After over one year of Covid-19 quarantine, I decided to take several days off and venture into the Land of Enchantment, New Mexico. I was informed by friends that New Mexico is rich of Architecture, Indigenous Culture, Arts and Indian Ruins. Then, I discovered, the Land of Enchantment offers more than that.
It is not uncommon to see artsy house like this in New Mexico.
Bandelier
After a few hours drive up the mountains and through the secretive Los Alamos Lab city complex where the toll attendant asked me not to take any pictures, I made it to the Bandelier National Monument. In Bandelier was where the ancestral Pueblo People resided.
Rocky Cliff – on the way to Bandelier.
Bandelier National Monument
The Ruins Houses and Cliff Dwellings.
Kiva was used for meetings, rites and rituals. The roof was long ago rot away.
Ruins Rooms
The Cliff is peppered with caves in which the Pueblo People lived in. This living arrangement offered protection from marauding raiders who came after the harvest and robbed of their food stock.
Cave Dwellings – This is what the living condition like 1000 years ago.
Commune Ruin. It still has stories to tell.
The high-cliff dwellings reflects the fear and phobia for the bandits.
Cave Room – hand carved into the rock.
The Pueblo People had moved on. The durability of the Dwellings remain.
I stepped inside briefly and it was surprisingly cool.
The cave rooms are within proximity of one another. Hence, the Cliff constitutes a big house.
This imposing structure rendered me speechless. This protective way of life is essential to respond to the bandits.
At the interior of the Commune is the Kiva, where meetings, rites and rituals were carried out.
This community was once a very bustling commune.
Why did the Pueblo People leave this commune? Why invested inordinate amount of effort to build such lasting structures and community only to abandon it? If the Pueblo People can whisper their secrets to us for posterity, what would they whisper?
Carlsbad Caverns
In the Chihuahuan Desert of the Guadalupe Mountains, is New Mexico pride and joy, the Carlsbad Caverns. I drove for about 5 hours from Santa Fe to Carlsbad. The Caverns formed from millions of years of geological change. It is deep underground, humid, cool and in itself, a different world.
There is an elevator that descends 725 feet. Once I exited the elevator and walked a short distance upon the paved walk way which is pale comparing to the brute power of nature, a scene of something that was created from a Hollywood CGI unfolded, except, this is no CGI. It’s magical.
There are 100 plus caves. Only 3 are open to the public.
Gran Quivira
Chaco Canyon
I especially appreciate Chaco Canyon. This sacred site is the National Historical Park as well as the World Heritage Site. The building complex is certainly a site to be hold. It numbs the mind. Little perfectly-cut, thin, rectangular stones, millions of them, lined up neatly within the wall. What devotion, what inspiration, what reverence that inspired the People of Chaco to build such monumental architecture.
One could also agree that there is still an awesome, mysterious energy exists throughout the ruins. I would love to return and camp in order to experience what it once was as lived by the Chacoans.
I found myself constantly thinking back in time. It was a harsh life that was matched by dogged determination to live. The indigenous people possessed more volition than we could possibly imagine. There are fundamental and basic lessons we can all learn from these determined and intelligent people. Somehow, with all the smartphones and digital gadgets we possess, I do not believe we are capable to apply Mathematics, Astronomy, Architecture and the patience to chisel and cut stones into millions of building blocks and erect such magnificent Kivas and dwellings like the Chacoans did so effortlessly over one thousand years ago.
Now, over one thousand years later, what happened to us?