SW Landscapes: Post Eleven – Last call … on to Mesa Verde

Contained in the following posts is the telling of a trip we have talked about for many years – a trip we took with our new teardrop camper – an extended trip of three+ weeks – a trip in which we expect to bear witness to a stunning diversity of amazing landscapes – a trip to the majesty of the Southwestern National Parks.

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We’re nearing the end of this epic three-week landscape tour, heading out of Canyon Country and on to Mesa Verde National Park. From Desert View on the East End of the park, we took our last look over the grand scale of this wonder of the world and headed out of the park thinking somehow that our eyes would no longer be treated to breathtaking landscapes. Yes, we did leave, but no, we were far from being done with breathtaking landscapes. Getting to Mesa Verde took us through northeastern Arizona and skirted Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park and Bears Ears National Monument. With every mile we traveled, our eyes flowed over the horizons finding new views that continued to sweep our breath away. Was there an end to our earth’s majesty?

Mesa Verde is a unique park created in 1906 to preserve and interpret the archaeological heritage of the Ancestral Pueblo people who lived here for over 700 years beginning about AD 550. This place was home to thriving communities on the mesas and in the cliffs of what is now Mesa Verde National Park. The park has archaeological records of villages built over that time period beginning with pit houses on top of the mesa and ending with the cliff dwellings that Mesa Verde is famous for some time in the late 1190s to late 1270s. The record is not clear just why these people left.

Today’s Pueblo people say the land is not empty. “Even though we physically moved away, the spirits of our ancestors are still here. If you stop for a minute and listen, you can hear the children laughing and the women talking. You can hear the dogs barking and the turkeys gabbling. You can hear and feel the beat of the drums and the singing. You can smell the cooking fires. You can feel the presence, their warmth, their sense of community.” TJ Atsye, Laguna Pueblo (Interpretive sign, Mesa Verde National Park). We were spellbound at the Spruce Tree House, the first cliff dwelling we visited. There was a palpable sense of quiet among those tourists alongside us as if we were keenly aware of the spirits yet residing in this cliff.

This park was impressive for its broad-reaching views across the mesa and into the canyons, but even more so was the story told by the ancient record still standing from a millennium ago. In contrast to today’s world, we have a lot to learn from coming to know these ancient civilizations along with today’s indigenous peoples.

Tomorrow, we head home, both tired and deeply enriched. The richness of the landscapes we experienced from the plains of southwest Minnesota to the Sandhills of Nebraska, and the spectacular canyon landscapes of Utah as Joe, our cowboy guide told us they would, took our breath away again and again. The scientific and cultural story told by the geologic, archaeologic, and cultural records stretched our experiential knowledge base in vastly new ways. It will feel good to pull into our driveway and climb into our own beds, but our lives will remain forever enriched by the experience of these last three weeks. Life is oh, so good!

Short Posts (in which I finish up with a few snippets of thought that didn’t quite justify calling them a full post)