It Is Good To Leave Tracks

Tuesday, September 21  -  Mesa Verde National Park

I love my husband again.  I really do. I am very glad I didn't follow through on the LSI Plan because then I'd never be able to say to him "Remember when we went to Mesa Verde?"

This is the World Heritage site of the Ancestral Puebloan Cliff Dwellings (formerly referred to as the Anasazi Cliff Houses but that name has been discarded at the request of the direct descendants.)  Dan had always wanted to come here but I was only dimly aware of the place.  We were both completely bowled over.

For a start, the drive to get to the site is pretty spectacular - up to the top of the 8,000 ft Mesa.

Once you're up there it just goes on forever.  A whole different landscape opens up - deep shadowy canyons, grassy fire ravaged plains, rocky outcroppings, steep, steep cliffs.

The Cliff Palace tour required a descent by rocky steps and ladders - didn't seem so bad at the time, but when viewed from the other side of the canyon it looks quite terrifying.

Look closely and you'll see a group of people on top of the cliff at left - somehow we got down there!

Unlike Miss Susie at Monticello, our guide Clyde (!) was wonderful.

I wanted to take him home with me.  He was a gifted story teller who managed to impart a great deal of respect for the history, spirituality and sanctity of this most remarkable site. Stumbled upon by two cowboys in the 1880s, the Dwellings had been abandoned for nearly 6oo years.  No one knows exactly why but it is thought that the 23 year drought in the late 1200s may have been the reason the people left after inhabiting this place for only 300 years.

Still, another site we toured, the Balcony House, was built right at the end of the Ancestral Puebloans' stay.  And the Sun Temple, up on top of the Mesa was still being constructed when they all packed up and left.

Dan in the unwalled section of Balcony House- it's a very long drop at the edge there.

As Clyde said, maybe they received word from Spider Woman that it was time to go. "It is not good to stay too long in one place. People need to move forward.  It is good to leave tracks.  That way you can see where you've been, you can know where you've come from, and know who you are."  In the midst of a group of 60 people, standing in high desert sunshine, I actually got goosebumps when he said that.

There were over 600 Pueblos up here.  It's thought the people started out up top but gave up that land for crops and moved below to the cliffs.  They built these amazing places stone by stone which they carried down one at a time.  The Balcony House was the only one with a wall on one half and it's thought that it might have been a sort of daycare center.

One of the ladder climbs to get to the sites.

This place, the last built, faced east rather than south, so got no heat from the sun in the winter.  The only way in and out was through this tunnel,

No, that's not Dan's ass. It belongs to the poor guy in front of me.  I made Dan go after me so I wouldn't inflict that view on anyone but him.

so it was easily protected, and with infant mortality so high (50%) babies were precious.  It's thought that maybe this was built because of impending trouble or warfare, but there is no real evidence of that.

Mesa Verde was definitely the highlight of this trip so far, and I was so overwhelmed by the beauty, ingenuity and mystery that I told Dan we really didn't need to see anything else for a while.  The Four Corners landscape can wait.  I promised I wouldn't pout, but now he really wants to see it - more mesas! more desert!  more pueblos!  God, I love that man.