Uninhabited but not Abandoned
Last weekend we went to Bandelier National Monument. It was Veteran's Day and admission was free. Like the ruins at Chaco, ancient people lived here at the bottom of a river-cut canyon, and built multistory stone apartment complexes. After living here for hundreds of years, they left.
They also carved dwellings in the porous cave-riddled canyon walls, and you can climb the ladders and go inside several of the cave homes.
This was smaller than Chaco, just a village really, of maybe 500 people at its height. It was built and populated later than Chaco -- from about 1200 to 1550, as people migrated from drier areas down toward the Rio Grande over many centuries.
It's also a narrower canyon than at Chaco. The walls are steep and the area at the bottom is small. The river at the bottom was just a trickle of a stream the day we visited, barely a foot wide, but clear and sparkling.
But when floods raged through the canyon in 2011 and 2013, the result of devastation from massive forest fires up above that stripped trees from the watershed, the flooding was catastrophic.
For a small village of 400 or 500 in ancient times, this narrow canyon had everything they needed. They built an enclosed plaza and communal apartment complex that housed several hundred, and this is what it probably looked like in 1400 (artist's rendering). The three round circles with ladders angled out of them were the underground kivas, or ceremonial rooms. One has been opened and excavated now.
(The village is called Tyuonyi -- Adolph Bandelier was the name of the Swiss archeologist who excavated it and brought the ruins to the attention of the public in the late 1800s. And the name of the canyon is Frijoles Canyon, which means "Beans" Canyon in Spanish. Place names fascinate me.)
The ancients also built hundreds of dwellings in a long row along the face of the canyon cliffs and climbed up to them on ladders. The holes in the rock face show where the wood beams were inserted to support several floors -- now the wood is gone and the rooms are gone, but you can imagine the apartment style buildings that fronted the rock face.
Unlike Chaco, where the sheer size of the place meant you had to drive from ruin to ruin and it was 9 miles around the canyon floor, at Bandelier you walk a short route that skirts the communal house and then you climb steps up to the cliff houses.
Easier said than accomplished! Oy. The route was only a couple miles, but with Jim's bad back and all the narrow, steep steps, it was a challenge for us. He had his cane, and we went very, very slowly, but he's paying the price this week for climbing all those narrow, treacherous stairs.
My legs hurt from going up and going down all those difficult steps too, especially the big quadricep muscles in my thighs, which actually cramped up. I thought it was because of elevation -- I am acclimated now for breathing, but it felt like using big muscles at this altitude really stresses the body's oxygen intake, and it hurt.
But in reality I think I'm just old and alarmingly out of shape.
Physical trials aside, we had a great time on a beautiful fall day. This is an intimate, alive, easily imagined place, easy to visit, and set up for walking and picnicking. The Pueblo Indians who descend from the ancients who lived here insist that although this village has not been inhabited for 450 years, it is not abandoned. The ancestors still live here.
I could feel it.
They also carved dwellings in the porous cave-riddled canyon walls, and you can climb the ladders and go inside several of the cave homes.
This was smaller than Chaco, just a village really, of maybe 500 people at its height. It was built and populated later than Chaco -- from about 1200 to 1550, as people migrated from drier areas down toward the Rio Grande over many centuries.
It's also a narrower canyon than at Chaco. The walls are steep and the area at the bottom is small. The river at the bottom was just a trickle of a stream the day we visited, barely a foot wide, but clear and sparkling.
But when floods raged through the canyon in 2011 and 2013, the result of devastation from massive forest fires up above that stripped trees from the watershed, the flooding was catastrophic.
For a small village of 400 or 500 in ancient times, this narrow canyon had everything they needed. They built an enclosed plaza and communal apartment complex that housed several hundred, and this is what it probably looked like in 1400 (artist's rendering). The three round circles with ladders angled out of them were the underground kivas, or ceremonial rooms. One has been opened and excavated now.
(The village is called Tyuonyi -- Adolph Bandelier was the name of the Swiss archeologist who excavated it and brought the ruins to the attention of the public in the late 1800s. And the name of the canyon is Frijoles Canyon, which means "Beans" Canyon in Spanish. Place names fascinate me.)
The ancients also built hundreds of dwellings in a long row along the face of the canyon cliffs and climbed up to them on ladders. The holes in the rock face show where the wood beams were inserted to support several floors -- now the wood is gone and the rooms are gone, but you can imagine the apartment style buildings that fronted the rock face.
Unlike Chaco, where the sheer size of the place meant you had to drive from ruin to ruin and it was 9 miles around the canyon floor, at Bandelier you walk a short route that skirts the communal house and then you climb steps up to the cliff houses.
Easier said than accomplished! Oy. The route was only a couple miles, but with Jim's bad back and all the narrow, steep steps, it was a challenge for us. He had his cane, and we went very, very slowly, but he's paying the price this week for climbing all those narrow, treacherous stairs.
My legs hurt from going up and going down all those difficult steps too, especially the big quadricep muscles in my thighs, which actually cramped up. I thought it was because of elevation -- I am acclimated now for breathing, but it felt like using big muscles at this altitude really stresses the body's oxygen intake, and it hurt.
But in reality I think I'm just old and alarmingly out of shape.
Physical trials aside, we had a great time on a beautiful fall day. This is an intimate, alive, easily imagined place, easy to visit, and set up for walking and picnicking. The Pueblo Indians who descend from the ancients who lived here insist that although this village has not been inhabited for 450 years, it is not abandoned. The ancestors still live here.
I could feel it.
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