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