The five deer ignored the crowd of tourists and strolled through the busy parking lot.
Cars halted and visitors gawked as the deer daintily picked their way across a crosswalk and disappeared down a path toward one of the ancient Indian cliff dwellings in Mesa Verde National Park.
I wished we visitors could have been as free as the deer to roam around Mesa Verde. But to protect the park`s fragile Anasazi Indian archeological sites, human visitors are kept on a tight leash.
Mesa Verde National Park, in the southwest corner of Colorado, is one of the most popular destinations in the American Southwest. And rightly so.
On this high, forested plateau, pierced by narrow canyons, the Anasazi
(pronounced ah-nah-SAH-zee) culture flourished for about 700 years. Visitors can explore everything from 6th Century pit houses-simple houses dug into the ground and roofed over-to the famed 13th Century cliff dwellings-villages of stone built in massive alcoves in the sheer canyon walls.
The 80-square-mile park is dedicated to human history-not, like most national parks, to the glories of nature. It`s not a park for long hikes, fishing or back-country camping.
Instead, it`s a place to immerse yourself in the Anasazi Indian past-by listening to rangers` talks; by clambering into the cliff dwellings (up and down rock staircases and, occasionally, ladders) and by meandering around the displays in the Chapin Mesa Archeological Museum that tell of the daily life of the Anasazi.
Yet the park`s natural setting is dramatic, atop a high plateau of pinyon pine and juniper (Mesa Verde means ”green table” in Spanish). On a clear day, from the 8,500-foot Park Point, the park`s highest spot, you can see the peaks and deserts of four states-Colorado, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico.
The road up to Mesa Verde is dramatic, too. It twists and climbs, with nerve-wracking, sheer drops, for 21 miles from the park entrance to the museum. (The road makes a quivering mess of flat-land drivers.)
About 650,000 people visit Mesa Verde each year. That pressure on the fragile cliff dwellings has made the park a place of regulations, fenced-off sites and, in summer, lines of people waiting to tour the dwellings. (The cliff dwellings can be entered only on ranger-led tours or when rangers are stationed at them.) The main sightseeing drive on the mesa top, the 12-mile Ruins Road, can be clogged with cars.
Amid the crowds and rules, it`s hard for a visitor to capture the feeling of what life must have been like at Mesa Verde hundreds of years ago, when the stone walls echoed to children`s games; when villagers tilled their crops of corn and squash on the mesa top; when men hunted deer and rabbits; when women cooked over wood fires and created the intricate black-on-white pottery.
Avoid the summer crowds
But there are ways to get a feel for the Anasazi past. Avoid the peak summer months. Give yourself plenty of time to roam around the park. Go to the museum first, so you`ll understand what you`re looking at.
On my late-fall visit, I drove up the park`s steep, winding access road early one morning in snow flurries and biting wind. At Far View, an Anasazi mesa-top village, only a half-dozen other visitors were roaming among the remains of the stone houses and the kivas, subterranean ceremonial rooms where villagers conducted healing ceremonies and other rites.
But an hour later, by the time I started driving the Ruins Road sightseeing loop, the sun was shining and it was one-sweater weather. The dusting of snow had melted; the air was scented with sun-warmed pine and juniper. At the pullouts and parking lots, there was only a handful of cars. Views could be savored uninterrupted; even Cliff Palace, the largest and most- visited cliff dwelling in the park, could be explored in relative peace.
More than 20 major Anasazi archeological sites are open to visitors in Mesa Verde, including the pit houses; mesa-top villages; and the remains of an irrigation system for crops (ditches and a reservoir).
Hundreds more unexcavated Anasazi sites, including some major cliff dwellings, are scattered around the park; to keep those sites undisturbed, hiking and camping is forbidden in most of the park.
But it is the half-dozen or so cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde that most capture the imagination.
`Condos` amid the cliffs
Cliff Palace is a complex of houses and towers-an ancient cliff condo of sorts-clustered in a cliff alcove more than 300 feet long, 100 feet deep and tall enough to accommodate the three-story buildings. It`s the biggest cliff dwelling in the park-217 rooms and 23 kivas-and is one of the biggest cliff dwellings in North America.
The stone-walled buildings huddle together, their honey-colored rock blending with the sandstone cliffs.
A few of the original floor timbers remain, the wood preserved for centuries in the arid climate. The rooms are small, the doorways narrow; the Anasazi were a small people, the men averaging about 5 foot 4.
About 250 people are believed to have lived in Cliff Palace in the 1200s, the zenith of Anasazi culture.
The cliff dwelling perches in its natural cave about 60 feet down from the mesa top. Narrow, steep stairs lead to it from the mesa; the canyon plunges down hundreds more feet. (How, mused some visitors, did they ever keep their toddlers from falling over the edge?)
Despite all the artifacts of Mesa Verde-the buildings, the finely made pottery, baskets (some woven so tightly that they could hold water) and jewelry, much of the Anasazi culture remains wrapped in mystery. The Anasazi left no written record, and the artifacts can`t reveal all.
Among the mysteries: Why, about 1200, did the Anasazi move from their mesa-top homes down into the cliff alcoves?
No one is sure. Some say cliff dwellings were easier to defend against enemies or offered more shelter from the weather. Others suggest religious or psychological reasons.
Yet by about 1300, the Anasazi had deserted their cliff dwellings and the whole Mesa Verde area. Again, no one knows for sure why they left.
Perhaps a drought forced them out. Or crops failed because of centuries of farming that depleted the soil. Or the forests were denuded by centuries of firewood-collecting. Or the climate cooled-there`s evidence of a mini ”ice age” in the late 1200s. Or, a few scholars suggest, perhaps social tensions were mounting-communities were getting too big and family groups broke away.
”It`s very difficult to know what happened without a written record. And we may never know,” says park archeologist Linda Martin.
”Sometimes that`s hard for visitors, for Americans to accept. We go to university, we study history, we expect answers. Here there are no definite answers. Just theories,” says Martin.
Whatever the causes, the Anasazi left their Mesa Verde homes. The cliff dwellings lay undisturbed for centuries-until 1888 when some cowboys, out rounding up stray cattle, stumbled across what is now called Cliff Palace. Congress created a park to protect Mesa Verde in 1906.
Where did they go?
So where did the Anasazi go? Most probably headed south into what is now Arizona and New Mexico. It`s believed the Anasazi are the ancestors of the present-day Pueblo Indians of northern New Mexico and the Hopi Indians who live in mesa-top villages in northeast Arizona.
Even the meaning of the name ”Anasazi” isn`t clear. Many say the Navajo Indian word means ”the ancient ones.” Others say it means ”ancestors of the alien ones” (the Navajo Indians have a separate ancestry).
The stones of Mesa Verde are silent on all this. But in a quiet moment in the cliff dwellings, you can feel almost feel the presence of the Anasazi.
When cowboy Richard Wetherill stumbled across the cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde in 1888, it seemed as if the Anasazi had just left, writes Thomas Keneally in ”The Places Where Souls Are Born.”
”Though the Anasazi had left it perhaps nearly 600 years before, there were cooking pots on the hearth, pottery was strewn on the floor. Richard Wetherill mentions seeing sandals in the corner. As if the occupants had just stepped out.
”That`s the wonder of Cliff Palace and Spruce Tree House and all the others. They possess the air of having been alive with activity until the second you look at them. Someone is lying low there.”
