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<br />-.:'" <br />N <br />cn <br />N <br />o <br />o <br /> <br />As with any lake today, the sea matured. <br />Waters poured into it, carrying with them <br />minerals dissolved from the lands they <br />passed through. These minerals settled to the <br />bottom, building up layer by layer the salt- <br />laden Mancos shale that underlies this <br />whole region until gradually, over many <br />millennia, the sea filled in. Still the waters <br />continued to pour through, finding a natural <br />passageway where the hard rock kept them <br />from digging a deeper channel. By now the <br />waters had pretty well leached all the salt <br />and minerals from their paths and ran free <br />and clean out through the deserts to the <br />sea. And that is the way the first settlers, <br />who moved slowly down from the north after <br />their migration from Asia, found it. And <br />that is how it remained for many more <br />centuries - happy and at peace with itself, <br />because it was clean. <br /> <br />Eventually other men appeared on the <br />scene - first the Spanish Conquistadores, <br />in search of gold, who drank from its clear <br />waters and passed on; then an occasional <br />hunter or trapper who spent a night on the <br />river's banks before resuming his quest for <br />game. The river was still happy, for these <br />men were very like the ones it had long <br />known, who left it in peace. <br /> <br />But then another kind of people appeared. <br />They were different than the others, for they <br />did not pass on, but instead stayed to till <br />the soil and harvest the meadows of hay. <br />They were a mechanical people, a <br />technological people, so they dammed the <br />river and sent the water out over their <br />fields to increase their yields. But as the <br />water crept through the soil, once again it <br />began to pick up salt - salt it had left behind <br />geologic ages ago - and carry it to the river. <br /> <br /> <br />6 <br />