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

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.

The Man of San Juan

By John Mitchell Redd, 12th grade

Published in Heritage and Horizon in San Juan @1975
Painting by Kelly Pugh

April 6, 1880-April 22-1906

A pale sandstone column

Rising from a cobblestone knoll

Overshadowing the San Juan river

Is the resting place for a giant of a man

"Kagooche".

From the little island of Laaland

In the tiny Kingdom of Denmark,

His religion took him across

Vast oceans, and three-fourths of this continent.

Pushing an pulling a primitive handcart

Across the Great Plains and

Over the Rocky Mountains in biting bitter cold

In his pilgrimage to Utah

The trek maimed him for life;

Froze his hands and feet.

He carried his right foot at

A right angle to his left for 50 years,

As a reminder of his sacrifice

For Zion.

At age 59, when most men settle

In the comfort of wealth that they've gathered,

He left his home to colonize

The desolate Navajo country

Of the San Juan --

His sixth move;

His sixth home in Utah,

All in response to calls from God.

Courage, faith, and wisdom

All describe this man.

But his own Anglo-Danish motto

Describes him best:

"Stickity-to-itity"

Hole-in-the-Rocker,

Bishop of Bluff.

A life dedicated to others--

A noble example--

A great heritage for San Juan.

--Jens Nielson.--