Bandelier

Recent musings, from a few weeks back, hiking around Bandelier National Monument, which is about forty miles northwest of Santa Fe, right next to Los Alamos. Beautiful time of year in New Mexico, the aspens and cottonwood turning colors and a bit of fall in the air. Bandelier is a cool place, it preserves the homes of ancestral puebloans, structures dating somewhere between 1150 and 1600 AD. They have discovered as many as 3,000 sites there, including the villages of Tyuonyi and Tasankawi in Frijoles Canyon, where I hiked. Of course, the air carries the mystical vibe one feels in these places, the sense of continuity and impermanence, somehow woven together. Ancestral pueblo people have been in the area for 10,000 years and there is a lot of living, loving, laughing and dying that goes on in that period of time. Families and communities. I’ve written it before, but in this country, I think people often look at Stonehenge or the Pyramids or the Aztec ruins as THE places to go to and feel the ancients. Well, I get it, and I’ve done some of that. But, the reality is we have such places all around us, in Nashville where I live now or in New Mexico, where I was visiting. We are on native lands.

In a sidelight, I got the hiking/national park bug through trips with my son but I went to Bandelier many years ago with my ex, his mom, by happenstance. We drove from Chicago to Taos, but also went to Bandelier and took one of the longer hikes (which was closed for this visit). At that juncture, I never exercised and I/we didn’t take any water and it was closer to summer and I started feeling it and looking back, I was reminded of all the ways I thought I knew more than I really did. However, on this trip, older in years, but maybe in better shape, I strolled around and thought about the ancients, the elders, and where we stand in this vast continuum and was reminded…

Of all the ways I think I know more than I really do.