How the sport evolved:

The pioneer of Desert Snorkeling was Blythe Sand Fishes With Groundhogs. An American of  mixed Cherokee, German and Irish background, the post pubescent Blythe fell victim to a fever after having had his ceremonial peyote spiked with leftover fish bait from his resentful pure blood Indian neighbors. Blythe, who would later have a small town on the outskirts of California named after him, lay in a severe coma for several weeks, during which he had a powerful vision.

Unfortunately, after the local shaman had restored Blythe's ability to function and the partial use of only the right side of his brain, Blythe was unable to recall this vision. Jaded and distrustful of all human interaction, he sought solace in the comfort of nature. For some reason, burrowing animals seemed to fascinate him. He spent hours studying their habits, and became convinced that their earth-dwelling lifestyle was the only sensible means of coping with the harsh exterior circumstances of everyday life. Post mortem Freudian analysis of Blyhte's brain would attribute this to a deep need to return to the womb.

One day, alone in the desert, back in the early 1960's, Blythe's fascination with earth dwellers and his overriding compulsiveness combined in an event that today can only be viewed as a paradigm shift for human devolution. As he watched a small ground squirrel scurry down into its hole, Blythe found himself frantically digging after the animal with feverish intensity. Barehanded and obsessed, he tunneled after the small creature, barely making enough room to fit his shoulders down into the earth. Choking on dirt and blinded by dust, Blythe's quest was prematurely ended when a tribal elder spotted him and had him towed backwards out of the squirrel hole by tying a horsehair rope to his ankles and pulling him out with a team of arthritic burros.

It was too late. Somewhere in those first few feet of tunneling Blythe had regained his vision. Humanity could only be saved by going underground. Life was too precious to be spent in the above world distractions of modern society. Life was to be seen from the roots, and everything beyond the roots was simply an accident of the forces of an unyielding nature and the overwhelming arrogance of mankind seeking to bend nature to its will. In Blythe's mind, the roots remained pure, and largely ignored or unsullied by man.

In a fit of inspiration, Blyhte deduced that an ordinary garden hose might be used to provide a flow of oxygen from the surface. A small army entrenching tool, left over from the white militia members occupation of the area, could facilitate faster digging. Wary of being interrupted, Blythe began travelling far out into the desert to perfect his burrowing technique. Soon he became adept at quickly tunneling to the host animal's lair, while making only a large enough hole for his wiry frame to fit down. He came to know all the different types of burrowing animals, and could tell by the size and shape of the burrow if he was likely to encounter a hostile or friendly host at the end of his digging.

All of this would have died along with Blythe had it not been for a freak winter storm that blew into the desert one late July afternoon. Blythe was on his most daring and adventurous dig yet, out in a narrow sandy wash only a few hundred feet from the neighboring road, yet hidden from site by a small rock escarpment. Suddenly it began to sleet and dump rain, filling the hole he was in with water and caving the sides in around him. As fate would have it a Willis Woody Jeep carrying three blond Grateful Dead fans on their way to surf the California shore some three hundred miles west of this exact location ran out of gas and sputtered to a stop a few feet away on the other side of the escarpment.

Blythe could hear the sounds of the Deadheads as they struggled with their deductive processes. Although he was buried under almost seven feet of earth, his hearing had evolved much like the burrowing creatures whom he so revered.

"Bummer, Dude, we're like so out of gas its like bringing me down", was what Blyhte heard. " Like it would be totally groovy if we had a hose or something that we could hitch into town with and steal some gasoline with or like, buy it if we had to". Blyhte heard the sound of Birkenstock sandals scrabbling up the loose rock escarpment." Far out, like look over there man, there's the hose we need to go score some fuel".

They had spotted Blythe's snorkel hose. It took all three of them to pull the hose out of the ground, and in doing so they unearthed Blythe. "Far out dude, like what are you doing down there?", they asked.

For some reason, Blythe confided in them. Maybe it was because of their gentle nature, but most likely it was because he figured they were too stoned to make it out of the desert alive with his secret. This proved to be fallacious reasoning, for not only did the three fail to perish in the desert,  they instantly grasped the breadth and importance of Blyhte's vision and stayed with him. Soon the four of them were brilliant Desert Snorkelers, and devotedly practiced their art until happened upon by a National Geographic Expedition to the desert regions of California and Nevada many months later.

After the article on Desert Snorkeling was published, the sport began to boom.   Blythe started a small community to teach the sport, especially emphasizing its reverence for nature and respect for the host animal. The town soon became known as Blythe's happenin' Digs, which was later shortened to simply Blythe. The neighboring spiritual leaders hailed him as a visionary, and there was talk of including the sport in the upcoming Olympics when tragedy struck.

One day, teaching a beginners class, Blythe had momentarily let his attention drift to a particularly sexy little desert mouse when one of his students began to scream uncontrollably. Rushing to provide aid, he stepped in an entry hole that one of the students had abandoned due to its high degree of difficulty. As he felt himself falling and heard the cracking of his own bones, he twisted hoping to avoid the poisonous sidewinder rattlesnake coiled and ready to strike at the hapless student. The snake struck at the precise instant that Blythe's groin fell between the snake and the terrified student. Both the snake and Blythe died within hours.

The world mourned a great loss. Soon infighting started amongst Blyhte's devoted followers. Squabbles arose as to whether snorkelers could allow power digging equipment and judicious use of explosives. The environmental groups began to equate the endeavor with strip mining for sport. Due to budgetary and foreign policy crisis's mounting at home and abroad, Politicians seized the opportunity to mount an outcry against the activity and deflect attention from real issues. They promptly banned the sport, and the US with its clout within the UN passed a worldwide sanction and ban on Desert snorkeling. The American Indians rose in protest, citing Blyhte's ancestry as the basis for the ban. First the Ghost Dance, now this, they cried. It was to no avail.

Desert Snorkeling today remains a discreetly practiced art, whose ways are passed down through the oral traditions and whose masters are cloaked in anonymity. Today all that visibly remains of the sport are a few thousand holes in the desert sand and one small California city that has over the years forgotten the true origin of its own name.

These are the ways of Man, and Blyhte Sand Fishes With Groundhogs knew them only too well. His vision of the Roots of Life remains unfulfilled, awaiting the next dreamer bold enough to dig into its unrealized mystery.

Okay, you've had enough, go back to the pretty picture of the Sundance Arbor and send me an email--