Anne had been to Mesa Verde National Park back in college and remembered it being an interesting place and worth a visit. After looking at our schedule for our final week, and how (relatively) close we would be to Mesa Verde when we left Grand Canyon, we decided to spend a few days there and just do some longer drives on the push home. This, readers, was a wise choice.
On the way out of Page we stopped to see Horseshoe Bend (pretty, but crowded) and the Glen Canyon Dam (big. really big.) since they were right there. I was again conflicted: I know dams cause massive disruption to natural ecosystems and often displace people, but I cannot help but be impressed by the design and construction of these massive structures. Then we hit the road, and I tried to absorb and appreciate the desert landscape I knew would be soon behind us. We had been in it for so long that I had to remind myself it would soon be a thing of the past.
The Mesa Verde campground was a mellow affair, uncrowded
enough that we got to just drive in and choose our own campsite. After some
consideration we picked our spot and set up among the abundant and almost tame
deer and the jackrabbits. Again, we were blessed with plenty of space and beautiful
night skies. Plus we got to watch Everett, by very slowly crawling and pretending to browse on grass, get up close and personal with a local resident. And Anne captured one of the best photos of the trip, capturing what it was like to fall asleep under a blanket of stars every night.
The next day we had two tours scheduled. When Anne last was here, people could just go where they wanted among the cliff dwellings, kivas and archeological sites. But, people being people (meaning destructive and disrespectful a-holes), things have changed, and now access to the most important sites are by a scheduled and guided tour only. A wise choice, since, as I mentioned, people suck (not all people--you’re fine).
{Why this next section published double spaced is beyond me, sorry reader}
A quick primer on the people who inhabited Mesa Verde over 1,000 years ago. They farmed, built houses and hunted on the mesa top, which, for a number of geologic reasons, was set up well to support a population of people who knew how to get the most out of what that tough environment offered. For some unknown reason, around 8-900 years ago, the people moved down from mesa top to construct elaborate sandstone dwellings in and among the cliffs.
They are gorgeous. Stunning. Awe-inspiring. Jaw-dropping. A combination of being sheltered from the elements, hidden, and very difficult to reach all adds up to some amazingly well-preserved houses and gathering places. Hundreds of them are scattered all throughout the area, but only a few specific ones are on the tour for the public to see and experience.
Our first tour was Balcony House, a multi-family dwelling accessible through a series of ladders and small tunnels to crawl through. It gave us a great feel for what life would have been like living under an overhanging cliff face, not to mention how precarious it was to access it by scrambling up and down the rocks, with no room for error.
Second up was Cliff Palace, a large grouping of structures which may have served as a communal gathering space. While the houses were similar, the scale was completely different. There were rooms and shelves and homes and kivas (circular dug-out rooms with a naturally aspirated fire-pit, very ingenious) tucked everywhere.
We finished up our time at Mesa Verde by visiting some of the above-ground structures, including a reservoir and some terraced agricultural fields. We learned so much and I gained a keen appreciation for the millions of ways the Ancestral Puebloans adpated to their environment and thrived there for generations.
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