SO WHY IS THE WANDERLING ON THE CRATER FLOOR IF THERE IS NO HIKING?
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The above photographs of the Meteor Crater floor, with me among the group hiking there as well, had been taken in conjunction with a field trip I participated in associated with the University of Arizona in mid September, 1999. More specifically so, Dr. H. Jay Melosh (1947-2020) class PTYS 554 Evolution of Planetary Surfaces. Dr. Melosh was a big K/T Boundary guy and I had approached him with some questions regarding the Chicxulub Crater. One thing led to the next and he invited me join his field trip, not however because of my knowledge and interest in the K/T Boundary however, but because of my Stepmother who, in a good hearted but gone haywire attempt to help out a down-and-out friend, became a big time goat farmer and with me as a kid, being caught up in it. He himself had been an avid goat raiser and loved my stories. A research associate of his at the university, Dr. David Kring, finagled permission for our group to go down onto the crater floor. The hike into the crater was a little more taxing and somewhat more academic than I would have preferred, but it was after all, part of a college course. We accessed the crater floor using the so-called Astronaut Trail pioneered by the late Gene Shoemaker, the discover of Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 that crashed into Jupiter. If you read the Astronaut Trail book you'll see what I mean about taxing and academic. In the end, no complaints.
My previous crater floor experience was not nearly so authorized, as the following will testify: When my Uncle was slowly ebbing away toward the end of his days he called me to his side, handing me a Huge Black Feather that as young boy once belonged to me, a feather of which I had long since thought had been lost forever to the ravages of time. I easily remembered the first time I ever saw the feather because it was of such a gigantic size, nearly sixty inches long with a quill the diameter of a stick of blackboard chalk, together as wide as the span of my hand and as long as I, a ten year old boy, was tall.
Without my knowledge my uncle had kept the feather carefully wrapped and tied in soft buckskin, hidden away from prying eyes all these years. He told me he "was getting up there" and wanted to ensure the correct "passage" of the feather. He said for me to secrete the feather away and arrange to have, upon my death, someone very close to me take it to the crater and in a certain rite, burn it. Instead, not for me, but in deference to my Uncle and his legacy, unbeknownst to anybody, including any crater authorities, on a windy, bitter-cold night at exactly midnight on the closest full moon to the spring equinox following his death, using a special box kite based on a Da Vinci design, as the cold wind howled down the crater wall and up the other side, I tied the feather to the string as close to the kite as I could and ran it out hundreds of yards into the night sky. As the full moon passed directly overhead and the pull of the kite and string was taut and nearly straight up, I let the string slip from my fingers, eventually allowing the end of it to pass from my hand." SEE NOTE.
TALON AND SCRATCH MARKS FROM THE GIANT BIRD
MAN RESCUED FROM METEOR CRATER FLOOR MINESHAFT
IN THE DEAD OF WINTER AND MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT, UNDER ZERO DEGREE
TEMPERATURES, A MAN ILLEGALLY CLIMBS TO THE CRATER FLOOR
Sixty-five million years before the Meteor Crater impact a giant six-mile wide extinction-level object crossed into the Earth's atmosphere at an incredible high rate of speed. Within seconds the object slammed into a shallow sea in what is now the north coast of the Yucatan, Mexico with a force comparable to 100 million megatons of TNT. The impact created a crater 112 miles across and a tsunami wave two thousand feet high that swept as far north inland as the middle of present day Texas. The results of the impact caused the demise of entire species, including the dinosaurs. Ground zero for the asteroid was centered near today's small Yucatan town of Chicxulub, hence the name. See:
THE MAYAN SHAMAN AND CHICXULUB
TRAVELS IN THE YUCATAN
ASTEROIDS, SHAMANS, HIDDEN MAGIC OF MAYAN TEMPLES
SACRIFICIAL ALTAR AND THE CHICXULUB IMPACT
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Although not directly Meteor Crater related, but during the exact same period of time my uncle was inching towards the end of his days and he gave me the giant feather so alluded to above, out of the blue he asked what I had done with the pieces of a plastic hand-held film strip viewer he had given some years before. I told him I wasn't sure but I thought over time I eventually just threw them away or they ended up in a box stashed away somewhere, possibly in a connex container on my younger brother's property in Oregon. Then he asked me if I remembered the toy ray gun or disintegrator pistol I used to have as a kid. First thing I thought of was my Buck Rogers U-235 Atomic Pistol which I told him I still had and that it was still in fairly good shape except the red flasher up in the little windows didn't work so hot any more. He looked puzzled as if he didn't know what I was talking about telling me the ray gun he was making reference to didn't have little red windows. Picking up a scrap of paper I sketched out what the gun looked like. He in turn, after seeing my sketch, drew his own picture of what he remembered the pistol looked like. Right away I knew what he was talking about. It wasn't the Buck Rogers U-235 Atomic Pistol but another toy gun I had as a kid called the Hiller Silver Atom Ray Gun.
He told me what he buried that day in 1947 up and behind the debris field was something he found while searching for one of the so-called anomalous I-beams with suspected alien Hieroglyphic Writing on them, or for that fact, anything with hieroglyphs on it. He didn't find any pieces, scraps, items, or objects with hieroglyphs he was readily willing to admit to, but he did find what appeared to be a weapon --- a pistol of sorts, although possibly a little bit smaller in overall handling size than one of our hand held pistols such as a Colt .45 for example, but, except for how light it was, still generally comparable in shape and handling to a pistol. See:
THE ROSWELL RAY GUN
SEE ALSO:
SEE ALSO:
MEDITATION ALONG METEOR CRATER RIM
JIJIMUGE MEETS THE WANDERLING
LEGEND OF THE GIANT BIRD
THE TREE
OFFICIAL METEOR CRATER LINKS:
BARRINGER CRATER COMPANY
Some floor shots courtesy of our photographer that day, Jason Barnes
NOTE:
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The quote below refers to the specific feather discussed in "The Boy and the Giant Feather" and is found in the book FOSSIL LEGENDS OF THE FIRST AMERICANS, Adrienne Mayor (2005), Princeton University Press, Chapter 3: The Southwest: Fossil Fetishes and Monster Slayers, page 163:
"According to Pleistocene bird specialist Tommy Tyrberg, a Teratornis fossil preserved in a dry desert cave could have cartilage and feathers. 'Even a wing of Gymnogyps (californianus) amplus, the large Pleistocene subspecies of the California condor, could be described as having man-sized bones. Remains of this bird have been found in at least six New Mexico caves.' Several very well-preserved Teratornis merriami remains have also been discovered in Dry Cave, Eddy County, and other caves in southern New Mexico, and teratorn skeletons have turned up in southern California, Nevada, Oregon, and Florida. A Native American fossil story that circulated on the Internet in 2002 claimed that a black-and-white feather, nearly sixty inches long with a quill the diameter of a stick of blackboard chalk, was made into an amulet by an old shaman in southern New Mexico. Whether or not that story is true, a feather of that size could be plucked from the remains of a mummified teratorn in a dry cave."
For the complete crater floor and giant feather story please see:
MEDITATION ALONG METEOR CRATER RIM
THE BOY AND THE GIANT FEATHER
MYSTIC AZTEC SUN GOD TIME TRAVEL, THE MYSTIC AZTEC SUN GOD, AND QUATU-ZACA
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