EDITOR'S LETTER

editor's LETTER I knew it was out there.

The lion. I could feel it, but I couldn't see it. That's why I stopped dead when I saw the steam rising from the bloody carcass. I just stood there, like Marcel Marceau in a motionless imitation of the Heisman Trophy. It wasn't a mystery. A few hours before, I'd learned a lot about the feeding habits of mountain lions. "Pumas like to drag their meals to a protected area," Brandon Holton, a wildlife biologist, explained to me that morning at Grand Canyon Lodge. They'll take a break from their meals, but they're never far away. That's what I was sensing on that cold and drizzly afternoon on the trail out to Timp Point. I knew the big cat was out there, watching me.

Psychologists call it "gaze perception." It's a feeling that originates from a system in the brain that's devoted to detecting where others are looking. Usually, the scenarios are more benign: a commuter train, a quiet restaurant, a stroll in the park. This was something more intense. This was the essence of the food chain. And I wasn't supposed to be there.

Mule deer and mountain lions have a long history on the Kaibab Plateau. It was symbiotic until 1906, when President Theodore Roosevelt signed legislation that designated the plateau a federal game preserve. Before that, it was one of the most remote places in North America, with a healthy population of mule deer. But with the arrival of settlers, hunters and so-called wildlife experts, there was concern that the herd was being decimated by voracious carnivores. So, the government contracted James "Uncle Jim" Owens, a professional hunter, to take out the deer's natural predators. And he did. It's estimated that he killed as many as 600 lions, thus flipping the paradigm and providing a case study for Aldo Leopold, who wrote that the "removal of predators predisposes a deer herd to irruptive behavior." Rachel Carson wrote about the Kaibab, too. In Silent Spring.

"At one time the deer population was in equilibrium with its environment. A number of predators - wolves, pumas and coyotes - prevented the deer from outrunning their food supply. Then a campaign was begun to 'conserve' the deer by killing off their enemies. Once the predators were gone, the deer increased prodigiously and soon there was not enough food for them ... in time many more deer were dying of starvation than had formerly been killed by predators. Turns out, man's folly had thrust the plateau into a state of disequilibrium. The resident brain trust figured something had to be done, but, with hindsight, those attempts weren't any better. One idea was to capture the deer, load them into boxcars and ship them off to other national forests. As absurd as that might appear, it pales in comparison to "The Grand Canyon Deer Drive."

The ill-fated plan was hatched by a rancher from Flagstaff. His name was George McCormick, and with the help of several dozen cowboys and Navajos, he planned to herd thousands of mule deer, like sheep or cattle, down a primitive trail from the North Rim, into the Grand Canyon, across the Colorado River and up the other side. For whatever reason, no one ever said, What? What's worse, the plan was endorsed by Governor George W.P. Hunt, who agreed to pay McCormick $2.50 perhead for up to 10,000 deer.

The money, however, wouldn't be paid until the deer were delivered to the South Rim. With no other way to fund the operation, McCormick offered the movie rights to the highest bidder. That bidder turned out to be the Lasky Motion Picture Company, which was hoping to film the movie version of Zane Grey's upcoming book The Deer Stalker - a pre-written fictional account of the impending drive.

The nonfiction version was written by Mark Musgrave, who worked for the U.S. Biological Survey, the precursor of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. "I arrived at South Canyon Ranger Station on the evening of December 11, 1924," he wrote. "There was about four inches of snow on the level ground in the juniper timber and eight or ten inches on the higher levels. On the evening of December 12, Zane Grey and his people arrived with six moving picture cameras and about twenty-five men. Later on in the evening, George McCormick came in, after having crossed the Grand Canyon.

The drive was chaotic from the outset - like Tudor's electric football game from 1971 - and two days later, Musgrave got an update from a Navajo man named Gray Hat Charley. "The old Indian came in and stood by the fire for some time before speak-ing, then looked to me indicating that he had something to say. I asked him if he saw many deer. He replied, 'Lots of deer, maybe a hundred.' I asked if the Indians drove the deer. He said, 'Yes, lots of deer.' I asked, 'Where did you drive the deer?' He swung his hand in all directions, making a sort of humming sound, indicating that the deer went in all directions.

Things only got worse, but even after three days of abject failure, McCormick refused to admit that he couldn't move the deer. Zane Grey and the film crew, however, had seen enough, and so had just about everyone else.

Ninety-eight years later, the quixotic tale of "The Grand Canyon Deer Drive" is just a footnote in the colorful history of the Kaibab Plateau, which has reclaimed its equilibrium. Predator, prey, life and death ... it can be unsettling when you see it firsthand, the steam rising from a bloody carcass, but that's the essence of the food chain. It's best we stay out of it.