Sis's, Mesa Verde, the very Grand Canyon and a few other places
This little intro is actually newer than the rest of this. I’ve had spotty wifi and uploading has been difficult, which is rather a pain so rather than mess around, I’ve just been compiling my notes. Sorry about the length of this post.
June 18
We got to my sister’s (MaCher’s) house after a long ride across the flat land of Nebraska. The land changes as you get towards the Rockies, it starts to roll again (like northern Nebraska.) Northern Nebraska was interesting. It was the Badlands with “clothes” on. The Badlands of South Dakota (which were just a bit to the north of us there) are incredible. The top cover of vegetation has been stripped away and the land carved out so that it is looking at the bare bones of the earth. You see all the layers and layers of soil and you know you are looking at a book of time. That layer was a shallow sea, that layer came from the eruption of a volcano, that layer is soil washing down from the Black Hills. Well, the northern part of Nebraska shows that here and there but it is all covered with grass and other vegetation.
As you drive towards the Rockies, you begin to see them on the horizon. At first you want to think they are clouds on the horizon you can see them from so far away. Your brain doesn’t want to think about the size and wants to make it something easy to process. I pointed them out to Blitzy, who kept saying they were clouds even when Pike’s Peak stood there as massive as anything could ever be.
MaCher’s house is incredible. It is like something out of a story about Georgia O’Keefe. It stands on top of a mesa, a couple of hundred feet above the surrounding area. To the west you have a view of the Rockies running north and south, with Pike’s Peak dominating the near view. To the east you see a high plain with other mesas erupting from the plain. In all actuality, the area is volcanic so the mesas are all just spots that haven’t worn down.
MaCher had a great surprise for me. My nephew the helicopter pilot had come up from where he is stationed in Albuquerque and my niece (who is currently living in Japan) were both there together with the twin who is living with my sister. The only one missing was my niece from Alaska, and I got to talk to her on the phone. I also got to meet my grandnephew who is three and a very funny, bright and active kid. He took to his cousin Blitzy and poor Blitzy, who is an only child, discovered the joys of being the object of a toddler’s attention. It was a zoo but a lot of fun,
June 19
MaCher wants to get rid of us (which we knew.) She is catering a big wedding on the 20th and is in the throes of cooking. I can help out with that but she also has other house guests who will be coming to stay (the wedding is that of a friend’s) and Blitzy and I will be two faces too many. That is why we decided to go to the Grand Canyon now and return to MaCher’s after. Gives her a chance to finish cooking and focus on her friends. Keeps me from having to be pleasant and all to folks I don’t know. It works for all of us.
We drove down to Cortez, NM today. What a ride! I missed the Rt. 24 exit so we ended up following the Arkansas river down. What fantastic scenery. The roads are steep and winding and I hated that I was driving. I would rather have been riding with my nose stuck to the window. The mountains are incredible and I’m so glad that so much of them are public land. I would hate for them to be developed. This land is really a treasure. It is so different from Michigan. I know that that is a “duh” statement but the beauty is overwhelming. There are deep canyons with fast, roiling creeks running through them. The vegetation is so different, aspen and pine and cactus and yucca and some of the most beautiful flowers. This has been a wetter summer than usual and we’re reaping the benefit. I grew up around mountains, the White Mountains in New England and the Alps in Germany, and the Rockies are are as different from them as they are from each other. The Rockies seem newer. The White Mountains are so old that time has rounded them down. They are there, but they meld into the environment, you notice them but they fit in. The Alps are newer than the White Mountains. They have that craggy beauty and they rise above the surrounding plains but humans have touched them and they aren’t so mysterious. They are prepossessing but familiar. The Rockies haven’t had the time to wear themselves into our experience the way the Alps have. They are massive, they give you the sense that they are still settling into the environment, that changes are still occurring and that there is more to come. In Europe, you work your way up to the Alps through foothills and valleys that were carved by glaciars. The Rockies are just suddenly there, rising out of the plains.
We came down out of the mountains into the high plains, a huge valley between two sets of mountains that rolled on and on. The land was spotted with cattle and here and there with small homes. The houses were all scattered and looked run down. I think that life out here is tough. It is a world bounded on all sides by mountains.
Back into the mountains but with a sense that we were heading south, and with real differences beginning to show in the vegetation. We came into high desert. It was drier and the plants showed it. We now see pinon and lots of yucca an other less hydrophilic plants. The trees are shorter and the plants more scattered.
June 20
Mesa Verde. We stayed in Cortez last night, first grungy hotel. Yechh. But Mesa Verde! To get to the cliff houses you drive twenty miles back up onto high mesas. I mean mountain size mesas. There were times when I was driving on a road that was a thousand feet higher than the ground below. It was incredible scenery, and because of it being a wetter than usual season there are wild flowers everywhere. This is high desert. Mesa Verde has been hit with lightning numerous times in the past ten years and there is a lot of fire damage. You see the charred skeletons of pine and oak everywhere, and everywhere you see the grasses and transitional scrub coming back in. The ranger said they’d had about 5 major wild fires in the past decade, all started by lightning.
We went to Spruce House. It is the most accessible but even then you have to climb down into a deep canyon. The house was built right into a cave in the wall of the mesa. Kiva’s were carved out and I went down into one. It is a round chamber with a ledge running around it. There was only one other person down there when I went down and the quiet was incredible. I understood why they were places where one communed with the gods. For me, as an anthropologist, I always wonder why; why did the folks who populated these mountains and built these incredible dwelling places do so? They started out on top of the mesas, and even when they moved down into the canyons they continued to farm and harvest the mesa tops. How did they come to this place and why? Where did they start out from? We know so little about the people who lived here. I know that we have the material remnants of their lives, their pottery and toys and tools. But we can never know why they left where they were and why they moved down into the canyons and why they then left.
We spent the morning wandering around Mesa Verde (and driving in and out of the site!) then drove down to Flagstaff. It is amazing to me how familiar Flagstaff, and most of the large towns/cities we’ve been through are. You see all the same stores everywhere. Strip malls and suburbia every where. Even when the scenery is different, the lay out is the same.
On a less thoughtful note... we lucked out and are benefitting from President Obama’s stimulus package. This is a free weekend at all National Parks. No entry fees. In retrospect, I guess I’m surprised there weren’t more people there. it was surprisingly uncrowded at Mesa Verde today.
June 21
Summer Solstice today. An auspicious day to visit the Grand Canyon. Blitzy is grumpy. “Why are we doing this? It’s just a big ditch” “Lets just go home”.
I’m so glad we went to the Grand Canyon. Wow. I had to laugh at the kid. He did one of those lightning fast attitude changes when we go to the edge of the Canyon and he looked down, and down, and down. It is amazing to think that all of this is as “recent” as it is. I don’t have words to describe the Canyon. I took some photos, and I’ll post them but they won’t even convey the grandeur. I can’t imagine ever being jaded to the point where the Canyon would loose it’s magnificence and become mundane. Our day was good. The sun was out, it wasn’t rising or setting, there were no phenomenal plays of light across the Canyon. The lighting was regular and even and still the view was awe inspiring. We looked down on birds flying below us, way below us and we could make out some of the trails that lead down into the Canyon. I think I would like to someday take one of the tours of the Canyon bottom. Wow.
June 22.
Drove to Santa Fe today. Stopped at Thoreau where I went to third grade and took a picture of the mission school. It looks different (1960 was a while ago) and tried to get up into the mountains where we lived but the access road is closed off. A utility company has control of the land there and the road up into the mountains is closed. The base we lived on was at 8600 feet so we lived a ways off the highway (then 66,now 40). I took pictures of the mesas beyond Thoreau. I remembered them as soon as I saw them. The base was called Continental Divide (not to be confused with the town a little west and north of the site) and it was my favorite of all the places we ever lived (even Europe.) I wish I could of gone back into the mountains and seen it again, even if all the buildings are gone. As a side note. We drove south first this morning. Sedona and the red rocks are just a little south of Flagstaff and, being the new age, woo woo person I am I wanted to see Sedona. I wish I hadn’t. I had this romanticized vision of this small, quiet, town in the middle of red rocks and mountains that lend themselves to peaceful meditation and tranquility. I found a place that puts Cape Cod to shame for touristy bull****. I had to laugh. There were signs everywhere for this therapy and that therapy and expensive cars and stores selling chotzkis everywhere. Sigh, another dream dies. I did get a great latte though.
June 23
I’m moving to Santa Fe. Georgia O’Keefe had the right of it. Speaking of whom, her museum is wonderful. I’m in love with Santa Fe and the land around it. See ya. I don’t want to leave.
June 24-26
Back at MaCher’s. Sitting still for a couple of days. Family stuff, usual family discussions, at least in our family. I’m liberal, they’re all conservative. You do the math. It’s fun and stimulating and I’m so glad to be with family. Left on the 26th and got into Kansas. I love my colleague from Kansas (at OC) but I have to say that Kansas just seems to stretch on, and on, and on, and...
June 27
Got to Topeka. We stopped at the Brown v. Board of Education historic site. it is part of the National Park System and it is a great site. The site is the old school that was the center of the Brown law suit. The Park Service has used the facility and worked exhibits into the building rather than redo the building to suit the exhibits. They have a great series of multi-media presentations on discrimination and segregation in the old gym and the standing exhibits are well done and convey a sense of what was going on in the 50’s vis a vis segregation. Blitzy was really impressed. I could tell because he took a great deal of time going through the exhibits, asking questions and talking to the park “rangers”. I remembered going to school in 1959 in Mississippi. I was very clearly from New England. I sounded different and acted different I remember getting in “trouble” because I hung out with the only other kid who was a much an outsider as I was. She was black and I didn’t know that I wasn’t “supposed” to play with her. The other kids called us names and my teachers tried to get me to play with my “own kind”. Bless my folks. They explained (or tried to) what was going on and told me to play with whomever I wanted to play with. It was the same when we moved to New Mexico for the fourth grade. I evidently wasn’t supposed to play with the Navajo kids there either. I hope things have changed.
June 18
We got to my sister’s (MaCher’s) house after a long ride across the flat land of Nebraska. The land changes as you get towards the Rockies, it starts to roll again (like northern Nebraska.) Northern Nebraska was interesting. It was the Badlands with “clothes” on. The Badlands of South Dakota (which were just a bit to the north of us there) are incredible. The top cover of vegetation has been stripped away and the land carved out so that it is looking at the bare bones of the earth. You see all the layers and layers of soil and you know you are looking at a book of time. That layer was a shallow sea, that layer came from the eruption of a volcano, that layer is soil washing down from the Black Hills. Well, the northern part of Nebraska shows that here and there but it is all covered with grass and other vegetation.
As you drive towards the Rockies, you begin to see them on the horizon. At first you want to think they are clouds on the horizon you can see them from so far away. Your brain doesn’t want to think about the size and wants to make it something easy to process. I pointed them out to Blitzy, who kept saying they were clouds even when Pike’s Peak stood there as massive as anything could ever be.
MaCher’s house is incredible. It is like something out of a story about Georgia O’Keefe. It stands on top of a mesa, a couple of hundred feet above the surrounding area. To the west you have a view of the Rockies running north and south, with Pike’s Peak dominating the near view. To the east you see a high plain with other mesas erupting from the plain. In all actuality, the area is volcanic so the mesas are all just spots that haven’t worn down.
MaCher had a great surprise for me. My nephew the helicopter pilot had come up from where he is stationed in Albuquerque and my niece (who is currently living in Japan) were both there together with the twin who is living with my sister. The only one missing was my niece from Alaska, and I got to talk to her on the phone. I also got to meet my grandnephew who is three and a very funny, bright and active kid. He took to his cousin Blitzy and poor Blitzy, who is an only child, discovered the joys of being the object of a toddler’s attention. It was a zoo but a lot of fun,
June 19
MaCher wants to get rid of us (which we knew.) She is catering a big wedding on the 20th and is in the throes of cooking. I can help out with that but she also has other house guests who will be coming to stay (the wedding is that of a friend’s) and Blitzy and I will be two faces too many. That is why we decided to go to the Grand Canyon now and return to MaCher’s after. Gives her a chance to finish cooking and focus on her friends. Keeps me from having to be pleasant and all to folks I don’t know. It works for all of us.
We drove down to Cortez, NM today. What a ride! I missed the Rt. 24 exit so we ended up following the Arkansas river down. What fantastic scenery. The roads are steep and winding and I hated that I was driving. I would rather have been riding with my nose stuck to the window. The mountains are incredible and I’m so glad that so much of them are public land. I would hate for them to be developed. This land is really a treasure. It is so different from Michigan. I know that that is a “duh” statement but the beauty is overwhelming. There are deep canyons with fast, roiling creeks running through them. The vegetation is so different, aspen and pine and cactus and yucca and some of the most beautiful flowers. This has been a wetter summer than usual and we’re reaping the benefit. I grew up around mountains, the White Mountains in New England and the Alps in Germany, and the Rockies are are as different from them as they are from each other. The Rockies seem newer. The White Mountains are so old that time has rounded them down. They are there, but they meld into the environment, you notice them but they fit in. The Alps are newer than the White Mountains. They have that craggy beauty and they rise above the surrounding plains but humans have touched them and they aren’t so mysterious. They are prepossessing but familiar. The Rockies haven’t had the time to wear themselves into our experience the way the Alps have. They are massive, they give you the sense that they are still settling into the environment, that changes are still occurring and that there is more to come. In Europe, you work your way up to the Alps through foothills and valleys that were carved by glaciars. The Rockies are just suddenly there, rising out of the plains.
We came down out of the mountains into the high plains, a huge valley between two sets of mountains that rolled on and on. The land was spotted with cattle and here and there with small homes. The houses were all scattered and looked run down. I think that life out here is tough. It is a world bounded on all sides by mountains.
Back into the mountains but with a sense that we were heading south, and with real differences beginning to show in the vegetation. We came into high desert. It was drier and the plants showed it. We now see pinon and lots of yucca an other less hydrophilic plants. The trees are shorter and the plants more scattered.
June 20
Mesa Verde. We stayed in Cortez last night, first grungy hotel. Yechh. But Mesa Verde! To get to the cliff houses you drive twenty miles back up onto high mesas. I mean mountain size mesas. There were times when I was driving on a road that was a thousand feet higher than the ground below. It was incredible scenery, and because of it being a wetter than usual season there are wild flowers everywhere. This is high desert. Mesa Verde has been hit with lightning numerous times in the past ten years and there is a lot of fire damage. You see the charred skeletons of pine and oak everywhere, and everywhere you see the grasses and transitional scrub coming back in. The ranger said they’d had about 5 major wild fires in the past decade, all started by lightning.
We went to Spruce House. It is the most accessible but even then you have to climb down into a deep canyon. The house was built right into a cave in the wall of the mesa. Kiva’s were carved out and I went down into one. It is a round chamber with a ledge running around it. There was only one other person down there when I went down and the quiet was incredible. I understood why they were places where one communed with the gods. For me, as an anthropologist, I always wonder why; why did the folks who populated these mountains and built these incredible dwelling places do so? They started out on top of the mesas, and even when they moved down into the canyons they continued to farm and harvest the mesa tops. How did they come to this place and why? Where did they start out from? We know so little about the people who lived here. I know that we have the material remnants of their lives, their pottery and toys and tools. But we can never know why they left where they were and why they moved down into the canyons and why they then left.
We spent the morning wandering around Mesa Verde (and driving in and out of the site!) then drove down to Flagstaff. It is amazing to me how familiar Flagstaff, and most of the large towns/cities we’ve been through are. You see all the same stores everywhere. Strip malls and suburbia every where. Even when the scenery is different, the lay out is the same.
On a less thoughtful note... we lucked out and are benefitting from President Obama’s stimulus package. This is a free weekend at all National Parks. No entry fees. In retrospect, I guess I’m surprised there weren’t more people there. it was surprisingly uncrowded at Mesa Verde today.
June 21
Summer Solstice today. An auspicious day to visit the Grand Canyon. Blitzy is grumpy. “Why are we doing this? It’s just a big ditch” “Lets just go home”.
I’m so glad we went to the Grand Canyon. Wow. I had to laugh at the kid. He did one of those lightning fast attitude changes when we go to the edge of the Canyon and he looked down, and down, and down. It is amazing to think that all of this is as “recent” as it is. I don’t have words to describe the Canyon. I took some photos, and I’ll post them but they won’t even convey the grandeur. I can’t imagine ever being jaded to the point where the Canyon would loose it’s magnificence and become mundane. Our day was good. The sun was out, it wasn’t rising or setting, there were no phenomenal plays of light across the Canyon. The lighting was regular and even and still the view was awe inspiring. We looked down on birds flying below us, way below us and we could make out some of the trails that lead down into the Canyon. I think I would like to someday take one of the tours of the Canyon bottom. Wow.
June 22.
Drove to Santa Fe today. Stopped at Thoreau where I went to third grade and took a picture of the mission school. It looks different (1960 was a while ago) and tried to get up into the mountains where we lived but the access road is closed off. A utility company has control of the land there and the road up into the mountains is closed. The base we lived on was at 8600 feet so we lived a ways off the highway (then 66,now 40). I took pictures of the mesas beyond Thoreau. I remembered them as soon as I saw them. The base was called Continental Divide (not to be confused with the town a little west and north of the site) and it was my favorite of all the places we ever lived (even Europe.) I wish I could of gone back into the mountains and seen it again, even if all the buildings are gone. As a side note. We drove south first this morning. Sedona and the red rocks are just a little south of Flagstaff and, being the new age, woo woo person I am I wanted to see Sedona. I wish I hadn’t. I had this romanticized vision of this small, quiet, town in the middle of red rocks and mountains that lend themselves to peaceful meditation and tranquility. I found a place that puts Cape Cod to shame for touristy bull****. I had to laugh. There were signs everywhere for this therapy and that therapy and expensive cars and stores selling chotzkis everywhere. Sigh, another dream dies. I did get a great latte though.
June 23
I’m moving to Santa Fe. Georgia O’Keefe had the right of it. Speaking of whom, her museum is wonderful. I’m in love with Santa Fe and the land around it. See ya. I don’t want to leave.
June 24-26
Back at MaCher’s. Sitting still for a couple of days. Family stuff, usual family discussions, at least in our family. I’m liberal, they’re all conservative. You do the math. It’s fun and stimulating and I’m so glad to be with family. Left on the 26th and got into Kansas. I love my colleague from Kansas (at OC) but I have to say that Kansas just seems to stretch on, and on, and on, and...
June 27
Got to Topeka. We stopped at the Brown v. Board of Education historic site. it is part of the National Park System and it is a great site. The site is the old school that was the center of the Brown law suit. The Park Service has used the facility and worked exhibits into the building rather than redo the building to suit the exhibits. They have a great series of multi-media presentations on discrimination and segregation in the old gym and the standing exhibits are well done and convey a sense of what was going on in the 50’s vis a vis segregation. Blitzy was really impressed. I could tell because he took a great deal of time going through the exhibits, asking questions and talking to the park “rangers”. I remembered going to school in 1959 in Mississippi. I was very clearly from New England. I sounded different and acted different I remember getting in “trouble” because I hung out with the only other kid who was a much an outsider as I was. She was black and I didn’t know that I wasn’t “supposed” to play with her. The other kids called us names and my teachers tried to get me to play with my “own kind”. Bless my folks. They explained (or tried to) what was going on and told me to play with whomever I wanted to play with. It was the same when we moved to New Mexico for the fourth grade. I evidently wasn’t supposed to play with the Navajo kids there either. I hope things have changed.