Out of the Canyon
Although many of my younger colleagues here at The Gazette do not feel it necessary to retain a sense of objectivity in their reporting, I still hold to the credo that my job is not to make the news but to relate it to the public. The following story was the first time I had to work hard not to speculate about the facts.
I was sent some years ago to do a piece on the murder of a co-ed at Preston University. It was a very tragic incident, but not one I expected would consume my time the way it has. What began with the body of a young woman, a seemingly straight forward case of unrequited love gone sinister, slowly opened outward like an ever expanding blossom of infinite petals.
The damn thing has still not stopped growing, for recently I have noticed I am being followed when I go out at night. My phone will ring and there will be no answer, just the sound of one vibrating note. Don’t ask me how I know, but I am certain it has to do with the Tooms case. All of this plus what I have already come to learn tells me it is time now to pluck the evil flower in hopes that it will begin to whither before it overtakes me. I present it to you as objectively as possible, and leave it to your own discernment to reach a conclusion as to its importance.
Tooms Canyon is a God-sized thumb gouge in the earth a hundred miles East of the Rockies and twenty-five miles North of the historic Horace/Griffin line. The declivity is steep and treacherous. Nothing grows therein—not a weed. In the mid-day sun the red rock and powder become like the walls of a furnace, and the rippling of the atmosphere caused by the rising heat has been known to conjure visions of paradise almost too intricate to be a mirage.
In the Western wall at the Southern entrance to the canyon lie the radioactive sulfur springs which, year after year, draw the weak, the lame and the terminally ill. Although some well-documented, remarkable cures have taken place at the springs since their healing powers were first discovered in 1860 by Elijah Tooms (visionary and animal carcass sculptor) the poor accommodations, the harsh sun, have made it one of the best kept secrets among miraculous environments.
When Tooms died in 1930, at the age of ninety, he had just completed a three hundred yard boardwalk that ran from the old stage trail to the cave in order to accommodate patients who would find walking in the deep red sand too exhausting. Although its hand rails are splintered and some of its planks staved in or missing, it is still very much in existence. It had been patched once in 1945 when the area was made part of a Federal preserve and then later in 1968 after the area lost its protected land status and was occupied by a commune of draft dodgers, ex-prostitutes and college drop-outs from Southern California.
In his day, Tooms frequently took out ads in the newspapers back East and in California to herald the amazing properties of the springs and to announce that the use of them was free, but only five known individuals visited the site in the time that he was its self-proclaimed proprietor. His diary attests to the full recovery of each of the patients. In fact, he, himself, bathed in the springs regularly and attributed his life-long vigor to this daily ritual.
