| Submitted by: Evelyn C. LeeperUnited States |
| Submission Date: 14 February 2005 |
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Going east on NM 53 for 34 miles brought us to El Morro National Monument. (There is also an El Morro in San Juan, Puerto Rico, administered by the National Park Service, but that's part of the San Juan National Historical Site. Still, it could lead to confusion. And what's the difference between a National Monument and a National Historical Site?) The main attraction of this site is grafitti, dating from 1605 to 1906. Actually, there's newer grafitti than that, but it's called vandalism. It's hard to explain why someone carving their name on a rock in 1880 is historic and should be preserved, and someone doing it in 1980 is a vandal. Was the 1880 person a vandal then?
The reason this giant sandstone cliff (headland, or 'morro' in Spanish) has all the grafitti is that it also has a pool of water fed by a spring, making it a popular stopping place for travelers through the dry Southwest. A trail leads along the base of the cliff and a booklet points out the most important inscriptions (this is also known as Inscription Rock). Actually, 1605 is only the date of the first European inscription; there are Zuni or Anasazi petroglyphs pre-dating that. These are higher up, as the ground level has been eroded since they were made. Another trail (which we didn't take) climbs to the top of the bluff to some Anasazi/Zuni ruins up there.
This took about an hour, marred only by a family with three unruly children. That's what comes of sightseeing on weekends, I suppose. During the week, places are much quieter because all the children are in school. So unless you meet a field trip, you're all set.
Many of the National Monuments have booklets describing the trails, and they have a very reasonable system for allowing people to use them. You can borrow them while you're there for free, and if you want to keep one (since they have a lot of information and photographs), you pay fifty cents for it. This is often on the honor system, with a stack of booklets and a coin box at the trail head. This means they don't have to charge everyone for the book and seems to work well.
After El Morro we took NM 53 east for another 42 miles along the west side of the Mal Pais lava beds. These are from the same lava flows as the beds we passed through earlier near Carrizozo. After stopping at the Visitors Center in Grants (these beds are part of El Malpais National Monument), we drove south on NM 117 along the east side. There was a good overlook point, but the view from the road was considerably inferior to what we got driving near Carrizozo (or in fact driving along I-40, as we discovered the next day). If you really want to see the lava, you have to hike it. There is a seven-and-a-half-mile (one way) trail that crosses the entire flow. We hiked in for about a half hour, then returned, which is a way of getting the feel of it without doing a seven-hour hike. (I guess you have to arrange to be dropped of at one end and/or picked up at the other--I doubt most people hike a round trip.) The hike is really quite interesting- -the trail is marked by stone cairns with a tall branch stuck in them. Supposedly some of the cairns have been there for hundreds of years. You travel from marker to marker, always making sure you can see the next before leaving the last. And sometimes it's a bit of a puzzle how to get from here to there over crevasses and craggy 'boulders' of lava. I would like to go back and try going further--but unencumbered with camera and binoculars, wearing a hat, and carrying some water. (And earlier in the day, when I'm not tired and sunset isn't approaching--even a low sun is a problem as it casts shadows obscuring some of the lava features.) Oh, well, maybe next time. If you're not planning on hiking, you might as well stick with the view from I-40.
All this driving and hiking filled up the rest of the afternoon, so we checked into the Motel 6 in Grants. Grants has been know most recently as a uranium mining town. The book started when an Indian overheard two men talking about looking for some yellowish rock. He saw what they had and realized he knew where there was a lot of it. (What isn't said is whether he got much out of all this.) Dinner was at 4B's, a typical 'family restaurant.'
Mileage today: 190 miles.
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After breakfast, we drove east 12 miles on I-40 and another 15 miles on some fairly confusingly marked back roads to Acoma Pueblo, a.k.a. Sky City. All the directional signs were hand-painted (white on black mostly, sort of like their pottery colors, though it's probably a coincidence). The largest sign was set at an angle to the road at an intersection, so it was unclear whether the arrow was pointing east or south. I managed to guess wrong, but luckily noticed a sign in my rear view mirror a few miles later indicating that Acoma was behind me. Eventually we found the Visitors Center, about 8:30 AM.
A guided tour of Sky City costs $6 a person and the only way to see it is a guided tour. Photography is extra: $5 for cameras, $40 for sketching or painting, and no video cameras allowed.
Sky City claims to be the oldest continuously inhabited site in the United States, and archaeological evidence indicates activity back to 600 C.E. (Old Orabai in Arizona also makes this claim and is known to date back to at least 1100.) Of course, it's perhaps debatable whether Sky City should be counted as inhabited now. There are ten to thirteen families on the 357-foot-high mesa, or about thirty people. But I got the impression from our guide Hope (or Dumaituitsa) that this was a rotating population; people stayed on top for a few weeks, then returned to their homes below. It sounds to me as if they're trying to keep from ending their streak more than staying there because they want to. (The whole Acoma group has 4000 people, so the percentage on the mesa is relatively small.)
One of the main features of Sky City is the San Esteban de Acoma Mission, a large (120 feet by 40 feet by 60 feet) church dating from 1629. In fact, it is the largest of the pueblo missions, and the beams for the roof had to be carried from Mount Taylor, twenty miles away. The cemetery is of interest--it's forty feet deep, as new layers were added atop the old (something like the Jewish cemetery in Prague, though the latter is more like twenty feet deep). The cemetery is surrounded by a wall topped by lumps of clay representing sentries guarding the cemetery. The wall also has a hole in the south wall for the spirits to exit through. Oh, another similarity to the Jewish cemetery is that coffins are not used. Here it's because they might trap the spirit. In Jewish cemeteries there are coffins, but they are very simple and all wood, including pegs instead of nails, so that the body is not prevented from returning to the earth.
One reason people prefer to live 'below' is that there is no running water on the mesa top, all water is collected from natural cisterns which catch the rain water, and the only electricity is from generators. Of the cisterns, only two out of the five have potable water (the others are too close to the homes and streets). There is one tree on the mesa top (a cottonwood), and one rose bush. While the dwellings still have the traditional ladders outside, they also have stairs inside. The kiva, however, retains its traditional roof entrance and has not been modernized.
Like all pueblo people, the Acoma are matrilocal. In addition, inheritance of the house is through the youngest daughter. If there is no daughter, it goes to the youngest son. If there are no children, it is returned to the clan to be given to the closest relative. This rarely happens. Currently on the seventy acres of mesa top, there are four hundred to five hundred homes. (Remember that there are only ten to thirteen families, and you can see why I'm not sure this counts as 'continuously inhabited.') The main reason people live on top of the mesa seems to be to sell pottery to the tourists. I wasn't counting but we seemed to pass between ten and thirteen pottery stands. I doubt this was coincidental.
Though we rode up in a bus on a road built in 1957, we all decided to take the old stone stairway down. It was tricky in a couple of places, but there were lots of hand holds carved in the cliff that helped. I can see how it would have been difficult for enemies to attack Acoma up that.
Visible from the top of the mesa was also Enchanted Mesa. Legend has it that the Acoma used to live on this mesa until a violent storm destroyed the stone staircase that provided the only access to the top. One legend says only a grandmother and granddaughter were atop the mesa when this happened; another says there were more. Of the grandmother and granddaughter, some claim they leapt to their deaths rather than starve up there. Some say that when the wind is blowing, you can hear the cries of those trapped on the mesa in it. In all the versions, the current Sky City was founded by those who were not on the mesa when the storm came.
The tour took about an hour (in the summer, they're forty-five minutes, but things aren't as hectic now). We also looked around the small museum in the Visitors Center before leaving at 10:30 AM. The road back to I-40 was better marked (going from west to east one exits I-40 at exit 96 and rejoins it at exit 108, so it's a different road).
Going east on I-40 another 48 miles to Albuquerque, we followed NM 448 and side roads to Petroglyph National Monument. This is a very new National Monument, created in 1990. The Visitors center was completed only two months ago and the signs directing people there still call it 'Indian Petroglyph State Park.' There are three trails among the petroglyphs. The easiest is a five-minute walk past three or four clear petroglyphs (and others less clear). The toughest is a climb up a one-hundred-and-fifty-foot hill past dozens of petroglyphs. Again, a booklet helps pick all the major figures out. All three trails took about an hour.
We returned to I-40 for another 4 miles and then took I-25 north for 52 miles. Traffic into Albuquerque on I-25 was very heavy, which seemed strange for 1 PM. And so it was--George Bush was speaking in the Albuquerque Plaza at 2 PM. I'm glad we hadn't planned on seeing Albuquerque today.
In Santa Fe we exited I-25 and took US 285 north for 34 miles, then NM 68 for 46 miles to get us to Taos, arriving about 4 PM.
After checking into the Super 8 Motel--surprisingly fancy for the price, with hand-crafted furniture--we drove to the plaza. The technical term for Taos is 'artsy-fartsy.' It's full of cute little shops and art galleries with price tags which are neither cute nor little. It's fun to walk around, but it's not the sort of place where I would shop. There were a couple of places in our price range that had some nice pottery or jewelry, but on the whole I found it less than engaging.
Dinner was at El Patio de Taos, just off the plaza. Some of the scenes in EVERY WHICH WAY BUT LOOSE were filmed here. I had a chicken tamale; Mark had chiles rellenos. (They also had a duck enchilada on the menu.) Considering how expensive the stores are, the prices ($10 to $15 for entrees) seemed very reasonable.
Mileage today: 266 miles.
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| It was 32 degrees Fahrenheit (0 degrees Celsius) outside when we woke up. In Flagstaff the highs were in the 70s and the lows in the 40s; here it's the 60s and the 30s. |
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| Copyright © - "Evelyn C. Leeper" |
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