The ruts of time . . .
Monday 2/17
Part of my fascination with ruins, I think, is walking through them, leaving footprints in places that people inhabited centuries ago. I’ve trudged through Templo Mayor, Teotihuacan and Monte Alban in Mexico, and I’ve probed most of the major Anasazi ruins in New Mexico . . . Chaco Canyon, Salmon, Aztec and now Bandelier. After I was done at Bandelier, I decided to drive up to Tsankawi, an Anasazi pueblo that’s just up the road from Tyuonyi. It’s part of Bandelier, but it’s out of the way. I almost skipped it. I’d spent almost four hours hiking the main part of Bandelier and was pretty beat. But I’m glad I didn’t.
Tsankawi is not as “developed” as Bandelier, and it doesn’t get anywhere near the tourist traffic (when I left Bandelier at about 1 p.m., the parking lot was packed . . . and it was a Monday morning in February.) Tsankawi was nothing like that. It’s about a 1 ½ mile loop that goes through the cave dwellings.
There were two remarkable things at Tsankawi: Over the centuries, foot traffic has worn trenches in the rock. It’s amazing to stand there and see these troughs of human activity crisscrossing the site. And then to place your feet in them and fall in line with the human erosion on the desert landscape. The second thing was the view. Tsankawi has one of the most incredible views of all the New Mexico ruins I’ve visited. The snow-capped Sangre de Christo Mountains were shimmering in the east. The Jemez Mountains were to the west. And about 70 miles to the south, you could see the Sandias, the range that looms over Albuquerque and shadowed me while I lived there.
Posted by Bob Benz at February 20, 2003 12:05 AM