Journey to the Heart of the American Southwest
Created | Updated Mar 9, 2006
Chaco Canyon: A Dark Mystery - 11 November, 2005
Chaco Culture National Historical Park, New Mexico
Happy Veterans Day!
The Chaco people were the true Romans of the Southwest. To visit this park you drive 21 miles each way over a very dusty, bumpy washboard dirt road. My shiny black motorcycle, hanging from the rear bumper, is now caked with an inch of red desert dust and gravel.
We begin driving at dawn and arrive just in time for the once-a-day 10 AM ranger guided tour. We get a shot of a firecloud as the dawn breaks just under a rainstorm.
The grand Pueblo has over seven hundred rooms arranged within a graceful semi-circular wall. It is estimated that a million man-days went into the construction of this complex. The tapered walls begin a meter thick and rise to three and four stories with many circular subterranean "Kiva" rooms used for ceremonial purposes. These are about twenty feet in diameter and ten feet deep with a covered roof to retain the smoke and heat. I'm thinking of constructing a smoke-filled Kiva in my backyard as an aid to meditation and vision. Here are a few pictures of Chaco.
Logs were hauled in from many miles away and sandstone was quarried from high mesa tops to construct this place. Again dendrochronology gives exact construction and occupation dates (about 850 AD to about 1250 AD). The Chaco also built a star pattern of five straight 30-foot wide roads radiating out into the desert nearly sixty miles. They did not deviate for terrain features and simply built up and over surrounding mesas. The purpose of these roads is unclear but something about them seems much more than utilitarian.
Something very dark may have happened here around 1250 AD. The Chaco set fire to this magnificent desert palace and moved away, leaving only the walls standing. In 1941, the canyon wall behind the Pueblo caved in and destroyed fifty rooms. One of the Chaco Indians buried in the Pueblo's floor was apparently someone very special since he was covered with 25,000 pieces of turquoise, including a bracelet with 2,400 turquoise pieces.
Tonight we are camped in the Lake Fenton State Park in New Mexico. We drove hours along an unimproved mountain gravel road to get here in the misguided notion that the shortest way to Santa Fe should be a straight line though the mountains and the Santa Fe National Forest. Nice drive anyway.
The Teosinte Hypothesis - 13 November, 2005
Santa Fe, New Mexico
The development of Maize (corn) by early Mesoamerican geneticists probably happened sometime between 10,000 and 6,000 BC in southern Mexico. This development has done more to enable a population explosion to six billion than any other human invention.
From the 1938 to the 1960s, Mangeldorf's 'Tripartite Hypothesis' on the origin of corn was widely accepted. He believed that corn was developed from a cross between an undiscovered wild Maize and the plant Tripsacum.
In 1968, George Beadle, in retirement, began to provide convincing evidence for his own 'Teosinte Hypothesis', which simply believed that Maize was developed from the plant Teosinte. Today scientists generally accept the Teosinte Hypothesis because of advance in the study of genomes.
Do you know the way to Santa Fe? - 13 November, 2005
Santa Fe, New Mexico
Yesterday we spent the morning in Bandelier National Monument to see more Indian ruins. The most interesting thing about all these parks is the work of the CCC. To join you had to be five feet tall, weigh at least 110 pounds and have three functional teeth. They built to last. The ruins have 500 rooms, cave dwellings, wall art petroglyphs and ceremonial kivas. Here are a few Bandelier pictures.
Today we caught a bus and went to an Andy Warhol-Georgia O'Keeffe exhibit at the Georgia O'Keeffe museum. She was an interesting lady. Things were never the same for her after her husband put the nude photos on display in the 1920s.
The downtown shops and the never-ending Santa Fe art galleries on Canyon Road are very unusual. Art is the industry of this town. It's everywhere. It's at bus stops and highway noise barriers and overpasses. All the buildings are adobe style and painted adobe brown with faux logs sticking out near the wall tops to represent an Indian style roof construction.
Smokestack Lightning
Mountain Home, Arkansas
We were stuck in Foss Lake State Park, Oklahoma, for an extra day on the drive toward home because of cold 60 mile an hour winds around a tight low pressure system.
Upon arrival back in Mountain Home, Arkansas, we recruit a native guide for a trip to the world's largest volume Wal-Mart. We were able to purchase Superglue, a set a jeweler's screwdrivers and a serving spoon for a total of $7.05.
The drywall (and some painting) is finished on Paul's new home and the move-in date looks closer now. I've volunteered to finish-coat the exterior doors on Saturday. Last night we drove out to the Yelleville charcoal factory to watch the sparks fly out of the chimneys. This is the high point of the entire trip. I borrow Paul's tripod for the time-lapse charcoal factory pictures.
Charcoal is useful for grilling steaks, as a gas mask filtering agent and in a blacksmiths forge, Usually pine waste is used to heat the charcoal kiln because of its high burning temperature. Hardwoods such as mesquite, oak, maple or hickory are used for the charcoal product. Each of these burn slowly and have unique aromas. The hardwoods must be kept in an environment with no oxygen during the production process so that they crystallize into carbon.
We stay another five days with Paul and Diane in Mountain Home. One day for Arches, Zion, Bryce, Mesa Verde, Canyonlands and the Grand Canyon and five days for Paul and Diane. I work Saturday and Sunday cutting bathroom tile and cutting and priming window casements and door jams for Paul's mansion in the Arkansas woods. I check h2g2 during a break and smear white paint on an RV seat. I turn the seat over before Mrs Phred can notice.
Home for the Holidays - 23 November, 2005
Tampa, Florida
The trip is over. We covered 6,200 miles in the RV and about 500 on the motorcycle in 46 days. On the last leg, we saw a truck driver in a Florida rest area feeding bread to migrating robins (snowbirds). The 1,040 miles from Mountain home, Arkansas to Tampa we did in one mind-numbing day. There is a huge stack of mail to attend to. The hurricanes have left much yard-trash to cart away.
The Florida weather is magnificent in late November: sunny, bright and pleasantly cool.
Journey to the Heart of the American Southwest Archive
