Photo Friday: Mesa Verde National Park

Back in June, en route from Colorado to Southern CA, we spent a couple of days at Mesa Verde National Park. That didn't give us a ton of time (it wasn't our first visit, so we didn't mind), but we had time enough to do a hike and take a tour of Balcony House. In between, we enjoyed an amazing sunset from the campground. I am assuming everyone knows that Mesa Verde is home to an amazing collection of Anasazi dwellings, and instead of my usual brief educational spiel, I'll refer you to the park web page for more info and cut to the photos.

The first evening we had just time to visit Spruce Tree House, one of the few you can do without a guided hike. I got a nice view back with no other tourists, because we were the last to be shooed out. We continued around the 3-mile Spruce Canyon trail, accompanied by rumbles of thunder.

I'm pretty sure there are no actual spruce trees anywhere near.

Driving back to camp, we stopped at the Cedar Tree Tower (no cedars, either; just pinon and juniper), which stands on the edge of the mesa, and caught the light nicely.

Dead trees from a major fire in the early 2000s stand out against a stormy sky.

Showers and sunset at the campground.

Next morning we had tickets for the 9 a.m. hike, so we were up early onto the mesa. For the record, the campground is about 18 miles from the Chapin Mesa tours, so this involved a fair bit of driving. We stopped en route to look over the edge at the Cliff Palace, which we have marked for a tour the next time we visit.

Cliff Palace, like almost all except Balcony House, faces West to catch afternoon sun.

We also left ourselves time to walk a mile or so to the Soda Canyon overlook, for a perspective on Balcony House. Along the way, we spotted a surprising number of flowers, including this gilia (I'm not sure what sort).

Catching the morning sun.

 It was cool to get a look at the setting and the whole picture of the place we were about to visit.

Note the ladder lower right. That's the way the tour enters the cliff dwelling. This tour is not for the faint of heart, literally or figuratively.

We joined our group and headed off to the ruins. The first bit is easy. Then you have to get into the house.

I'm already up in the ruins. From this perspective, the ladder looks terrifying, but it really isn't bad.

 A couple of shots once we climbed and crawled our way in:

I'm not sure if this is the balcony that gives the place its name, or if it's the open space in front of the rooms, which atypically actually has a wall to prevent anyone falling over. I would imagine that made moms happy.

You can see here where there were walls all the way up to the (natural) ceiling. You can also see that there were fires in that room.

At the end of the tour, we left by the route the Anasazi used to come in and out. You can see that they walled up a gap in the rocks to force people to crawl through--arguing a certain need for security.

No, that's not my backside. For once the spouse found someone else to catch in an awkward moment.

The Anasazi had some hand- and foot-holds carved in the rock. We were given a ladder and some railings.

It's enhanced, but this was the route that the original occupants used.

From here, we were off across northern Arizona (see my post on Petrified Forest National Park).

Note on weather conditions: I often post about areas of the SW US that are desert. And we often visit those areas in summer, though they are at their best in spring, if not winter.  We make it work because that is when we are there. But in light of the tragic death of two French tourists last week at White Sands in New Mexico, I feel obliged to comment on how we do this. Primarily, we do very little outdoors between the hours of about 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. Mesa Verda is relatively high (the top of Chapin Mesa is 7000'), and afternoon thunderstorms can cool it quite a bit. But we still limit distances and carry plenty of water. When we must be out at midday (as at Petrified Forest), we do very short walks indeed. We were never out of sight of the car or Visitors Center there, and stayed out for maybe all of 15 minutes. These deserts are for real, and heat can kill!

H: House of Rain (book review)

 

 

For H-day: a review of House of Rain: Tracking a Vanished Civilization Across the American Southwest, by Craig Childs.

Craig Childs is well known in certain circles for his almost poetic meditations on the land, water, and creatures of the southwestern U.S.  His books resonate deeply with those of us who also love the land of little rain (that's another obscure literary reference.  Go ahead and go look it up).

In House of Rain, Childs takes on the great mystery and fascination of the region: the ancient culture(s) that built the silent ruins preserved in Mesa Verde and Chaco Canyon, as well as those that you may stumble on unexpectedly in a cave or overhang in any canyon or wash.  Half travelogue, half archaeological discussion, and half fantastical recreation of a world that is--and isn't--vanished, at one point while reading I jotted in my journal that the book is "the work of archaeologists filtered through the mind of a poet."

And that pretty well sums up both the strength and the weakness of the book.  Childs has a vivid imagination, a boot-soles-and-spirit knowledge of the region, and enough knowledge of archaeology to present the science cogently--and then to draw his own conclusions.  Many of his conclusions do not bear the stamp of approval from the archaeological community.  They may be no less valid for that.  He is a powerful proponent of the idea that a gut feeling might be the final tool needed to put the story together.  And he is willing to walk through country that would not only daunt but kill many of us, in order to string together the story.

Chapter by chapter, mile by mile of walking in blazing summer heat and blowing winter snow (yes, the region is extreme in both seasons, though the snow is never deep--it is, after all, desert), Childs tracks the movements of the ancient people around the Colorado Plateau, down into Arizona, and finally into northern Mexico.  Sometimes he travels alone.  Sometimes with others who share his interest, amateurs or experts.  Sometimes he travels with his wife and infant son.  Always he travels with the ghosts of those who went before.

This is by far the most thorough and most brutally honest account of what archaeology tells us--or implies to us--of the people who inhabited the southwest before Europeans arrived.  Childs is not afraid to tell of the evidence of violence, nor of the evidence that drought and possibly mismanagement of resources drove people from place to place.  In the end, he also reminds us that the cycle of drought and uninhabitability (if that's a word) isn't a thing of the past.

Five stars, for great literary non-fiction and an education in 500 pages.

As a bonus: a sampling of my own photos from just a few places on the Colorado Plateau.

 

Pueblo Bonito, Chaco Canyon National Historic Park

 

A lone wall, Wijiji, Chaco Canyon

Stone dwellings and caves in the rhyolite cliffs of Frijoles Canyon, Bandelier National Monument

Hovenweep National Monument.  I particularly like this picture, as it was the last trip we took with my Dad.