The slanting light of the setting sun casts the southwest corner of Cedar Mesa in sharp relief. Photo by Adriel Heisey
The Seed Jar
A rare artifact. A people, vanished. In the labyrinth of Anasazi canyon country, a search for one thing becomes the discovery of another
We used to scour the land together, my wife and friends and I. The canyons and barbed mesas of the Four Corners were our maps. We drank from springs and rain pockets in sandstone. It is no wonder we found what we did.
Every several years we’d discover a particularly fine artifact, the neck of a thousand-year-old water jar sticking out of sand in the back of an alcove, a 1,500-year-old coil weave basket set upside down on a protected ledge in streamers of black widow webs.
At first these objects seemed liked lost things, but as I studied the country and its archaeology, pieces began fitting together and they were in fact far from lost. They were in just the right place.
Regan was five months pregnant with our first child when we found the seed jar in Southeast Utah. Along with a friend, a Moab river outfitter named Dirk Vaughan, we came upon it half buried in red blow sand in the
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