Colorado’s Mesa Verde ~ Windsong

It’s amazing what you can hear when you just get silent.  In the midst of nature and her royal habitat.  She sighs and the whole valley echoes in silent reverberation.  Her stillness moves in wispy tendrils beckoning your attention over soft anticipations.  Discover me, she croons.  See me, she reminds.  Remember your roots.  We are all one.  We are all divine.  Wound together in playful dances and synchronicities.  This is your romance, this is your call.  Remember. 

Again, we were in the presence of sacred land.  It is the peoples’ that once lived amongst the arid terrain, embedded in the stronghold of mountains, near and as far as the eyes could see.  We were constantly in awe as we looked up at the stone walls that lined the trails up to the mesa.  The canyons and cliffs revealed the beautiful layered portrait of their evolutionary history.  Centuries of shaping and shifting, molding the palate of the forlorn landscape.  Its aesthetic lay in its ripe persistence.  I delighted in the chill in the air and felt grateful to be in these Colorado mountains and out of the desert climate.  My hand brushed along the smooth, stone walls as I climbed and wound through the narrow path.  The rocks almost came alive beneath my caress.  Its heartbeat pulsed through to my core.  They were still here.  Their spirit, their laughter.  Hush so you can listen.  The wind started in the distance, snaking its way to us, whistling through the trees, rustling the leaves in sacred symphony.  The most euphonic of language, understood as you open and allow it to moves through you, permeating the skin, lighting the senses.               

We had made it to the top and our first reward was a wall of carved petroglyphs.  We were witness to art over 700-years-old, a glimpse into the life of a thriving people who seemingly disappeared, having abandoned their dwellings, a century before the Spanish explorers ever arrived.  Certain etched symbols seemed translatable.  A circle winding into itself representing the sun, triangles with bottom stems representing trees, stick figures of warriors with their spears, and outlines of animals.  A whole life had coexisted and was depicted before us.  Our mind’s fancy could not be explained or deterred from such amazement as what we stared at.

We ascended to the summit and moved near the edge.  The canyons were illuminated in the warm sunlight; some rocks even sparkled.  Again, the valley crooned, and again the silence spoke.  One could imagine a time when the empty riverbed actually flowed, and where the Natives walked and hunted.  I started to get a better sense of how the Native Americans coexisted with their habitat.  Their reliance upon nature was returned with reverence for it, and that is why the land is sacred.  The land is life.

In the near distance were the “cliff dwellings,” where the people had built their habitats into the concave spaces of cliff that the earth had carved out and left.  The people had stacked clay “bricks” fashioning rooms and spaces for food storage, and these dwellings had remained somewhat intact over the centuries.  Some were even multiple stories.  These were a much more modern version of the cave homes we’d seen when we hiked the prehistoric site of the Tsankawi people’s in northern New Mexico and how they’d made homes in the eroded caves throughout the canyons.  Nothing was as memorable as when we had sat inside one of the larger caves upon chair-sized, smoothed rocks and were surprised to find petroglyphs in the shape of what appeared to be a chief.  We had sat where he had sat. 

What an honor. Up close the cliff dwellings were a marvel to behold.  These people had adapted to their surroundings.  They managed to survive in seasons of extreme heat, bitter cold, and even droughts.  The Natives are known for their resourcefulness, not only incorporating, but having made their local resources into a culture and rich heritage in their way of life.  Evidence reveals how these peoples utilized the local plants, trees, and earth to fashion things like roofing, baskets, clothing, instruments and pottery, and we were lucky to see remnants.  Myths and stories that have been passed down through the generations also give insight into the rituals and traditions that the people kept in regards to hunting.  All was done with balance and reverence to the Great Spirit, because they recognized the interdependence of all that exists.

                               

We drove further into the expansive park, and got out at “Four corners” look out.  A steep climb and we made it to an impressive overlook with 360-degree views of mountains as far as the eyes could see, spanning four states.  The wind pierced coldly, beating my sun-tinged skin.  I stared out, studying curves and edges of the distinct mountain ranges.  I imagined how people from these tribes had stood in the same exact spot looking out onto the same view.  The mountains looked majestic in a silvery mist.  It was guessed that the Hopi tribes in these areas, and Tsankawi people of northern New Mexico, abandoned their homes here due to drought.  It seemed a shame that they would have to leave the land in which they had been so deeply enmeshed in.  But as much as one is a part of nature, as much too, as you are subjected to her “law.”  Perhaps harmony as a way of being would have to take on a new context.