Prologue
Tall Boy’s Last Ride
The mountain biker rode down Jacks Canyon Trail looking for signs he hoped he wouldn’t find. He’d slipped into the wilderness area; bikes were prohibited because nature had been declared too fragile for rubber tires, as if the ageless red rocks of Sedona, remnants from ancient sea beds, wouldn’t still be there long after he was gone. Two miles back, he’d cruised past the Forest Service marker threatening a significant fine if caught. As a local, he knew the trails weren’t patrolled past Labor Day when the tourists left. Tourists were the good and ugly of Sedona. They brought money on the one hand, but on the other they overwhelmed the streets and trails. He kept pedaling, alone with his thoughts and the canyon’s spirits.
The biker was testing his almost new Santa Cruz Tallboy 29 Carbon R bike. It was her maiden ride, with him anyway. Once he graduated from Northern Arizona University and was getting a paycheck, he’d upgrade to a CC frame, but for now the C frame would have to do. What did another tier of carbon do for performance anyway? It would have cost him another semester’s tuition. The new bike had a longer frame and more reach than the old one his great aunt had given him when he graduated high school. That made it a lot more stable. He could already tell from the bigger boulders he’d glided over. This bike had more than enough performance and speed to get him out into remote areas for his studies of past civilizations and geology.
The side canyons in this area were full ofSinagua ruins.Sinagua was the Spanish name for the Puebloan people who had scratched out a living in this part of the arid Southwest long before the conquistadors and the missionaries arrived. They were the current focus of his thesis. He had been exploring the faults and cracks of the Verde Valley and Oak Creek Canyon since he was a kid. When he began learning about the people who had lived there, in his high school history class, his path in life was set. A scholarship to NAU turned it into a professional passion. At first he’d been torn between archeology and geology. But when it came time to choose, he had opted for people over rocks.
The day was beautiful. Most fall days in Sedona are after the monsoon rains stop in mid-September. The rusty red sandstone and gleaming white Coconino formations of Lee Mountain were backstopped by a brilliant baby blue sky. They’d stood in contrast to each other for over five-hundred-million years. The large fluffy cumulus clouds softened the hardness of the jagged peaks. Biking in this setting was like riding through a Thomas Moran landscape. What better way to spend a weekday morning? The young idealistic biker basked in his good luck and promising future.
The trail had narrowed considerably, twisting and climbing a slight grade the entire way. If he rode it long enough he’d end up on the Colorado Plateau. But he had no intention of going that far or that high. Biking had to be your career to tackle that. He was looking for smaller unexplored faults. That’s where it got really remote and challenging, off the main trail and into areas man seldom visited. Archeologists were still discovering untouched smaller ruins or ones that hadn’t been seen since the 1860’s cavalry patrols were hunting Apaches. He always looked for an
