New Music to Ancient Culture

Mesa Verde

From bluegrass to cliff dwellings.  What culture shock.  We left Telluride and drove directly to Mesa Verde where we stayed in a weird national park campground run privately by Aramark. Quite unkempt campsites without electricity.  The drive there gave us a wonderful scenic drive through the flat topped mesas that were the home to the cliff dwelling Indians.  (Once again I lived up to my reputation as a great passenger and have not gone beyond my original 100 miles of driving).

The  park runs things quite well.  Only a few sites are accessible without guides and all are well protected.  Our first taste was a self guided tour to Spruce Tree House where we walked straight down a path (I was thinking all the way about the walk back up…we were at 8000 feet which led to much huffing and puffing).  I could not shake the idea that this was a museum tableaux and not the real deal.  The National Park had done some restoration, but basically the cliff dwellings were left as they were when first discovered in the 1820’s.  Carefully chipped and shaped limestone connected with mud and grit mortar into small rooms, round kivas (ceremonial spaces) tall towers, all accessed by the dwellers with ladders.  We saw the stains of the cooking fires, wall paintings, seeping springs where water was gathered, and all about, a sense of the disappeared people.  Even though there were other tourists around, there was enough space for private reflection . 

On our second day we book a morning tour and an afternoon tour which meant we could see 2/3rds of the sites open.  The park does such a great job providing little trams that take you close to the site and then a  guide to walk you into the site and provide information.  The walks were quite strenuous because we started at the flat top of the mesa and then very carefully walked down into the overhangs where the dwellings were.  On our second tour, we walked straight down, and then returned by going straight up two different ladders.  Quite an adventure, again at 8000 feet.  We were so impressed with the ingenuity of the sites, the largest of which held about 100 people.  We were told that there are about 4000 dwellings throughout the area, some in the park and some on Indian land.  Most of them held 20-23 people.  There were actually more people living in the area in 1000 AD there are now!  And we say that there was nothing in the area before the white man!  Hah!

We found that the dwellers started living on the mesa tops.  Mesa’s are unworldly.  Flat topped uprisings popping straight up from the surrounding areas.  They lived in wood roofed pit dwellings and farmed the land.  We visited a huge reservoir created from chipped rock into which water was channeled.  Later in their evolution, the Indians moved down into the cliffs and then after 200 years they abandoned them for reasons known only to them.

We left Mesa Verde after staying 2 nights and made a decision that from now on we would slow down a bit and decided to extend our stay by one day in the Grand Canyon.We had many visitors in our campground.  (Mule deer)