The Black Pit

Journal Entry – December 31, 2003

You must be careful when exploring unfamiliar areas of this desert. Open pit mines abound, left over from the turquoise and silver glory days. Most lie flat with the ground, abandoned and coverless. A few have a strand or two of barbed wire running the circumference, but none have warning signs and all are deadly at a mistaken footfall.

David and I found many of these mines on our “desert doggin’” Sunday afternoons. Stones were tossed to check the depth, and flashlights were shined in an attempt to see bottom. We never heard a stone land, nor did the light ever find its end. “Deep,” we’d look at one another and say in unison. “Deep.”

Since I arrived in this area ten years ago, I, personally, know of three people who “just disappeared.” For the Mexican immigrants crossing the Sonoran at night, these mines lie waiting with open mouths, capable of devouring five or six people walking close to one another.

Occasionally, a rancher will miss a steer or two; most of the cattle avoid the open mineshafts, but it only stands to reason that some are lost in wandering this desert expanse. One of the first things told by the locals to new residents of the area is, “Don’t let your dog run. Keep him on a leash, or you’ll likely lose him.”

David and I conjectured about what might lie at the bottom of these shafts. Certainly, there were bones, probably some from a hundred years ago. Rattlesnakes? Good possibility.

If a person fell in, we reasoned, he’d most likely be killed by the fall. If the fall didn’t kill him, then broken bones would preclude any attempt at scaling the walls to freedom. About the only thing a person could do would be to scream for help. Out here. In the middle of nowhere. The wind screams and the coyotes howl, and any call for help would never even reach an ear.


Depression is an open mineshaft, deep and dark, impenetrable by light and impossible to climb out of alone.

I am in that pit, crawling on bones of the past, fighting off rattlesnakes and trying to get a foothold on the wall. When I make a few inches of progress, the wall crumbles in my hands and beneath my feet, sending me back to the bottom. No one knows. No one sees. No one can hear me but Jesus. Lord, please throw me a rope.