We Had An Entire 1,200 Year-Old Lost City All To Ourselves
Imagine being the last person to walk the planet, isolated as a refugee from an apocalyptic world, but simultaneously finding yourself in complete freedom and unity with Time and Space. Only then will you understand the whirlwind of emotional sensations that followed me on the winding route to the "Lost City", a remote and alien world surprisingly not too far from home.
The year 2020 has been nothing short of ominous, even downright catastrophic for those who have been directly victimized by raging pandemic, rising poverty, and a ruthless president. Having witnessed the harsh realities of life for many across the globe, I've always been told to count my blessings, a task that grew ever more challenging as daily life became more complicated, months of hard work more grueling, and all plans of respite quickly vaporizing. While I managed to keep my home, employment, and comfortable lifestyle, I began to realize that 2020 would certainly be the first year of my life that would rob me of my only true reason for existence - international travel. I began to silently suffocate behind my N95 mask, with the growing nightmare of being trapped for over a year in a country whose passport power had begun to diminish as fast as its integrity and prowess. I desperately needed physical stimulation and mental liberation away from the sickness of society, as well as the plague of politics. I needed an open space to clear my head. And this year, that place and adventure would have to be somewhere domestic.
The desert badlands of Bisti-De Nah Zin, en route to the remote Chaco Canyon
An alien landscape of forms and colors in the late afternoon
Trekking through a sandstorm with 65 kph winds
There's a story in American history that is never told in schools, from a time long before the arrival of colonizing Europeans and the "taming" of this wild land. In the legends of the native tribes of the Southwest, it is the tale of a Golden Age of humanity, when Man, Nature, and the Spirits walked the same earthly paths outlined by the gods with celestial orbs in the heavens. In more scholastic archaeological terms, this was the 9th-13th century age of the Ancestral Puebloan civilization, which created the most advanced and sophisticated society in pre-Columbian North America. A rich culture of star-gazers and engineers, they erected unrivaled masterpieces of urban and ceremonial architecture that easily evoke textbook images of imposing sandstone villages and precarious cliff-dwellings, all constructed without metal, machinery, pack animals, or the wheel. But by the time the currently predominant rival Navajo tribe had migrated into the region during the 15th century, the earlier civilization they had called Anasazi ("Old Enemy Ancestors") had all but entirely dissolved, its silent towers, temples, and towns abandoned to decay like skeletons left to vultures. Some say their decline was mainly due to dramatic climate change, while others claim it a consequence of socio-political turmoil. In any case, the doomed fate of their past eerily resembles the damned trajectory of our future.
While the ancient cliff-dwellings of Mesa Verde, Colorado, have been made renowned worldwide, few have ever visited or even heard of a greater indigenous metropolis (and UNESCO heritage site) lying further to the south in the remotest and harshest desert terrains of northwest New Mexico. But from my unconventional childhood fascination with contemporary Pueblo tribes, along with their mystical migratory ancestors, I had always known and longed to visit - or more romantically, make pilgrimage - to the oldest, largest, and holiest of Ancestral Puebloan cities, the forgotten spiritual navel of a pan-Native American culture stretching from the American Plains to the Valley of Mexico. Together with my timeless adventure partner, whose own travel plans were also a victim of current circumstances, we finally found time to set off for the fabled "lost city" in Chaco Canyon.
"Cliff Palace", the largest and most famous of dwellings in Mesa Verde
Channeling my inner indigenous vibe
"Square Tower House" boasts Mesa Verde's tallest structure at 8.5m
"Spruce Tree House" is known for its 3-storey facade of windows
In the blink of an eye, the clouds overhead darkened, the air grew frigid, and the white flakes began to fall. In an unpredictable region typically battered by arid windstorms and seared by scorching temperatures, the weather forecast predicted a purportedly rare and rather historic storm - for only one day, exactly when I planned to reach the ruins of the ancient city. Clearly, Nature was sarcastically trying to test my resolve. Checking the reports frequently, I nervously clenched my teeth as the snow began to pile and my visibility through the bleak desert landscape blurred to white. After days of driving, would we even be able to make it to the canyon in these conditions? The ruins are remote and in a barren wasteland, as Chaco Canyon is 110 km away from the nearest substantial town, with 30 km of rough dirt roads separating it from the only highway in the region. And as the temperature began to dip to 0°C, -5°C, and finally -9°C, the ice thickened to dangerous levels for virtually any vehicle. Painfully slow, we inched and skidded our way across the flat snow-engulfed badlands, the thought of our vehicle breaking down and getting stranded in a blizzard looming in the back of our minds. Our mobile phones lost reception, our GPS finally lost signal, but we semi-blindly pushed forward, as we had come too far to turn back. By the end of a stressful hour, towering buttes suddenly appeared like apparitions in the whiteness and we descended into a massive open canyon.
Trekking into the canyon through the historic -9C snowstorm
All alone in the canyon
The ethereal beauty of Chaco Canyon, with its colossal stone ruins dripping with sparkling icicles and cactus gardens coated in frosting, is a sight unlike anywhere I've ever beheld before. One could not ignore the otherworldly silence, the absolute stillness and sense of isolation enveloping the pristine canyon, a long-overdue detachment and escape from the collapsing country I was fleeing. Trudging deep into the wash through the powdery snow to the largest ruins at Pueblo Bonito, we came face-to-face with the magnitude and quality of these primordial communal constructions, a complex of over 800 rooms with some areas reaching a towering five stories in height, the tallest structures in North America until the 19th century. The masonry of fine sandstone bricks was perfectly fitted like delicate warm-hued mosaics, while simultaneously concealing sturdy walls nearly a meter in thickness, a perfect balance of elegance and strength for sacred edifices designed to stand through the passing of ages. As I stood among the largest stone kivas, the ubiquitous circular pit "temples", I could almost hear the faint voices of chanting ancestors, their healing songs wafting with the snowfall throughout open spaces that were once entirely concealed below ground in the "spirit realm". With the entire structure perfectly aligned to the cardinal directions, alongside special windows facing the magical path of the solstices, it felt paradoxically humbling and empowering to stand at the physical center of a civilization's known universe.
In the center of Pueblo Bonito, the largest and most famous of ritual complexes
Feeling indigenous at the ruins of Chetro Ketl
Approaching Pueblo Bonito through the snow
One of the massive kivas, or sacred circular pit temples used for ritual dances
Glimpse inside one of the sacred chambers, 4-5 stories in height
"Cawww!" The deafening silence was broken by a fluffy black raven, the only living creature in the canyon to cross our path all morning. Pieces of sweet bread from our simple lunch warmed the creature to us as it approached with more confidence and curiosity. As it flew off towards the imposing stone mesa that hovers above the ruins, we followed its path along the vertical cliff walls, which served as a veritable prehistoric gallery of intricately carved petroglyphs and exquisite rock art, a medley of anthropomorphic figures, lizard signs, and hypnotic spirals emanating the enigmatic energy of long lost stories. The trail ended at the site of another great ruin complex at Chetro Ketl, the black raven patroling us from its perch upon an immense stone wall overlooking an even larger kiva. It continued to follow us from ruin to ruin that entire afternoon. To view the entire complex from above, we hiked our way in the snow to the north, reaching the ruins of Pueblo del Arroyo and Kin Kletso, where a steep hidden trail began to climb a gigantic crack in the stone and scale the massive mesa. The route tightly tunneled its way up between two sheer rock faces, where it eventually opened onto a flat terrain dotted with snow-covered boulders, cactus gardens, and megalithic sheets of fine sandstone. Through a scene from a Martian snowstorm, we meandered along the perilous cliff edge overlooking the entire canyon, passing the foundations of sacred circular spaces and perfectly round hand-carved water basins hewn from the living rock. Our raven reappeared and flew to a stone on the very edge, faithfully calling us to view the entire honeycomb framework of the many ancient pueblos from 100 meters in the air. "Breathtaking" simply cannot sufficiently describe the sense of beautiful inspiration combined with blissful liberation that overcame me as my watery eyes gazed out over the shimmering winter wonderland with a native twist. The stresses of unending work, national division, viral outbreaks, and even the surrounding sub-zero temperatures all seemingly melted away into the snow.
It was nearly inconceivable to imagine that we had the entirety of a vast ancient city completely to ourselves, in pure uninterrupted solitude... something that few, if an, people could ever claim to have experienced before...
At that moment, the raven flew off, never to be seen again. It was as if our briefly adopted "spirit animal' had been specifically sent to lead us to this magnificent climax, a simple sign of gratitude for what little morsels we could provide. I had never before felt so intensely the veiled, watchful gaze of the ancestors.
The trail along the base of the mesa reveals ancient petroglyphs
Our raven "spirit animal" guides us to the edge of the mesa for a view of the Pueblo del Arroyo ruins
View of the immense Pueblo Bonito complex from 100m above
View of the Kin Kletso ruins from the cliff
For all the blessings bestowed upon us during our unique and magical time in Chaco Canyon, the ancestors apparently still had one last test of faith up their sleeves - getting out of the canyon. As the temperatures began to quickly warm from -9°C up to 1°C, the ice and snow on the dirt roads began to melt into a soggy slush of nearly impassable sludge. The rush to escape Chaco before potentially being stranded overnight without food nor heat in subzero temperatures immediately set in, as we floored the gas pedal in frantic attempts to plow through long deep troughs of sticky mud. Tires spun furiously as our filthy vehicle continuously struggled to gain enough traction to summit even in the slightest inclines leading up the mesas, the fear of imminent entrapment rapidly rising as the last 16 km of dirt road seemed to drag on into tortuous infinity. After an hour, and by sheer luck, we finally struck solid pavement in a relieving return to our own dearly doomed civilization, our own familiar ruins. But at least now, I felt I possessed a newfound outlook for this convoluted year.
Archaeological evidence has shown that the decline of the Ancestral Puebloan culture didn't result in their complete annihilation. Rather, small groups migrated in all directions away from troubled times and chaotic conditions in search of new opportunities to rebuild and renew, their descendants still living in the form of today's Hopi, Zuni, Jemez, Acoma, and Tewa tribes. From the natural world they knew and derived, they fully understood and accepted both the transience and impermanence of all things in Life, where everything is said to have its specific time. And while the modern world that we know may seem to be crumbling around us, the fundamental human spirit has always maintained an underlying, oftentimes unawakened tenacity to initiate meaningful change and move forward for the better. But before we can ever start anew, we first must learn to listen to the silence.
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