At the bottom of the pass we got out of the truck to look at the petroglyphs carved into a group of basalt boulders.  There were birds and thunderstorms and curved patterns that didn't resemble anything. Ed studied one of the birds and said that he wanted to come back as a buzzard after he died and soar above Barrier Canyon in Utah, where the greatest Indian rock art in North America is located, a place I had never been. He described life-size cliff paintings of mummylike figures with bucket-shaped heads, square shoulders, and long, tapered trunks decorated with birds and other small "spirit helpers."

Go there, he said. It's the gateway between worlds.

He was low on blood those last months of his life.  The resulting anemia starved his brain of oxygen and produced an odd,  insular humor.   By the time Ed died, he had the clearest eyes I'd ever seen.

   The eyes still haunt me.

-Doug Peacock
 

Barrier Canyon is also known as Horseshoe Canyon