Back to Mesa Verde with the Watkins and Square Tower House for the First Time

The Wednesday before last we rose early and drove to the Durango Airport to collect Mark and Michelle Watkins, friends we haven’t seen in way too many years.  And as we hugged and bundled backpacks and luggage into the car it was also as if we’d seen them yesterday.  The last time we were together we did Horseshoe Canyon and the San Rafael Swell.  This time we were headed for Mesa Verde.

It could be the best way to make sense of Mesa Verde would be with one of Edward Tufte’s clever strategies for projecting high-dimensional objects into a diagram that would necessarily be a map but something else, too.  It was a geographic center of civilization on the Colorado Plateau at a critical time, the twelfth century, but it was also a cultural center, too, exporting exquisite, geometric ceramic art to many other places in the Colorado Plateau and importing exotic objects like Glymeris shell armbands from the Gulf of Mexico.  In an entirely different sense it is a unique temporal nexus for the American Southwest.  It was where cowboy history touched prehistory on a snowy night in December 1888 when Richard Wetherhill discovered Cliff Palace whilst looking for lost cattle.  Wetherhill also first hosted Gustaf Nordenskiöld, the Swedish Scholar who first brought a professional practice of Archaeology to the Southwest.  How many dimensions does that make?  How do you draw a picture?

Then there are the cliff dwellings.

We were insanely lucky.  Cliff Palace, the largest and most famous cliff dwelling, was closed for restoration.  The night we arrived rain thundered on the roof then, in the morning, turned to snow on the Mesa.  The result was that our necessarily ranger-guided early hike to Balcony House only had 10 people.  Did I mention how dangerous it is to do Balcony House in those conditions?  The slippery, steep descent from the cliffs?  The climb up a narrow, icy thirty foot ladder to the site itself in shrieking winds?  The long dark passages with surprising drops and low doorways, some so close you’re on hands and knees pushing your pack ahead of you with your nose?  Well, actually, the weather broke just before we began the hike so that while it was cool and a little damp, it was otherwise beautiful.  Further, the trail is more than polite in almost any weather and the ladder was neither narrow nor icy, though it is 30 feet high.  The dark passages, which are great fun, do exist.  Frankie Anderson, the ranger who led us was professional, very well informed and gave us sufficient time to explore and photograph.  As we were doing so, Mark commented that cliff dweller culture must have shared aspects with contemporary Japanese culture:  the people must have been adept at sharing close personal space and, perhaps, at developing an internal psychological space as a counter balance.  Perhaps there were even similarities in etiquette.  I’d glimpsed Anasazi culture from a new point of view even though I’d been in Balcony House many times before.  As far as I know, no one bumped his or her head.  And the climb out, though quicker, was as fun as the one in.

In the afternoon we visited the park museum, did the Soda Canyon hike which leads to an overlook of Balcony House and also walked down to Spruce Tree House.  There we encountered Ranger Luann Andrew, who shared my perplexity at how Craig Childs, the author/adventurer who wrote the admirable House of Rain about his pursuit of Anasazi culture and prehistory, managed to get access to the back of the site, almost 89 feet into the cliff face, which is always off limits.  More interestingly, she gave us a comprehensive tour of the remnants of the visual art on the ruin left by the inhabitants as well as Nordenskiöld’s site number and James Wetherhill’s initials.

Dinner at the lodge’s restaurant, “the Metate Room,” was a disappointment.  We learned that the original chef had left and to my mind the new one hasn’t found his footing yet; I hope he does so.

The sunset view of the rolling green mesa and red rock canyons from the balcony patio and restaurant are one of those glorious top of the world vistas.  It’s an archetypical vision of the West, its great distances and cerulean and cumulous skies, suggesting promise, glory, mystery and loss.  In the far distance Ship Rock stands on the horizon like a ghostly castle.  Though I grew up far to the north, it’s one of those views that feels as much like home as an old backyard.  We forwent our usual evening Bridge game for an early night.

The next morning we drove to the Square Tower House Overlook where we met our guide for a hike down to the Square Tower House itself.  It was one of the first hikes into the site since it had been closed for restoration and the Park service only offers a half dozen or so every year, limiting those to less than ten participants.  Ironically, the guide turned out to be the same Ranger Andrew we’d met yesterday.  She appraised us while telling us what to expect, decided we were fit enough for the trail and then we set off for the descent.  The first 20 foot ladder was straightforward.  The second came after a short, but protected, ledge walk to stairs blasted into the rock in the 1920s beside much shallower steps carved out of the rock by the original inhabitants.  The transition from the rock stairs to the ladder disappearing below looked tricky but turned out to be simple.  After that it was a straight-forward back country walk with the site slowly revealing itself through the Pinion and Juniper forest before us.

Only half the site is visible from the overlook above.  What you don’t see is the intricate multi-story construction into the cliff itself which rises to a beautifully bricked rounded tower room called the Crow’s nest.  I was so entranced by the architecture that I didn’t do what I normally do at such sites, which is spend time ruminating about how the site was built and what life was like here.  Frankly, it was just too beautiful and mysterious.  Next time.  Ranger Andrew turned out to be one of the best guides we’ve ever had in the Park; she gave us an excellent précis of the site’s history and prehistory and  ensured we saw all of the rock art, much of which is easily missed.

In the afternoon we did the Cliff top Petroglyph trail, which was rather muddy from all the weather, and made it back just as a another storm broke.  We’d hoped to do Wetherhill Mesa as well that day but it was closed due to lightning danger.  As we drove back to the lodge for our last evening I was already missing Mesa Verde.

The next day we decamped for Cortez and an afternoon at the Anasazi Heritage Center Museum which, next to the Edge of the Cedars, has one of the best displays of Anasazi artifacts.  Visiting either museum is always a wistful and melancholy experience for me:  I’m always reminded of what’s lost, not just particular artifacts, but the individual stories of the people themselves.  Their architecture, their migrations revealed in the archaeological record and their art suggest a lost history which must have been rich, dramatic and probably pertinent to the stresses our own culture faces.

In the evening, thanks to recommendations made by two different people we’d met at Mesa Verde, we found our way to the newly opened Loungin’ Lizard Restaurant in Cortez.  It’s a project of the former chef at the Mesa Verde Lodge, Brian Puett and his wife Amanda.  The chalk board menu, is definitely reminiscent of the one of the one he created for Mesa Verde, but clearly aspires to take a step up in quality and innovation.  It’s a very pleasant space, clearly frequented by the locals, including the proprietor of Drew Vineyards who dropped by our table to introduce himself when he saw us enjoying one of his wines.  I recommend the Pork, the Bison burger with Pork belly, the white chili and their root beer floats.

Monday we set out for some casual hiking in Hovenweep and were once again graced with remarkable weather.  We hiked in a particular light breeze beneath uncertain clouds that  reminded me of adolescent adventures in the San Rafael Swell and Goblin Valley to the west.  So “I walked in shower of all my days” to quote Dylan Thomas.  The castle like structures of Hovenweep, with circular towers similar to the construction of the Crow’s Nest of Square Tower House in the mesa to the east suggest cultural and technological coherence but there are enough differences to suggest pluralism and diversity as well, especially when you consider the nearby Lowry ruins site.  A paper we’d heard at the Big MACC Conference in March came to mind:  Shanna Diederichs presented evidence intimating that two cultural traditions may have lived concurrently side by side at the Dillard site which was also not far away.  The Anasazi, or Ancient Puebloans if you prefer, are growing more complex and interesting the more we tease details from what remains and that may be the only consolation for what’s lost.

Tuesday, we traveled east for a short trip to Chimney Rock and the adjacent Chacoan Great House.  Unfortunately, (and completely unnecessarily to my mind) we had to make the hike with a group but the views from the top were as spectacular as ever.  The last time we were there it was for a solstice moonrise between the pinnacles.  Then it was back to Durango for Mexican food and a last evening together at the rambling, nicely preserved Strater Hotel.  After dinner, a helpful desk agent guided us to an empty party room in the basement where we indulged ourselves with Ginger Snaps, Dalwhinnie Scotch and Bridge.  Mark and I had consistently phenomenal hands; Michelle and Lynn, not so much.  In the next room, a group of local Blue Grass enthusiasts played the night away.  I mostly listen to classical music and so that night I heard the Bob Dylan/Ketch Secor song “Wagon Wheel” for the first time.  It was lovely, as was so much of the music they played.

In the morning I took one last photo of the door of room 323, dedicated to Gustaf Nordenskiöld who’d been held in the hotel by the sheriff for exporting artifacts even though there was no law against it at that time.  (According to Ranger Andrew, that event subsequently led to the Antiquities Act of 1906.)  Then it was time to take Mark and Michelle to the airport and head home.

(And so we’re back; I will return to the subject of Sir Thomas Malory shortly.)