Hovenweep

We’re back from vacation, a trip to Durango, Colorado and the Four Corners region. It was a mostly good trip with a few small negatives, like getting lost on the way back and a broken windshield on the rental car. Over the next couple of days I’ll post some pictures and some thoughts I had on the trip.

I’ll start with our first destination, Hovenweep National Monument in southeastern Utah. It was built by the ancestral Puebloans, who lived there from about 500 to 1300 CE. Then they moved on, presumably because of climate change, but no one really knows – the legends of their current descendants just say their ancestors lived there, not why they left.

Here’s a shot of Cathy and I standing in front of one of the ruins. You can’t really tell from this shot, but behind the building is a canyon – the structures were all build right on the edge.

And here’s a shot of the countryside. In today’s climate, I can’t see anyone living here without modern utilities.

I tried to open myself to the spirit of the place and all I got was “hot and dry.” Whatever energy was built up by the people who lived here has either dissipated or is overwhelmed by the spirit of the desert. Although Egpyt is a half a world away, I kept hearing one of the closing lines to our Summer Solstice ritual: “the desert is always waiting, and Set is never sated.”

More to come over the next few days…