This is an old recipe gathered from a ghost that I met at a campground in Bryce Canyon, Utah. It was a small campground just outside the main park gate. There were campers at every campsite and for eight dollars I got a small site in the back where a year earlier there had been a forest fire. While I was setting up my tent, I noticed this guy wandering through the forest and in spite of the smokey haze he looked to be carrying a frozen turkey. Black soot covered the trunks of all the pines. There was little ground cover and fallen trees were scattered all around. There was no privacy and I could easily see all the other campsites. The air smelled of pine smoke yet not charred. The figure walked nearer to me and I could see he was a native American Indian and he was carrying a frozen turkey. Did I need to be worried? As he neared my campsite I said "YatahHey" which means "what in the freak are you doing walking through a burned out forest with a frozen turkey?
His face was worn like you would expect with tons of deep crevasses and leathery brown skin. He was wearing jeans, a tee shirt with a picture of a beer can on it and Birkenstock sandals. His turkey was a nice eleven to thirteen pound size. I think it was a Butterball. The bird was no longer bound in a plastic cover and the wings were flopping all around. Drugs must be involved in this somehow I thought, and good drugs at that. Not the run of the mill meth or crack, no, we are talking top grade Hash, mushrooms, or at the very least peyote. Of course I was still looking at the turkey and the juxtaposition with the Birkenstocks when he says to me seemingly without moving his lips. "Is this your camp site?.. "This is the site where I traditionally cook my Fourth of July bird. On this very site for the last seventy five years". I said, that sound like a load of Moose scat to me. He only looked about fifty years old in spite of the the crevasses. My camp site had no real appeal. There was one of those industrial duty elevated metal cooking grills with old chucks of charcoal in it. The grill grate on top was what was called a hotdog eater. If the dogs got going in the wrong direction, they fell right through the grate into the fire. There was a cut log for fire wood and a rock to sit on. Looking around I said Yes, you look tired, grab a rock. I could feel a chill in my spine when the Indian said "I am going to smoke this turkey for you and we will eat like chiefs, dream of satisfied squaw and straight arrows for every quiver." A warm ,dry and welcome breeze came up the canyon on its travels through the forest and ash circled my body.
I walked to the camp general store for beer and some charcoal fluid. There was nothing unusual about this campground store. There were rocking chairs out front with a railing and lantern lighting. They had two or three each of all the things that a camper might forget. There were Colman gas light mantles and a huge supply of strike anywhere matches. You could buy a tent if you forgot yours. The only beer they sold was Coors with the small buttons in the lid that you had to push down being careful not to get your finger caught. The beer was cold and cost three dollars a six pack. I bought some canned corn, a tin of charcoal lighter fluid, some antelope jerky and some choke cherry fruit leather whatever that was. I left the store and people were rocking in the chairs gazing out over in the direction of the canyon. I smelled smoke and saw a great light as a rounded the bend heading for my camp site. There were flames shooting up about eleven feet high from the industral barbeque grill only inches from my tent. The indian was circling the blaze like a buzzard looking for a jack rabbit and mumbling some strange Indian crap. I said, "Chief Whathafuck, think you have enough fire there, Butch?" "To smoke a turkey you need lots of smoke!" "Come over here young wolf, I will show you the secret of the Bryce canyon smoked turkey. It is all in the rub." The turkey was laying on the ground and there were three piles of differnt color sands in front of a small depression in the forest floor. There was a coarse red sand from the vermillion clifts, this old scalp chaser said it was the iron and the selenium that made the smoke stick to the bird. There was white sand as white as snow that he said came from the salt of the earth and would keep the turkey moist. The yellow sand was silica with soda lime that crusted the bird richly. He placed a hadful of each color sand in the depression. He added juniper needles and pine nuts from the various types of cones laying in the campsite. The Indian seemed to lose his balance as he rolled the turkey in the mixture. I though of helping him up but I really did not want to touch him. I was about half way through my Coors beer when he grabbed the can and stuffed sage brush in it and shove it up the turkey's one way tunnel. With the wave of his hand at the last flash of flame, the turkey was in the middle of the camp stove over a bed of glowing coals with scented smoke mixing into the forest haze.
I turned and found the indian sleeping in my tent on my sleeping bag. "Chief", I said, "don't you have to watch the turkey?" "Nope, wake me in three hours." "Three hours, what am I going to do for three hours?" "Go see the talent show at the Canyon Lodge." I had noticed signs all around the park about the End of the Season Talent Show. It was an annual tradition where the summer staff, mostly college students displayed their singing and dancing talents to the delights of the guests. I walked the mile or so through pinyon pines as tall as telephone poles up to the Canyon Lodge and grabbed a seat in the back of the hall. The Bryce Canyon Lodge was a hotel with huge pine pillars and large stone steps. The entire end of the hall was an enormous fire hearth constructed of huge sandstone boulders. The roaring fire filled the lodge with warmth and the strong scent of pine. There were cabins similarly built littering the grounds around the canyon. This lodge was quite old and well preserved in its original style. Once the talent show started, I forgot about the Indian, my tent and the turkey. Part of the festivities was food of a local variety. There was that fruit leather stuff, some fruit salads with various types of pine nuts in them. There was boysenberry pie and choke cherry cobbler and I could not tell the difference between the two. There were plates of turkey, deer, grouse and pine hens all smoked and braised with various recipes. The moderator of the show told a story for each of the recipes. There was a little cook booklet for each season that could be purchased for two dollars. I bought one because I felt sorry for the kids that had to tie those colorful ribbons through the punched holes. I had to do that once because that was my only talent.
While waiting for the plate twirler to clean up the plates that somehow launched themselves into the third row barely missing the statue of Ebenezer Bryce, I flipped through the recip book to the part about the smoked birds. The original ancient recipe is still a mystery. Evey year the cooks try a different combination of spices, nuts, hoping to emulate the legendary turkey recipe of the once local indian tribes. The moderator was making a big deal out of this recipe. In the cookbook there is a note that every season the meats to be smoked are placed on the window ledges and the tecnawatu, a visitor from the spirit world comes out of the forest sprinkles unknown spices on the meats while the kids prepare for the talent show. Nothing extra is added to the meats and they are place on a fire of pinyon pine charcoal. While reading, I blurted out,
"its all in the sand". Everyone looked at me very oddly. I said "What
the old indian told me was that the unique taste came from the different
sands in the canyon." The matron of the talent show asked "Have you seen Technawatu?" "Does he wear Birkenstocks?" I posed. A few people chuckled and continued watching the talents of the dancing mule deer. Tecnawatu was described as a shadow coming to life out of the hoodoos, the tall weather worn stone towers famous in Bryce canyon. It was a spirit and wore brilliantly colored robes. It moved on the wind without sound. In the Lodge, the is a book where visitors can write descriptions of their encounters with the techawatu. There are several hundred sightings of Bryce Canyon's ghost. Common entries were similar to "I could hear him singing while moving through the trees" or "The brightly colored ghost passed by swiftly and I could smell smoked meat on the wind".
The talent show ended with a full chorus of the Bryce Canyon Goodbye song., I purchased a large cup of beer for the walk back to the campsite wondering if my tent or the Indian were there. The sun was down and forest was cooling off when I left the lodge. If my sleeping bag was still there I would need to delouse it of bed bugs and mites. They carry disease you know. I was pretty sure I was going to get the Rocky Mountain trots at the very least. As I finished off my beer, I thought maybe the Coors will keep me disinfected. The down hill walk seemed like more that a mile and I kept seeing the shadows of the Technawatu. I walked and spoke aloud in the direction of the canyon and the echo would come back three times. The light from the moon kept my trail illuminated. There were some people out in front of the camp store rocking in the chairs and keeping an eye on things. "Hey, I think your turkey is done." I chuckled and said, "Did that old freakin indian leave me any?" "We did not see any indian" they said. "That is a lot of food for one guy, where is the rest of your group?" I quickened the pace to my tent with the two rocking chair dudes in tow. The campsite was immaculate with the sand swept smooth and the sleeping bag was rolled up nicely. The coals from the fire gave off just enough light where I could see roasted corn on the cob, a wooden bowl of wild greens and some tortilla looking things. The smell of smoked turkey was everywhere. There was a six pack of chilled Falstaff beer wrapped in a brightly colored Indian blanket. The two old rockers looked at me in earnest and I looked at them and said, "dig in boys, there is plenty to go around." "This is the best damn bird I have ever tasted, what did you use for a rub, you gotta give me the recipe?" "I dropped it in the sand, it must be the iron or something." They laughed and said, "Falstaff, I never heard of that brand of beer" while they ripped smoked bird off the bone. "Yep", I said. "Nothing better than eating like chiefs, thinking of satisfying squaws and straight arrows in every quiver." Looking out toward the canyon, I could see the smoke trails from all the camp fires mingling together and drifting through the hoodoos filling the shadows.
