Chaco: Preface
What the heck.... I decided to go ahead and post this "teaser" before I leave. A lot of this is mapped out in my head already, but I'm going to be out of the country and computerless until about mid- March. May get part of next chapter up before I go, but probably not....
Hope you enjoy. All comments welcomed!
Chaco
Preface
The tall, lean figure, topped by the classic Smokey Bear hat, gazed into the canyon below. He had been standing there a long time measured in the cyber seconds of the 21st century. Fortunately his companion, Steve Tsosie, was Navajo and knew a different measure of time. A bit like the gazer himself.
He had left his friends because the past few years had just been too chaotic, too frenetic and disturbing to bear any longer. So he had parlayed his degree in linguistics, specifically his knowledge of Nahuatl and its connection to other members of the Uto-Aztecan languages, into a one year stint with the US Park Circus, er, Service. He was to work on an exhibit for the Visitor’s Center on the possible linguistic connection between the ancient Anasazi, the Aztecs, and modern Mexican and Pueblo languages. The latest genetic work confirming the modern Hopi as the descendents of the Anasazi, and the Hopi’s language connection to Nahuatl made what would have been an archaeologist’s flight of fancy thirty years ago a sound scientifically based theory in the present.[1] So, he was working on an exhibit pointing out the linguistic similarities of all these groups, nicely illustrated by all the parrot feathers, copper bells, seashells, and other ephemera of Mesoamerican culture that had been found in excavations in the canyon and surrounding areas.
He liked the quiet of the canyon. He liked its isolation, the lack of paved roads. He liked the sweet smell of the sage after the rain. He liked the endless vault of blue sky.
As he stood at the edge of the mesa, a few hundred feet from Pueblo Alto, he had a perfect view of the ruins of the place the white men called Pueblo Bonito. The images that had been flashing through his mind behind unseeing eyes paused briefly, and the man’s expression turned from one of pain and longing to a grinning smirk. The thought of his friend Joe Dawson pissing his pants brought a wry grin to his mouth. What would cause his normally composed friend to have such an unseemly reaction? Because he was Methos, the eldest, and he had been there and helped build Pueblo Bonito and the many other structures of Chaco Canyon. He alone of all beings on this Earth knew what the “Ancient Enemies” had called themselves, how they lived, why they left. [2]
It had all started with that damn boat….
[1] There is indeed now genetic evidence connecting the Hopi with the Anasazi.
[2] Anasazi roughly means Ancient Enemies in Navajo, the Indian tribe who currently inhabit Chaco Canyon and much of the ancient Anasazi territory. The Navajo are not related at all to the Anasazi, or to the Pueblo Indians such as the Hopi.