On Being a Site Steward

By Gregg Noord, Regional Coordinator for Red Rock, the Spring Mountains, and Desert National Wildlife Refuge

I moved from the northwest to Henderson, NV about 18 years ago after retiring from a financial service career.  I have always been an avid hiker, backpacker, camper and just about anything else that would get me outdoors.

A friend, I met while working part-time at REI, learned about the stewardship program from a customer. We decided to look into it assuming it would be a good way to get information about places to hike and things to see.

I have always been passionate about history, reading books and taking classes whenever I could.  That love of history easily transferred into archaeology and I started to read about it and found that the southwest was a hotbed of cultural resources going back thousands of years.  Then I saw my first petroglyph panel and I was hooked on the history part.

After taking the certification class and seeing pictures of the damage done to some of the cultural sites, I wanted to participate in helping to protect the history and the legacy of these ancient peoples.

I was assigned to and began visiting historic and cultural sites.  I must admit, it is the prehistory that really excites me.  The experience of seeing the rock art, shelters where these ancient peoples lived, the tools they made from rock, wood and bone, etc. I realized they were just as smart as we are and a whole lot tougher.  I don’t know about you but, until I started doing a little studying, it didn’t dawn on me, they were not on the top of the food chain as, for the most part, humans are today.

I still remember the first time I held a spear point in my hand and thought about the person who had possibly used it to hunt a mammoth or some other large animal – how much courage does it take to get 5 or 6 men together and go hunt a dangerous animal that stands ten feet tall at the shoulder and weighs six tons with nothing more than a long stick with a sharpened piece of obsidian tied to the end it?  And you think the freeways we drive to work on are dangerous…

As I saw more and more, I realized it was not just the cultural resources I found so interesting it was all of the other things that go along with it that keep you excited.

I was headed for a site one day a couple of years back and there was a large herd of wild horses (Mustangs?) coming down off the hill to my right.  They were being led by a large stallion who for some reason, possibly newborn colts in the herd, decided I was too close and headed towards where he was taking the herd.  He decided to cut my trail and every time I changed direction, he put himself between me and the herd.  I’ve been around and owned horses for many years but as I got closer to the herd, he got closer to me with ears held high and the look of an angry horse on his face.  I decided discretion was the better part of valor and headed away from him and the herd.  He watched me go until I was a very long way off.