On a ridge above the crumbled, pink-and-black Morrison Formation was a decaying axe-cut juniper stump, signal to watch for the circular stone base of a hogan.

Sure enough:

It was probably nineteenth-century, because the juniper cribbing had decayed or been taken for firewood. Into it had been dumped the rusted remains of a McCormick wind pump dating to, say, the ranching thirties:

Outside the circle, laid carefully on a rock–“curated” by some previous visitor–was a 3″ chert hand axe. The Navajo had metal trade axes, so presumably this one was Archaic. Thousands of years older than both hogan and pump.