Sinagua Rising: A story of survival after a worldwide catastrophe

by R. G. Andersen-Wyckoff

  The women and children were busy collecting rocks in the Duwa Valley and putting them in the drainage ditch Bud had dug. It was three feet wide and two feet deep and he wanted the bottom of the ditch lined with stones.

  While they did that, the men, after reading the instructions, began erecting the first large tent, to the north side of the lunch tent, leaving room for the alley, and positioning it so the tent ropes and large tent stakes overlapped with those of the lunch tent, putting them as close together as this would allow. By the time they got the second tent erected the sun was dropping below the main part of Horse Mesa and the women suggested heading back to the Ranger Station. They were all exhausted and readily agreed. Tomorrow was another day. All they wanted was to wash their hands and face, eat an MRE, and go to bed. And that’s exactly what they did.

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  Carly had always been a light sleeper and, in the middle of the night, she got up to check on the children in the motorhome. They were all sleeping peacefully and Chloe was tucked up tight against Kiera. She looked up when Carly entered and then just as quickly closed her eyes and went back to sleep. Carly could hear the sound of the generator set behind the motorhome keeping the refrigerator and freezer they had moved from Bishop’s home running. They had moved all the perishable food into one freezer and were going to make it last as long as they could.

  Carly quietly closed the door and went back to her cot. As she looked southward she could see an orange glow in the sky, despite the smoky haze, and wondered how those poor folks in Phoenix were doing. The smoke was thicker as she looked toward the northwest or she felt sure she would see the same glow there from Prescott and Flagstaff. And then she looked toward the eastern horizon and could just make out Horse Mesa and the star-studded Milky Way, as if it was sitting on top of the mesa. What is our world coming too, she thought to herself, and what will happen to us?

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  The next three days went by quickly. The men moved the kitchen trailer, refrigerator and freezer, and restroom trailer to the site and arranged them in the proper place: the kitchen trailer at the east end of the lunch tent, with the refrigerator and freezer just inside the door of the tent, and leaving enough room for the alley between the kitchen trailer and the basalt wall. The trailer was offset from the tent’s door to allow easy entrance. The restroom trailer was placed at the south end of the alley with its flat end against the wall and the doors facing north, up the alley. They judged, amazingly, that there was just enough room to get four rows of tents in the space between the lunch tent and the restroom trailer, so all the tents would be provided for. The smoker was placed outside the west end of the lunch tent.

  So, while the men went about setting up the remaining tents the women, along with Philip and Jason as guards, drove trailer after trailer load of supplies and equipment from the Ranger Station to Duwa, and then, using wheeled garden carts they had brought from their gardens, moved the supplies to the storage tents. God bless the person who invented these garden carts, thought Carly, after having made so many trips from the trailers to the tents she couldn’t count them. The children, under the supervision of Tate, Mattie, and Kathleen, began removing debris from the pueblo rooms at the south end of the village. The rocks from the collapsed walls were stacked in the courtyard and the remaining debris was tossed over the lowest portion of the outer wall where it could be removed later.

  By the end of the third day Duwa Valley looked like a tent city, complete with an operating restroom facility and a ready-to-use kitchen.

  Bud had used the backhoe to dig a huge pit below the pits he had previously dug for the septic tanks. It was twenty feet long and as deep as his bucket could reach down into the ground, about ten feet. He and others filled the pit with rocks of all sizes, of which there were still plenty in the Duwa Valley, as well as those unearthed by digging the trenches, and then covered the rocks with dirt, leaving a mound on top to account for the compaction he knew would occur. “The new ditch,” he explained, “would be to insure they had plenty of room for the septic tanks to drain into before it drained into the natural drain field provided by the underlying limestone. He wanted a system that would last a long time,” he said.

  The two septic tanks were set side by side with both tanks emptying into the new trench. He left one of the septic tanks entry opening covered with plastic and put the drain hose from the trailer into the opening on the second tank, making sure the entry was sealed so no gases would escape; the magic of duct tape. “This should last us until we get permanent bath and bathroom facilities built,” he said, “and we can hook the new facilities into the unused septic tank. When we’re ready we can unhook and remove the trailer, flush the first septic tank and have it as a back-up for our system later. I feel certain the septic field I’ve built will last for decades, if not longer. I think now we can stop using those chemical toilets down in the yard,” to which the group loudly cheered him—again.

  Last, but certainly not least, they moved the greenhouse from the Ranger Station to Duwa. Under Travis’ guidance, they reassembled the greenhouse and then slowly began moving the potted plants and trees up to the site. The section of the pueblo in which they were putting the temporary greenhouse demarked the southernmost part of the developed site. Beyond the green house and the adjacent pueblo units the promontory was extremely rocky and began to rise sharply until it dropped over the edge of Woods Canyon. Everything for the greenhouse had to first be moved up to the village parking lot on the trailers, and then to the base of the stairs using the garden carts. They carefully moved the plants by hand to the top of the wall where they could be moved in a garden cart from there to the greenhouse. Tanner struggled carrying a potted lemon tree and collapsed, out of breath from the exertion of manhandling that 50 pound pot up the stairway, even though he had rested several times. I’m definitely not as young as I used to be, he thought. Boy am I glad we have these garden carts. It took the greater part of the day to reassemble the greenhouse and help Travis put everything inside in its appropriate place. When they finished it looked just as it had in Travis’ yard—just in a different place. Travis was all smiles.

  So, by the end of the third day, they had moved everything from the Ranger Station to either Duwa or the trailhead, where it could be moved later. There was virtually nothing left at the Ranger Station but some unusable junk, the telephone poles, and the gas and diesel fuel tanks. They had also refilled both water trailers from the pump at the Sedona Golf Resort, adjacent to the Hilton Hotel, which was closer than the Oakcreek Course, and were ready to spend their first night in their new tent city.

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  Jack, Philip, and Tanner had taken on the responsibility of refilling the water trailers. First they siphoned water from one trailer to fill the tank in the second trailer. Then, with the empty water trailer hooked to Tanner’s Jeep and one of the 7,500 watt generators in the back of Colby’s truck, they made their way to the Sedona Golf Resort.

  They saw nobody as they entered the resort and wound their way along the service road to the pump station. The pump building had a padlock but a quick twist with a crowbar from Colby’s truck removed the hasp and lock. Jack examined the electrical wiring from the pump to the power box and then quickly removed the wiring from the box, leaving a three-wire pigtail attached to the pump motor. He then took a heavy duty 10-foot extension cord and clipped the female end of the cord off, peeled back the three strands of wire and attached them to the corresponding strands of the motor with wire nuts.

  Jack directed Philip to start up the generator and, when it was running, he plugged the extension cord into the outlet on the generator, flipped the toggle switch on the pump and, voilà, they had power and the pump was running. They let the pump run for a couple of minutes and then attached a garden hose to a hose bib at the base of the pump housing and turned the handle. They had water. Tanner put the end of the hose into the fill pipe on the water trailer and within 20 minutes the 5
00-gallon trailer tank was full. Jack and Tanner again congratulated Philip for his creative thinking, which Philip took with pride. They turned off the generator, unplugged the extension cord and coiled it up behind the pump, where it wasn’t obvious. Jack’s thought was that they’d be using this pump again and there was no sense connecting and reconnecting the power cord each time they used it. Jack advised Philip that bringing the large generator was a good idea but now that he had seen the pump and motor, he felt one of the smaller portable generators would work just as well and be easier to manage in the future.

  They closed the door on the pump house and put the hasp and lock back in place, even though it was just sitting there and could be easily removed.

  They backtracked their way out of the resort. Unknown to them several sets of curious eyes had observed their every move.

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  Not only was the transformation of Duwa Valley amazing but the transformation in the Mavericks was, as well. They were no longer the Mavericks, but the Duwanians, having added others to their group. They were well-tanned and, though the women had kept up some of their normal grooming, the men were mostly unshaven and, well, unkempt. Everyone had adopted shorts and tee shirts as their work clothes, recognizing they needed to preserve their other clothes for winter and winters to follow. All were seemingly more fit, having exercised considerably over the past several days. And all, including the children, were happy, pleased with themselves for what they had accomplished, and ready for a deserved rest.

  The next day was the one-week anniversary of the CME, one-week PSE, and it called for a celebration. The men determined they would improve the trail down to the creek in the morning and they could all go for a swim in the pools there. “In fact,” Bishop said, “we can reserve the southern-most pool for bathing, if you wish. We can erect a tarp to screen that pool from the others, and the women and children can bathe first in privacy and then the men can use the communal bath.”

  The women, almost in unison, replied by saying, “We wish.”

  “A week without a proper bath seems like an eternity, even if it has to be a cold bath,” Carly said with emphasis, as the other women nodded and murmured in concurrence. “My hair will take several washings just to begin feeling normal again.”

  They again heated up MREs for dinner, set up their cots wherever there was space in the tents, and quickly went to sleep.

  Bud had moved the motorhome to the trailhead and Carly had put Chloe into her travel cage and brought her up to the village. Her travel cage was actually the cage for a large dog, so she had plenty of room to move around and have her food and water with her. She now sat on Carly’s lap while Carly brushed and petted her. She would have to spend the night in her cage but tomorrow Carly knew she had to deal with the very real problem of where and how to care for Chloe in their new setting. While the dogs, Jackson and Belle, had been having a merry time chasing quail and exploring their new surroundings, Chloe was quite subdued in her cage. She would have to adjust to a whole new lifestyle.◘

  Chapter 19

  Celebration

  The morning air was filled with the smell of coffee brewing and the tantalizing smell of sweet rolls—and sausage. As if by some unheard beckoning the Duwanians emerged from their tents in a constant stream, all following the familiar kitchen smells.

  Unknown to the others, Michael and Maria, along with the help of Jenny, who knew where all the food supplies were stored, had decided to make a special breakfast to mark the one-week anniversary and the move to Duwa.

  Combining food stores taken from the various families’ pantries, dried foods, and MREs, Michael and Maria had cooked up a breakfast worthy of the occasion. In addition to the coffee and sweet rolls, they used the remaining sausage and eggs from the refrigerator to make sausage and scrambled eggs. There wasn’t enough food left in the fridge to make it worth continuing to run it, so they unplugged it. The freezer, on the other hand, still had a small supply of meats and frozen vegetables that should last another few days or so; especially if they mixed the frozen foods with MREs and dried foods. They mixed up powdered Tang as a juice drink, which delighted the children. While they were cooking on the new field kitchen, Jenny had dug out the plastic eating utensils, plastic cups and plates, and paper napkins and set enough places on the folding tables in the lunch tent for everyone to have a proper sit-down breakfast together.

  There were enough sweet rolls for everyone to have two and those who didn’t want two had ready recipients waiting to take the extras off their hands. Nothing went to waste and, when Michael and Maria finished serving the group who filed past with their plates at the ready, and joined them at the tables, they were greeted not just by an ovation, but a standing ovation. Even the children, with their mouths stuffed with sweet roll, managed to stand and clap. This was an auspicious beginning to their new life in Duwa.

  Jenny informed the group that “Michael and Maria started planning this meal yesterday afternoon as the last of the food supplies were moved up here and they asked me to help in locating the ingredients they needed. And this is the result.” There was more spontaneous applause. “I know that we won’t be able to count on such sumptuous fare for every meal but I know that Michael and Maria and those who help them will attempt to make the best of what we have and to make it last as long as we can. I’m sure you all recognize that our current food stores can’t last forever and that we’ll have to begin growing and hunting our own food as quickly as we can, but in the meantime let’s enjoy this celebration breakfast. Oh, and lest I forget, we’ll recycle everything we can so when you’re finished just leave everything on the table and I’ll form a committee to take care of it. Bon appetite!”

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  After breakfast, as Tanner began organizing the men for the trail work, Jenny, Ellen, Mattie and Jessie all volunteered to help clean up. Michael boiled some water for them and using pails they washed and then rinsed the eating utensils, plates, and cups, as well as the cooking utensils. The used napkins were put into a plastic bag to be burned or otherwise used later. There was no leftover food so they didn’t need to worry about starting a compost pile, yet.

  While the men took their shovels, rakes, stiff brooms, McCleods, picks, and hoes to begin working on the trail, the women broke into groups to begin turning the tent village into a home that they knew would have to fill their needs until at least the following summer.

  Michael, who had stayed behind to help inventory all the food, along with Maria, and Olivia and Tina, both of whom loved to cook, began making the lists that Jenny would later put on the computer to keep a running tally of their available food. Once the inventory was finished, which had been started earlier by Jenny before they had moved down to the Ranger Station, Michael and Maria could begin planning a long-term calendar of meals.

  Mel Brenner, along with her daughter, Ellen, and Jessie began searching out and listing the medical supplies in the big storage tent and moving them to the First Aid tent. They, too, would set up an inventory list to track their medical supplies. Mel had her own laptop on which to store the list.

  Carly, Celeste, and Kristen took the unenviable task of deciding where everyone would be housed in the six large tents available. Unenviable, because they felt sure they could never please everyone, but someone had to do it, so they would.

  Everyone else divided into two groups to continue moving rocks into the drainage ditch and moving debris out of the large kiva. Kathleen took charge of the former group and Mattie the latter.

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  Bud had determined that Tanner had plenty of help working on the trail and that he, Bishop, and Jason would take Bud’s truck and one of the utility trailers and go to his and Colby’s jobsites to remove all the PVC sewer pipe available at both sites. Bud carried a 45-caliber pistol in a belt holster and Jason carried the rifle he had had when he kept guard on Bishop’s roof. Bishop felt they were well-protected and he didn’t need to carry an additi
onal weapon.

  As they were preparing to leave, Jason spotted Kathleen across the valley by the latrine trench Bud had dug, but wouldn’t now be needing. She was turned sideways to Jason so he couldn’t see what she was doing, other than looking in the trench. Then she bent over and he knew exactly what she was doing—she was vomiting. He wanted to run to her but then felt reluctant to do so, and Bud was ready to leave. So he went into the storage tent he had seen Mel go into and told her. After all, he reasoned, Mel was the village medical officer, right!

  It took Bud, Bishop, and Jason most of the morning. They loaded the sewer pipe at the two sites and then went by the storage barn at Colby’s to make sure there wasn’t something else there they might need. Bishop quickly determined that at some point they could probably find a use for almost everything in the barn, but that wasn’t practical now. They knew where it was if they needed it. They did, however, load a large amount of rebar and several hundred feet of construction quality garden hose on the trailer, along with at least 30 coils of 100 foot lengths of green vinyl-coated clothesline wire. Bud had no idea why Colby had such a large supply of the wire, since they only tended to use it to stake up young trees, or such, but there it was so they threw it into the back of the pickup. They also found several large rolls of heavy gauge plastic sheeting he and Colby used to cover fresh concrete or to put on unfinished roofs in case of rain, which also went into the pickup.

  As they were finishing up and ready to lock up the barn, they heard the sound of voices nearby. Instinctively they ducked into the barn and got their weapons in hand. They waited and listened. Bishop could tell by the volume that it was more than a couple of individuals, maybe a group, and the voices were masculine. They were in animated conversation, with laughter from time to time. It appeared the voices were headed up Verde Valley School Road and away from them. Once they could no longer hear the voices, they locked the barn and slowly drove away from Colby’s. Jason was standing in the back of the pickup so he would have a higher vantage point. He never saw anyone as they headed back toward the Ranger Station and Duwa.