October 1, 2

October 1

Today is my birthday! Last night Rose gave me a painted wooden pendant. The wood is sanded smooth, and I can see the tree rings on the reverse side. My dad thinks the wood is the local juniper. On the front is hand painted Zuni image of Corn Maiden surrounded by traditional Zuni designs. The painting work is quite fine. Corn Maiden is a deity who is responsible for the growth and well being of the corn. She is revered because each year she gives a part of her body for the Zuni people to eat (the corn).

We left the house at 9:15; we seem unable to beat our record that we established earlier. Since we had to be traveling on my birthday, I got to pick our stops. Our first stop was where we had walked on the first day. We had seen petroglyphs (ancient images engraved into stone) and Daddy wanted to photograph them. It was a longer walk to find them than we had anticipated, so our schedule was pushed even later.

The only reason our timing mattered was that there would be an 11:00 tour at the Wild Spirit Wolf Sanctuary that we wanted to catch. We arrived there later than planned and joined half way through the tour. The wolf sanctuary rescues wolves and wolf-dogs that people have tried to raise as pets. Wolves and wolf dogs are not dogs, they can’t be trained and have unpredictable behavior, like a wild animal. When they are around two years old they start to get out of control (teenagers) and try to find their place in the pack. This is normally when the panicked owners phone the sanctuary. The Sanctuary’s only purpose is to rescue wolves, they spay and neuter all their animals.

The canines are kept in family groups or pairs. All the mini-packs have their own wooded enclosure that is bigger than what they would get at a zoo. Also, the animals are matched with a human who they get to know and can go in and feed the animals and take care of them. Some wolves, though, are too unpredictable and no one can go in their enclosures. Remember, they are wolves—with a wolf’s instincts. I found the experience very informative. Did you know that you can tell how much wolf is in a dog by how round its ears are and how much fur is in it’s ears? Or that wolves have bigger paws than dogs, with webbing in between the toes for walking on snow? And of course, it was the first time I had seen wolves--and I was able to get close to these guys.

Then we drove on to El Morro, a canyon with only one wall; actually, it was a mesa. El Morro used to be an important place for the pueblo peoples. It’s walls are dotted with rock art, and ruins cover the top of the wall. We hiked to the top of the mesa and started talking with the three Zuni rangers who were cleaning the ruins of weeds and re-facing the stone work (amazingly enough, they were doing it in preparation for a group of Afghanistanis who were coming to study the ancient methods of stone work). They immediately recognized my necklace as Zuni and asked where I got it. I told them and it turns out that they know Joe and Rose. Not only did they know Joe and Rose, but one of them had done archeology with Momma when she had worked in Zuni 26 years ago. It is truly a small world after all. By the time we had finished talking to them, eaten lunch, and returned to our car, it was 4:00. With a three hour drive to Chaco Canyon, it would be dark when we arrived there. But we set out anyway.

The last hour into Chaco Canyon is on a narrow dirt road with very bad “washboard effect”. The washboard effect is a ripply pattern of the gravel that makes you feel as if the car has a bad palsy. From the window of the car I saw an elk, a big beautiful female elk. As I leapt out of the car to get a better look she took one look at us a galloped away into the distance. I watched until darkness had swallowed her form. Just after the last of the suns glow faded from the sky, the road got a lot worse, and a tire began making a clunking noise. It turns out the road hadn’t gotten worse, but our tire was completely shredded. So now we were changing the tire in the dark. But it got changed and we were driving again at 9:00 PM.

When we got to the campground at Chaco Canyon, all the tent spots were full. So were most of the RV spots. Our area was sandwiched between an RV and a snorer who sounded like he needed his muffler replaced. Never let it be said my birthdays are uneventful.

October 2

One day past my birthday, a morning in Chaco Canyon, and in the afternoon we will be in Santa Fay. Chaco Canyon is another differently-shaped canyon. It’s walls are short and squat, but the distance between them (i.e. across the valley ) is a mile-and-a-half (the brochures give the distance in miles and I can’t translate). One mile-and-a-half is very wide. Chaco canyon was an hugely important regional center for the ancient people’s – and today, of archeological sites. The Ancient Pueblo Peoples in Chaco Canyon built a series of structures, like condos, except was even more all-inclusive (including kivas, food storage, farming areas, dance plaza’s, etc.). The pueblos there were planned ahead of construction and built with a finished product in mind, not just adding-on rooms as needed. They were formed in a “D” shape, with hundreds of rooms, up to three stories high—all built in stone. You can mark how old a wall is by what pattern the rocks are placed in(mortar or no mortar, big rocks or little rocks). It is so dry here that the original thousand year-old wooden beams remain preserved in some of the walls. The ruins remain mostly unreconstructed, and they don’t need to be because they are so well preserved. Chaco Canyon was only occupied as a major centre for about 200 years; then everyone left. This is an especially short time considering it took several decades to build one of the D-shaped pueblos. There are more than six of them! People talk about the anomaly of the Ancient Pueblo Peoples (Anasazi) and “why did everyone leave”. Chaco Canyon is the archetype of that mystery.

In Pueblo Bonito, the biggest set of structures, you can walk inside the rooms, walk through the doors, and imagine the place bustling with life. It was especially emotional for me because my Grandma, who died when I was young, stood and walked in the same places that I was. I might even have touched a stone that she touched.