R. Saunders - Underground and Radioactive

I had to hand it to them, the Grants Clinic had an efficient assembly line set up, so it wasn’t long before my name was called.

The first stop was the weigh-in, followed by the standard physical exam. No problems there. Then it was to the hearing test. I wasn’t sure why I needed a hearing test, but OK, no problem.

Upon entering a soundproof booth, I was directed to put on a set of headphones and raise my hand every time I heard a tone. I sat there watching the nurse and technician running the test and listening for the tones but heard nothing. It seemed like quite a bit of time had elapsed, but I hadn’t heard a thing. The nurse and the tech didn’t appear to be waiting for anything, so I figured the test must be working. So, still not hearing a thing, I raised my hand. This seemed to amuse the two of them, and I immediately heard a faint tone. Lowering my hand, I sat there listening and then straining to hear something—anything—but no more tones were coming through, so I raised my hand again and immediately heard another tone, even more distant than the first.

By this time the nurse and tech were about beside themselves without actually bursting out laughing, but I wasn’t finding any of it the least bit funny. Apparently giving hearing tests to prospective miners all day, every day, can get monotonous and lead to some creativity, because these two clowns were making a real game of it. In the end I passed the hearing test but wasn’t happy with those two.

Somebody then pulled me aside and sent me over to do a blood pressure recheck in which the nurse in charge attached the cuff and took the reading, followed by a “Hmmm, let me take this again.” That was followed by another “Hmmm.” She then sent me with my test results in hand to see the physician on duty.

The reason for the nurse giving me the “Hmmm” soon became apparent when the doctor asked, “Have you ever been diagnosed with high blood pressure?”

“No, not that I know of.”

“It’s too high to pass the physical, so we are going to have to get it under control.”

That seemed odd to me because I’d never had any blood pressure issue that I knew of. The doctor handed me a bottle of pills, telling me to take one a day and return in a week. If my blood pressure was within the normal range, he would pass me, and I could report for duty at Section 35.

It was crushing news. I had expected to begin work right away, then had found I had to fill out paperwork, then had been sent to the clinic for a physical, and now this. I was moving further away from going underground with every step, but there wasn’t a thing I could do except follow orders and start taking the pills. So in bitter disappointment, I headed back to what was now home, the Coal Mine campground in the Cibola National Forest.

Uranium mining was reaching its peak in 1975, and Grants was  teeming with new arrivals, all looking for a place to call home. A few mining companies were providing housing in enclaves of mobile homes for their most essential employees, and the rest of us were on our own to work out whatever living arrangements we could.

Would-be miners by the hundreds all scrambled to find housing but found there was seldom a house available for sale or rent and even fewer apartments. Most places, if they became available, were snapped up sight unseen. So it was fortunate for us that Greg had some friends who agreed to let us stay at their place for a few days.

There were a number of small homes built into the hillside on the northwest side of Grants that housed nomadic young men like us. A narrow, rutted road that had once been asphalt but now alternated between dirt and gravel wound its way along the hillside among a hodgepodge of ramshackle dwellings that had seen their best days back in the 1950s. They were now in an accelerated state of disrepair exacerbated by itinerant tenants like us, but it didn’t matter. I was happy to have the floor to sleep on and the roof over our heads.

The first morning, I remember being awakened by a rooster that seemed to be somewhere inside our home but was actually at the house next door. That was a surprise, both because I’d never had a morning alarm quite like that and because while the town seemed small, it was, after all, a town, not a farm.

The distinction between rural and city sometimes got a little hazy in a small town like Grants, so it wasn’t unusual for people moving from farms and ranches to bring their animals with them to live in town. The rooster was a popular choice.

After a few days of the five-in-the-morning rooster call, I began to wonder if the murder rate was above average in Grants—with one neighbor killing another over a rooster.

Rather than look for a cramped living space of some kind in the Grants or adjacent town of Milan, our master plan was to live in the National Forest Coal Mine campground located up on Mount Taylor, at least for the summer months. After that we hoped to find a decent place in town, one that was relatively quiet and didn’t come with roosters.

We had each brought with us all the camping gear we owned individually, which together amounted to a large cabin tent and a small ax. The local discount store provided us with the rest.

The Cibola National Forest covers a vast area of New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas and includes the 11,300-foot Mount Taylor just north of Grants.

Named in 1849 for then president Zachary Taylor, Mount Taylor is the largest volcano of an extinct volcanic field dating back 1.5 million years. Massive lava flows, known as El Malpais, cover thousands of surrounding acres. El Malpais is today a national monument.

To the Navajo, the Acoma, Laguna, Zuni Pueblos, and the Hopi tribe, Mount Taylor is a sacred site. Known as Tsoodził, or turquoise mountain, Mount Taylor marks the southern boundary of traditional Navajo territory. Beneath it lies a rich deposit of uranium-vanadium, the potential mining of which was, and is, a source of contention between the Navajo and the State of New Mexico.

There were several mineral claims made on Mount Taylor and even some exploration by mining companies under the mountain, but no extensive uranium mining was ever carried out, and development was halted when the boom petered out in the 1980s. In 2009 Mount Taylor was placed on the National Trust for Historic Preservation‘s list of America’s Most Endangered Places.

During my time living in the Grants area, I spent many days hiking in the Mount Taylor area. Occasionally I would hike to the peak, where a mining company had placed a claim stake. Having been up there and seen the beauty of it, I am very happy no mining ever took place on the mountain. There were other places and other ways to get the ore.

Mount Taylor and the surrounding area of the Cibola National Forest are beautiful places in the high desert country of western New Mexico. There are some truly grand vistas available from several areas on Mount Taylor. Many times I would sit on the edge of Horace Mesa with my feet dangling over the side, just looking out over the vastness below. Gorgeous natural beauty made it very easy to imagine how the area would hold spiritual significance to many native peoples.

Coal Mine campground was in the 1970s and remains today the lone developed campground on Mount Taylor. When Grants was booming, Coal Mine campground could be found full to capacity every night, so it was with some good fortune that Greg and I found an empty space there to call home.

We had a great time living at Coal Mine campground. It was usually cool up there at night, making it wonderful for the sleep that I got a lot of at first.

Coming from sea level to seven thousand feet turned out to be an interesting experience. The relative lack of oxygen caused me to tire easily, and I found myself sleeping at least twelve hours a day. It took me quite a while to figure out what was happening.