Cocoposts

Mesa Verde National Park

Jesse Nusbaum with little friend. NPS photo.


Today’s experience visiting Mesa Verde couldn’t be more different from 1000 years ago if we were dropped down from space. We move on asphalt networks in metal capsules of varying sizes, hopping in and out of them (over twelve times by my count) at carefully positioned locations to view ruins covered by monstrously unattractive metal buildings.  Funny thing is, I don’t mind. It is a very special place in spite of this strange and temporary connection.

The mesa changes from verde to oro this time of year as oaks and serviceberry turn. I imagined thinner crowds and cooler weather but the parking lot at the big Visitor and Research Center was already busy at 9:45AM and it was warm on the mesa by noon.

TACA Board Member Jerry Widdison remembers visiting the park with his family after the war. They stayed at the Aneth Motel in Cortez. It’s still there. Aneth is a word in many languages but Jerry said it’s Navajo and also a Utah place name. The origin may be a nickname given to a greedy Anglo trader meaning just like a devil. The term was used more widely about unsavory business practices at trading posts.

The Drive

At the entrance kiosk up the road I bought an Annual Senior Pass which is a very good deal. The man staffing the kiosk was a quintessential park ranger in full uniform, full beard, dark sunglasses and Smokey Bear hat. I resisted asking, “All set for Halloween, are ya?” 

It is a great road up and across the big mesa and its smaller mesas, that reach like fingers between multiple canyons. There are stunning views from several overlooks. Jerry recalled the hair raising part of the route called “The Knife Edge” that’s now a trail. A tunnel replaced this section of the road.

Far View Ruins site was my first intended stop but, like all of  Wetherill Mesa, it was closed.  With no choice, like everyone else that day, I went on southward on Chapin Mesa to the museum and two loop roads. 

It’s clear from old maps and aerial photos that ruins are all over Chapin Mesa but you can’t see the archaeology from the roads and you’re not allowed off them. This is by design. It protects the sites and landscape from being over-run by humans, no doubt. It also means you can be well over two hours into the park before ever seeing a ruin.

Jerry also recalled that the tours of the famous cliff dwellings were first-come-first-served and that you could walk into many of them unaccompanied by a guide.  Those days are gone. 

Park History

The people behind designation of Mesa Verde as a National Park in 1906 included women. Virginia McClurg (1857-1931) started a movement to preserve the cultural treasures of the mesa. Lucy Peabody, (1863-1934) the “Mother of Mesa Verde” worked nine years to gain national support for park creation, including negotiation with the Weminuche Utes.

Wetherill and Chapin Mesas are named after Richard Wetherill and Frederick H. Chapin. Along with Wetherill’s family, including Marietta Palmer Wetherill, they explored the ruins during the summers of 1889 and 1890. Chapin wrote the first book about the place in 1892, “The Land of the Cliff Dwellers.”

Wetherill was from a Quaker ranching family that settled in the Mancos River valley in 1880. He ran trading posts, including one in Chaco Canyon where he was murdered in 1910. Artifacts he and his family collected were subsequently donated by Marietta Wetherill to the University of New Mexico. 

Perhaps the people with the mostly visible modern impact on the park were Jesse Nusbaum and his wife Eileen. Jesse Nusbaum was selected as park superintendent in 1921 and began significant improvements in 1922. 

Parkitecture

Before arriving at the museum I turned off on a whim to check out the picnic area. It was  delightful. No other people were there. Old thick junipers shade the picnic tables. This was once the campground and the spaces and little roads are scaled for Model Ts. I found a choice spot in front of a serviceberry bush in full yellow fall color and saw a turkey, crows, and a hawk.

It was here in the old campground that first noticed a little sandstone brick building that looked a bit like an ancient pueblo structure. It was a restroom.
The reinterpretation of ancient architecture for modern purposes at Mesa Verde in the early twenties created a cluster of unique historic buildings on Chapin Mesa - a layer of history upon prehistory.

Jesse Nusbaum (1887-1975) was born in Greeley, Colorado and became an archaeologist when the science was new. He studied teaching and then taught in Las Vegas, New Mexico before becoming an archaeologist and architect, undertaking work on new and ancient buildings, including the Palace of the Governors and the State Art Museum in Santa Fe. 

I left the picnic area and headed into that cluster of historic buildings - hidden in and among large junipers and punctuated by expanses of asphalt roads and parking. The museum was one of six buildings funded by JD Rockefeller Jr.  and built by the newly appointed superintendent between 1922-1925, with an addition in 1939. It’s design subtly mimics a scaled down Spanish mission with a small interior courtyard (barely visible through the windows) and a “church” or auditorium where a film about the park was showing.

Ruins at Last

In spite of its position as the focal point atop the trail that descends into Spruce Canyon and Spruce Tree House - my first view of a ruin - the museum is underwhelming and crowded. The building was apparently tortured into ADA compliance and ramps consume entire rooms. It’s obvious a lot more money and effort have gone into displays at the visitor center at the entrance in recent years than at the old museum on Chapin Mesa.

There’ve been many fires but many beautiful trees remain. During the height of occupation in the thirteenth century, the plateau was largely deforested. According to dendrochronologists cited in the extensive wiki page about Mesa Verde, the last tree used in construction was cut in 1281. This marked the tail end of mesa occupation.

The loop roads have many overlooks from which to view canyon ruins. Jerry said he visited an overlook exactly 100 years after Wetherill rode a horse up to that same spot and saw Cliff Palace for the first time. It’s still awe inspiring.

I’m planning on visiting Mesa Verde again before my annual pass expires. I’ll never grow tired of trying to envision life on this mesa, even in the more recent past when visitors in early cars or wagons climbed the mesa over difficult roads to visit mysterious stone structures for the first time. Plenty of mysteries remain on Mesa Verde. 

 

 

A Late Summer Summary

Planning Emergency

Image: 1927 New Mexico highway map show route of today’s 550 as 44 joining 19 at Aztec. The  road to Silver City crossing the Black Range over Emory Pass, now NM152,  as US 180

My first concern is no hot shower. The phone is charged, which is good because otherwise I would have missed the notice on my weather app about a “Regional Planned Emergency Power Outage.” That’s the wording. I’m especially amused by the oxymoronic ‘planned emergency.’ Apparently it provided “plausible deniability” for hotels that rented rooms in spite on knowing what was coming. 

Up until then I liked my big bright corner room in the grand old hotel. The fire escape door at the end of the hall was tied open and there was a smell of room deodorant masking a sewer scent in the bathroom. But the mountain view - incomparable and stunning.

Red Mountain White Knuckles

The drive on US 550 up here is intense. As kids we called the whole stretch the “Million Dollar Highway.” It probably costs at least that much every year just to maintain it. It is now apparently only called that between Silverton and Ouray. According to wiki, it’s the portion twelve miles south of Ouray - that last hair raising portion through Uncompagre Gorge, that gives the highway its name. Quick glances at faces in oncoming cars show passengers expressing worry or terror. 

The highway is an impressive drive all the way from Albuquerque. It’s US 550 the entire way - the Rio Grande Valley to Montrose on the Western Slope through some of the most interesting geology in the west. Portions follow routes used in prehistory and the Old Spanish Trail. In the San Juans a man named Otto Mears built the first tollroads on parts of what became this highway. Then he built the first railroad to Silverton. Collectors of railroad memorabilia love his Silverton Railroad passes, printed on buckskin and adorned with silver filigree. 

It’s nice to divide the drive into two parts with a stop in Silverton for relief from the cliff-clinging road. A free Shakespeare production of As You Like It in intimate little Anesi Park that night was delightful. Multiple sponsors included UpstART Theater That Moves. The play was also preformed in Ouray.  

The Silverton history museum expanded from the old jail to a mining boarding house donated to the San Juan Historical Society. In and under those buildings is everything related to mining but a live burro. A mineral exhibit had me transfixed and I stared at innocent looking yellow uranium powder for probably too long wondering if it’s safe.  

My second concern on the morning of no electricity, is no hot coffee. I thank my stars for the cold brew I bought yesterday and sit in my car taking big gulps while admiring the looming mountainsides, illuminated like a stage backdrop by the rising sun. Somewhere someone is whistling. 

The whole county is lined up in the one coffee shop with a generator. There are delicious pastries. A hot cup takes ten minutes. Everyone is listening to city workers talking loud and greeting each other as they file in between the tourists. One guy says marijuana is a gateway drug and another says it sure was for him. The whole place erupts in laughter.

Give me an old hotel over a new dull and anonymous one any day. Preferably with electricity. 

To Tucson

From I-25 I drove west to Silver City through the Black Range. It is a magical drive and less scary for the height conscious passengers. I remember boys at NMSU hauling bicycles up and riding them down the curvy steep bits above Kingston. I drove the pickup. No one was hurt, remarkably.  Tiny grey deer under ponderosa watch the occasional traffic. I try and take photos but end up attempting watercolors  later for the first time in years - simply inspired.

Silver City is a good and interesting. It's one of those places where the rolling Wheel of Fortune has been very visible and left an indelible track. Artists and seekers sometimes come to places like this.  Sometimes money or popularity "ruin it" and we'll talk about how Vail or Durango or Santa Fe used to be. Silver is like that now.  I'm sure it'll change again. Cultures have been displacing, absorbing, undermining each other from prehistory. Land and landscapes used and abused. Mountains turned upside down for copper. Rebellion over cows to controversial feral cow elimination.

It’s always the end of an era. Sometimes things get better. Sometimes (usually) long after “we” are gone. Like how a flood in 1895 washed out Silver City’s Main Street leaving a 55 foot deep trench. Main street became the next street over. Now the trench is a pretty linear park. 

The copper mines could be a set piece for the Netflix series “KAOS” with Jeff Goldblum as Zeus sitting in a giant excavator observing the miles-wide pockmarks, seeping festules, funny-colored fake mountains. A friendly cowboy in the brew pub said when dust from blasting settles on cars it eats away the paint, “and that can’t be good." He knows dust, being from where dust storms frequently close I-10. I asked if the mines employed many people. He said he didn't really know but that they'll never close them. They'll always keep "a skeleton crew" to avoid the costs of reclamation work required when they close.

I stayed at the Murphy Hotel, a downtown classic. It is solid, simple, nice. I like to pretend I’m the Hotel Inspector. That reality show follows famed hotelier, Alex Polizzi, around Britain as she visits and critiques hotels and B and Bs. I don’t have her background, experience, heritage or chops, but I know good vibes and clean sheets when I feel and see them. I also see that cool Mondrian inspired mural on the back wall across from restored old brick buildings. I can smell the sweet little bakery downstairs around the corner. 

Mimbres pottery is a reminder of prehistory and that spinning wheel of time. Western New Mexico University has a huge collection housed in a beautiful 1917 Arts and Crafts building. The distinctive black on white Mimbres pots with animal images became so popular with collectors that ancient sites where the pottery originated have been routinely destroyed. A century of looting resulted in several large private collections that this museum has acquired for analysis and display. 

Mimbres means little willow in Spanish. We don’t know what these people called themselves or the beautiful river valley where many villages were located. Similarly, the Mimbres are classified as part of the Mogollon culture, named after mountains that were named for a Governor of New Spain. 

The Sonoran Desert

Interstate 10 is very bumpy and busy past the Arizona border. It’s best viewed as it stretches out in the distance on the descent from Silver City. Trainline-like lines of tractor trailers move back and forth. You barely see the cars, seemingly outnumbered by big trucks.

This was part of  the Gadsden Purchase - 45,000 square miles the US ripped-off from Mexico in 1854 for a transcontinental route and a railroad magnate’s aspirations. Mexico pretty much ripped it off from the Apaches who ripped it off from the Mogollon and Hohokam and Ancient Puebloans. All this within a millennium. 

It never stops. Subdivisions punch holes in the delicate Sonoran desert. It is an honor and a tragedy to be this close. Like petting an endangered fish. I baby talk to javalina from a swimming pool and sketch quail from the bedroom window. The relentless wheel spins. What will be next, you can’t predict. 

So breathe the delicate morning air. Enjoy the native desert. Come back when it’s cooler.

 

 

The Victorian Hotel

 

Sadie:  I love them. Old places but especially old big richly storied hotels in western towns. 

Cat:  I worked at an old resort near Denver for a summer. It was memorable but not endearing. I can smell it now - mold and dust. Not entirely unpleasant, or among the least unpleasant things I recall. The work was grueling. It consisted of dragging an old vacuum cleaner to hillside cabins and cleaning all day after serving breakfast, then cleaning ourselves up to serve dinner. We slept in a bunk room under the porch with cheap polyester blankets, no insulation and touching wiring. We got one day off a week, alone, when I would drive to Denver in a borrowed VW Beetle to watch The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

S: It was pretty - that canyon and the trees and the grand old three-story tower. We rattled the bones of that building at that square dance in the lobby. The whole place was alive. Give me an old hotel like that over a new one any day.

C:  Sure, if you like the smell of rotting wood and body odor. The worst place I ever stayed was an old “Victorian” in Texas. Historic, they said. Charming, they said. There were bugs. It was cold. It was windy. The windows whistled and the closest decent restaurant was thirty miles away so we ate peanut butter on stale bread and had bad coffee under dusty stuffed dead things in the morning. 

S: I remember that place. I recommended it to you. The taxidermy display in the dining room was impressive. 

C: There was a grizzly bear behind the table and a mountain lion above it. It felt like I was the meal. And it wasn’t cheap. I’d prefer a new La Quinta or Embassy Suites to fancy crown molding and a piano player in a derby.

S: Dull and anonymous.

C: Just what a hotel should be. I don’t want character. I want to sleep.

Orange

Sky, Balloon, Coyote, Dog

Project Pasture

Conservation easement establishment is progressing and the tree project is gearing up. 
I only wish I’d started ten years ago. 

 

Nikos

Single

Mushroom Men

Infinity on the Rio

Eclipse In a Colander

Mr. Nobody

Sadie and Cat had made a scarecrow in late September for a Halloween display the kids were putting up at the barn. They stuffed straw inside clothes over a wooden frame and propped it up on the second floor deck of the barn apartment. The head was a ball of fabric inside nylons with glasses and a hat. They named him “Mr. Nobody” and he almost looked real from the stable yard. From the parking lot he was convincing and menacing in the way he seemed to glare reprovingly from behind dark sunglasses. Some people found this disturbing. Mr. Nobody particularly disturbed Ace. 

The first time he saw the scarecrow Sadie was with him in his truck. As they turned into the driveway he started grumbling and cursing about how he hated strangers. She began laughing uncontrollably and didn’t stop until he rolled down his window and reached for the gun under his seat. She could barely talk through coughing gasps.

—Nobody! It’s Nobody!

This enraged him further as it implied guilt and denial. He took aim.

Angel heard pinging on the roof before the snap of gunfire and quickly assessed where it was coming from. This wasn’t hard as he could also hear Ace screaming. 

—Who does he think he is sitting there like that!? 

Sadie burst out in a fresh peal of fresh laughter. Angel admitted it was funny unless a horse got shot. 

—I don’t like the way he’s looking at me!

Ace spun the tires of his truck and drove through the gate into the stable yard and then jumped out, waving his gun.  He stomped up to the deck yelling insults at the straw man. When he noticed the mask he called him a pussy and a mummy a few times. A small group of parents and students gathered. Someone made a TikTok

Ace finally caught a clue when he recognized the sunglasses and hat as Sadie’s. Next he noticed a stick in a boot where a leg should be. He stopped yelling, deflated visibly, and got in his truck and drove off. A week later they found Mr. Nobody where Ace had hung him up from a tree and burned him. The kids at the stable had a funeral and then built his widow, Mrs. Nobody.

After that, the guys took turns wearing Sadie’s sunglasses and hat and staring at Ace from the deck whenever they saw him coming. He stopped visiting the barn. 

October Round Things NOT Balloons in Albuquerque

Ace

He noticed the crows. Their loud calls distracted him from the white noise of pain. They were circling close enough to look him in the eye. They watched as he picked his way across lava boulders in his stupid dress shoes. He was suddenly self-conscious and worried he’d fall. He was sure they’d peck his eyes out.

Velvet edges of saltbush and mesquite sharpened as dawn light hardened into day. He could tell he wasn’t thinking clearly. The wreck beat him up badly. He had tumbled around in the trunk of his wife’s sedan. The horizon had waves and there was ringing in his head. One side of his body wasn’t working right. It was hard to walk straight. He imagined taking a DUI test in this condition and laughed. Certain failure. He wiped sweat and blood off his face with the sleeve of his dress shirt and yelped as he snagged his cut lip with his cufflink. This became the most painful thing on his body for a few moments before fading into the dull roar of agony.  

Sadie had seemed so sweet and easy-going. Hard to believe she had that much violence inside her. Telling her to calm down  didn't help. Neither did his suggestion that her anger was because of menopause. Still, he was shocked when she hit him. She found out about the waitress and didn’t like being tricked. He couldn’t blame her. When they found that grave, which never should have happened, she figured it out. 

He wanted to avoid the security cameras along the highway. He’d installed the system for a billboard company and had done such a shitty job he figured they probably weren't working. But he didn’t want to take the chance.  Cross-country was rough going. Stickers clung to his socks and he was getting blisters. He needed to rest and sat down to watch the crows on what happened to be an ant pile. 

In the few moments before the biting began, he reflected on Sadie’s perverted sense of duty to her brother. He was her downfall. She treated him better than he ever treated her.  He recalled the time she'd slapped his face for calling Sebastian a dumbass. Sebastian called her a dumbass all the time. 

Ace stood up squealing. The ants were inside his trousers and biting. He tried to take them off but didn’t take off his boots first and hopped around on one leg briefly before falling back onto the ant pile in his underwear.

Sadie’s witchy friend had warned him that the consequences of his actions would pile up until the "scale of fate” tipped.  He didn’t know what she meant then but was pretty sure now. 

Ice House

There was a hidden entrance to the Cozy Y ranch house. The Colonel built a Spanish Colonial home in 1910. It sat on the mesa above the older structures on the valley floor beneath it. In one of these was an ice house or root cellar. The roof was reinforced with beams and the walls were lined with shelves. In the back wall was a closet that housed a dumbwaiter up to the pantry. 

There was room for a day bed and floor lamp. Connie would hide from her father-in-law down there. It stayed cool on the hottest days and cozy in the winter. She read books, ate peaches and preserves from glass jars with a spoon, and napped on piles of  Persian carpets and Navajo rugs stored there. They were safe from their enemies too - the moths and sunlight.

When the first ranch house burned the icehouse and other structures were all that remained. These were ignored in rebuilding. Rosa had the dumbwaiter closet rebuilt after the fire, replacing the dumbwaiter with a series of ladders and stairs. She showed it to Chocky but Alva never knew about it and neither did Sebastian. Sadie was almost certain that Ace didn't either. 

Sadie tried to jog the last hundred yards but was too exhausted. She'd been without water for the last couple of miles and she was wearing heels. She walked up her driveway and glanced at her reflection in a patio window. She looked exactly as she would expect to look if she'd hiked across the desert after killing her husband, shoving him in the trunk and wrecking the car.

She knew she couldn't get in without passing the office window.  If he wasn't there someone else might be and there would be questions. She paused to consider her options. The swimming pool was burbling and glistening. It was right there. She was so thirsty and hot.  

He glanced up when he heard the splash. She still had her clothes on but she'd done far weirder things. She waved at him and smiled a genuine smile because the water felt so delicious. When he was no longer watching she got out and strolled to the cabana for a towel. She headed the direction of the main house but appeared to reconsider and headed to the bar for a drink instead. No one was at the window when she turned around. She went back into the cabana and down a ladder in one of the changing room closets, emerging silently from the ice house below.

There was no sign of anyone at the barn.  Either Cat or Angel would be with a horse or in the office. She waved at the security camera. Her barn was never left unattended or unguarded. She began counting seconds and got to three when her dogs turned the corner of the barn at a full run. They immediately veered toward the ice house and she allowed them to jump into her arms. 

*****