Sand Canyon and Mesa Verde

We visited Mesa Verde after first visiting Sand Canyon, which was buried in snow. Ancestral Puebloan people lived complex and community based lives along the canyons feeding into the San Juan River which we traveled over at Four Corners on Ute Nation.
There are apparently 21 Puebloan tribes or nations which call the Ancestral Puebloan people there ancestors. (They therefore are not considered “extinct” people as I wrote in the last blog.)
Mesa Verde National Park encompasses two mesas. One was closed due to snow. The loop we made showed the evolution of the people from living on the mesas to cliff dwelling. From tree ring studies it seems that it was 23 years of drought that may have driven the people from their sophisticated communal dwellings in the cliffs to obscurity.We got to walk around Spruce Tree House with an enthusiastic park ranger who talked about the structures and history the best he could.
The heart of Ancestral and modern Puebloan spiritual life was and is the Kiva which connects us to the other worlds. For me, these metate struck the best connection between our time and their time, which ended by 1300 “common era.”