

For the country is wilderness, There are no Indian signs

We have no trail nor guide, boys--We have to go it blind.

We've clambered up the clay hills--The compass we have boxed

We have traveled over mountains--And canyons full of rocks

This trip would try a Quaker--It cannot be denied

For the old gray horse of Pocketville--Has tumbled down and died.

Our bugler found a hornet's nest--Which caused him to retreat

But everyone acknowledged--He performed a quite a feat

For like a broncho rider--The sadlle he did stick

While the mule was whirling off with him--And seemed inclined to kick.

We have crowded thru the quaking asp--And over fallen pine

We have bursted up our cracker sacks--And strewed our flour behind

Our animals got off the track--The boys politely swore

That they never drove a pack mule--In such a place before.

When we got to Cedar--The Bishop took us in

And gave us all our supper--And bid us call again

But when we got to Parowan--The Bishop gave a bow

And said its not convenient--To entertain you now.

I wish I had a clean shirt--I wish I had some shoes

I wish my old mule was fat--And I didn't have the blues

If ever I get home again--Contented I'll remain

And never go exploring--Till called upon again.

—Thales H. Haskell--1865

[And of course, he was called upon again and again, and never said "No."]

LOOKING BACKWARD, ALSO FORWARD

Photo shows Kumen in the center, honored as the last surviving "adult" who came through Hole-in-the-Rock.  He is surrounded by others, who were children when they came through.

A Tribute written by Kumen Jones

Written about his mother: "SAGE TREHARNE JONES and his brother Lehi. His mother had no schooling. She was born Nov. 27th, 1832, Llanelly, Glamorganshire, South Wales, and died at Cedar City, Utah, March 20, 1897. She joined the L. D. S. Church with her family, both parents, three sisters: Mary, Jane and Sarah, and brother William. [She] emigrated in the year 1848 [with] all the family.

Mother lived to see all of her sons and her only daughter get married, and she felt pleased with the choice that each one had made. She saw all her sons chosen for responsible positions in the Church and state which repaid her, at least in part, for her sacrifices. When the time comes when the One Just Judge rewards His children for their loyalty to Him and to His earthly authority, we know that our faithful, devoted mother will be rewarded in full. May our Heavenly Father help all her posterity to so live that we may be worthy of our noble parentage when we all meet again."
"  MY BROTHER LEHI, born November 1854 at Cedar City, Utah, was 5 feet, 9 inches in height and was very light in complexion, followed farming, stock raising and general business. By strict economy, thrift and industry, he made his way up to a good success. Being the oldest son to live, he took very early in life the responsibility of the care of the family, in which he took a noble and intelligent part."

===============
A Tribute

Had I my life to live again,
  when this good life is through,
Retaining all the best of this
   and adding to the new,
I'd start by being kinder to our good mother, left alone
With six small kiddies, under eight,
   and the work of home;
Left almost penniless too,
  with broken health and nerve,
The only asset left her
   was the iron will to serve.

Through this short, cruel story
  there is history sublime
Reaching up towards heaven
   to realms of the divine.
She drew much needed courage
  from the servants of the Lord,
In material help and counsel,
  from fathers of Cedar Ward,
Who always gave a kindly hand,
  a friendly word and smile.
Ye public servants keep this up, '
   Twill help us out the while;

There's one more family item
  that should be noted too,
To round the story out
   and make it full and true,
It is of a child turned man
   almost overnight,
Turned into a princely man
   and made a noble fight,

'Twas our brother Lehi
   made that character summersault,
Turned from childhood to manhood
  without one serious fault.
Though eighty-three he still plods on,
  in a slightly lower gear,
With wise and friendly counsel
  his life work has made clear.

I wish all men had brothers,
  just like this pal of mine,
'Twould make this a wiser world,
  much better and sublime.

MARY ANNE

By Mildred Bayles Palmer
Mary Ann was my great grandmother Mary Anne Durham Bayles who died in childbirth


South of here on a rocky bluff,
There is a grave.
It is not a lonely grave,
There are others there.

A lovely girl came to a lonely, barren place,
To make a home for the man she loved.
To follow the destiny of mother, wife.

She bore four children,
I wonder if she ever spoke of pain.
One day when her only son was five,
In childbirth she died.

Her grave is sand and rock,
A marble marker placed with love is there.
Even so, I wish she could be
By the one she loved
Where it is cool and green.

(The son was my grandfather Hanson D.Bayles Her husband is buried in the Blanding cemetery.

Song of Sorrow

By Mikki Bayles Palmer
Dedicated to the James Bean and Anna Maria Mickelsen Decker Family
Published 1980 in San Juan County Centennial Sampler

Decker story

Bluff December 15, 1901

My beloved husband died today.
The sickness is throughout the house.
My small young son lies pale and still.
He too is dead; he is only five.
Weariness and sorrow weigh me down.

Dec. 16, 1901

Today again a life is stilled.
My darling Mary, just approaching womanhood.
The sounds of carpentry fill the night.
Three coffins must be made for burials
In cold and frozen ground.

January 25, 1902
Did we have Christmas?
I remember not.
The cabin smells again of suffering and death.
My stalwart son of seventeen lies quiet now,
His song of life cut short.
The winter wind blows,
Echoing the sorrow in my heart.

January 26, 1902

My own dear son is gone.
The softness of his laughter stilled.
He was just past ten, awakened not,
After the long dark night.
Friends come to wash and dress my dead.
The sound of hammers once more fill the night.

The men must carry the coffins
Up the steep and twisting trail.
The open graves are waiting.
Here my loved ones shall lie side by side,
On this barren windswept hill.

Below me in the valley I can see
The tall white house newly finished,
Stark and lonely in the winter morn.
I shall never live there now.

A song of sorrow fills the air
As friends and family gather round.
A prayer of comfort quietly is said.
I turn, blinded by my tears and blowing snow.
Retrace my steps a second time
To the still empty cabin
at the foot of the hill.


Note: This poem is based upon the tragic events which befell the James Bean and Anna Maria Mickelsen Decker family during the winter of 1901-1902 when five members of the family died of diphtheria.

These Came Through the Hole-in-The-Rock

By Marian Gardner Nielson
Published in Saga of San Juan 1968,

They came from the green hamlets and the secure villages,
These dedicated pioneers.
Who were plodding along the lonely trail of their beliefs.
The mocking mirages faded before them in the desert;
The icy pinnacles of stony mountains glared at them,
As they wallowed through the sandy washes
And rock-bedeviled canyons below.

Lack of food painted blue smudges on the faces of the hardy ones.

There was one patriarch in the company
With poor crooked feet--frozen on other starvation treks--
Who led the train with homely prayer and practical advice.
The dreamer saw spired cities and green ranches
Spread-eagled over the mesa and into the box canyons.
The explorer who came in late at night
Exhausted in body and spirit, huddled around the cow-chip campfire
And ate his cold flapjack
Alone.

The main body, virile in its youth,
Crawled along the canyon rim.
Young zealots with heads high, constantly checking
for lagging feet of barefoot children,
Or eyes straying in torment to a swaying wagon where illness lay,
Searching the buttes for a through break,
   the muddy waters for a fording place,
Confident in their manhood and the integrity of their quest
These pioneers prayed fervently,
And square danced as fervidly on the rocks at night camp.

These came through the Hole-in-the-Rock

Heritage and Horizons

By La Raine Redd
Published in Heritage and Horizons in San Juan 1975

Pioneer stalwarts struggled hard
To find this land where they could rest
And do the biddings of their Lord
Without fear of death or false arrest.

Through Hole-in-the-Rock the small group came;
They crossed deep gorges and sandstone buttes.
Meeting hardships of rough terrain,
They arrived in Bluff to face Navajos and Utes.

Since early times in San Juan's story
The Church has grown and the people prospered.
For a hundred years they've pushed to glory
And made this vineyard bloom, preferred.

What of horizons that before them lay--
The progress, achievements, the promises held?
It's up to us, their burdens fray
And build this land and make it yield.
Our future, as theirs, before us lies--
A responsibility to this heritage--
To grow, to build, to amplify--
Our hearts to praise and give patronage.

Pioneer

By Sylvia Chamberlain
Published in Discovery 77, Blanding, Utah

Faith in our Heavenly Father,
The giver of all that's good,
Calls a challenge to reach upward
Beyond our self content and
Pleasures of the day.
So with happy anticipation of new ventures
And dreams of things yet to come,
We bow in humble supplication
And say, "Thy will be done."

Dedication and Desire

Bluff Fort, October 24, 2009
By Janet Wilcox

     

 Standing on the shoulders of those who came before

A new San Juan Hill has been summitted.

 With Herculean effort

    families  have united to share

       legacies and lore,

          truths and treasures

             heritage and heroics.

Like parachutes of dandelion fluff

  scattered by the winds of change,

    Bluff’s legacy spread afar for 120 years,

         nurtured in descendant’s hearts,

           Until a dream began to grow.

Outdistancing the clouds of doubt

    And storms of failure

       Leaders called forth with hope and vision

            And new pioneers rallied to recreate the past.

  

    A modern gathering of clans and cabins converged,

       reminding us how undaunted courage

          and stick-it-atoo-ity can accomplish the impossible.

  

New generations

   Recognizing the value of history

     Have  reclaimed the mission of San Juan,

      Rebuild the fort

          and shown us with loving reminders

                   its new purpose under heaven.

   May we ever remember

        the trail, tears, and travails

             leading to this sacred ground in Bluff.

          

The Old Swing Tree

By Hilda Perkins

There's a cottonwood tree by the river

Whose branches reached both high and wide

Its memories still set hearts a quiver

Tho they're scattered, and many have died.

If the old swing tree by the river

Could tell all the stories it knows,

Of love, and of fears; of heartaches and tears,

Of happiness, sorrows and woes:

It could tell how its branches protected

The settlers who came there to pray,

And many a young maid was courted

In its swing, built for two in her day.

Its branches protected the people

Who settled the Valley with hope,

Where the river wound gracefully onward

And the red cliffs with past echoes spoke.

The river has taken the swing tree.

The memories of it linger on

With past generations of lovers

Who remember it clearly and strong.

Photo courtesy Images of America Early San Juan County, LaVerne Tate

Coming Home

By Jean Nielson Bayles
Published in San Juan Centennial Sampler 1980

What is this, but rocks and earth and air?
This place where wind drinks dry the ground,
Where sand will swirl and settle and wait--
Silent--to be stirred up again?

Here sun beats down on rocks and sand
Too hot to touch or rough to rest;
Where feet are bare, and then --there is the quiet.
It shutters every door and window of this place.

How sweet the seldom green and cooling shade
That must be searched for here.
What is it then--but rocks and earth and air?
What?  This--a silent voice will tell.

"Tis bed and hearth and home for some
Whose time preceded mine,
Whose unknown faces fill my dreams,
Whose hands I see, have shaped my past.

It is the rocks which mark in grooves
The memory of wagon after wagon
Laden with life's substance.
For only heavy burdens etched their way.

Rocks, where hide the secret, shadowed caves
Where many came to rest, weary;
Or to dance with the dancing bonfires flames;
Or only to find, in solitude, the strength
to descent to the sand again.

This place is air--the early
Morning river scent from that
Temperamental river which
They fought--and which they loved.

And evening smells of dusk and tiny
Purple blossoms--south in cracks and corners
Of the cliffs-a precious, simple
Beauty they found to fill their homes.

And here is earth.  They walked its lonely paths
They plowed its empty fields,
Up from it they built their homes, their town
To mark their presence in this place.

They brushed its endless dust
From off their chairs and pantry shelf
They swept it hard and smooth outside their door--
To make it clean, this earth.

And here they came to lay at last
Among the rocks and earth and air.

What is this place?  It is the whispers
of their words, the echoes of their footsteps.
And listening, listening, I can hear my name.
The voice of what I was and why I am.

This is coming home.