Serendipity Strikes Again, in Colorado

I love serendipity.  I learned this word from my dance teacher on Maui when I was in high school.  She had named her car Serendipity, and I have loved the word ever since she explained to me what it meant.  Serendipity, she explained, is when something delightful happens, unexpectedly.  Serendipity is always magical.

Lee and I knew we wanted to head for Moab, Utah, after Santa Fe, but we would have to make one or two stops along the way.  Lee found an RV park he liked the looks of, in a Colorado Rocky Mountain town called Pagosa Springs.  Lee and I had never heard of the town, knew nothing about it, but I was up for the adventure.  It was in the right place at the right time.  Serendipity.

As it turns out, we loved Pagosa Springs.  It is at 7,100 feet.  To the north and east we could see the majesty of the Rocky Mountains.

The RV park was on Wolf Creek, a sparkling mountain stream.  Had we followed the creek upstream, we would have arrived at the Wolf Creek Ski Area, the summit of which is at 11,904 feet.  Lee seems to be affected more by high elevation than I am, and he had had enough of high altitudes in Santa Fe, so we didn't make the trip.

In addition to access to the ski area, Pagosa Springs itself is best known, for the "healing waters" of its hot springs.  There were certainly a lot of people taking advantage of the opportunity!  These springs have been known for centuries, to Native Americans before the white man discovered them.  Our first view of the springs was of a small one on the opposite side of the the river from the main springs.

On the southeast side of the river and opposite the historic district are the main springs.  The water has been channeled into man-made pools for the comfort of tourists and locals alike.

 

 

Flowers are happy in Pagosa Springs at this time of year!

Up the hill from the springs manipulated and used by people is another spring, turqoise in color, where the earth-warmed water is much too hot for bathing.  There are warning signs all around.

Just downstream from the springs were some young boys fishing.  There is something for everyone here!

A day later we were eating leisurely at a restaurant that overlooked the river, directly across from the springs, and watched a flock of seven common mergansers making their way upstream.  It is nice to see a river shared in harmony by both people and wildlife.  By the way, Brewer's blackbirds seemed to enjoy bathing in the river near the springs.  The water must have been warmer there, and the birds knew it!

(Lee gets special credit for the merganser photographs)

Not too far west of Pagosa Springs we found another interesting attraction, the Chimney Rock National Monument.  It was made a national monument in 2012, so is probably unknown to most people.  It is currently under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Forest Service, but is run completely by a non-profit group.  The site is the remnants of a village that was an outpost of Ancestral Puebloans (previously known as the Anasazi) over 1,000 years ago.

  

The woman who led the tour is a volunteer but also an archaeologist, so she knew her stuff.  She could answer any question we threw at her.  

The Ancestral Puebloans would normally dig a pit in the ground to create the base of their homes, then create a low wall.  On this particular mesa, there was too much rock to dig too far, so the stone walls were higher here than at other sites.  On top of the stone wall, these people would add a wood structure covered by adobe.  Entrance was by ladders and through the smoke hole in the roof.  The archaeologist explained that these people thought smoke was purifying, so climbing through smoke was a good thing.  The pithouse (as they were called) would have been used primarily for sleeping.

Against the outside wall of each pithouse were three sections, two open and one closed, that served various purposes.  One section was for grinding grains, corn, nuts, and legumes.  (These people grew corn, beans and squash on the mesa.)

The second space was for making tools, and the enclosed space was primarily for food storage.  All the spaces seemed small to me, but these people were small.  Women averaged 4'11" in height, and men were only slightly taller.

Every village had at least one kiva.  The kiva was used for ceremonial and social purposes.  To this day, Native Americans consider kivas sacred and still use them for ceremonial purposes.  At all the sites Lee and I have visited we have been asked not to enter them, including this one.  The kivas are always round and are inset into the ground.

It is believed the stone benches on either side of the fire pit were used for "foot drums" - wooden boards may have been laid across them, and then rhythmically stomped upon.

I was fascinated by a feature on slickrock in the village.  First of all, there were fossilized tracks of ancient shrimp on the slickrock, which was once sand at the bottom of an ancient sea.

Secondly, there was a deep round hole in the rock similar to those found in other villages of the same period.  It is now believed this hole was used to anchor a pole, which was used as a survey tool of sorts.  All the walls of the buildings in the village are lined up in exactly the same direction, possibly through use of the pole by sighting in some way. 

Our tour guide next led us up a steep hill to a feature that can be viewed only with a guide.  It reminded me of a smaller version of Machu Picchu in Peru.  Here is an aerial view that I found on the web:

The construction of this building (known as the Great House) was state-of-the-art Chaco construction.

 Archaeologists believe the structure was very important to the Ancestral Puebloan people, and people would come from hundreds of miles away to visit. The Great House includes two kivas, but also several small rooms that served two purposes.  The walls of the small rectangular rooms served as buttresses to strengthen the walls of the kivas, but they also served as rooms of a sort of hotel, a place where visitors from far away could stay.

 

The large kiva, as is the case with most kivas, has a bench around the outer edge that serves to support posts for the roofing.  By the way, look at that view!

At this point, you are asking why people would come from so far away to visit this distant outpost of Ancestral Puebloan society.  The reason is because of Chimney Rock, clearly visible and within walking distance of the Great House.

It took archaeologists a long time to determine why Chimney Rock was so important to these people, but they now believe it has to do with the the Major Lunar Standstill (MLS), something I had never heard of.  To explain, and I quote (from http://www.chimneyrockco.org/mls.php ):

"The moon's orbit of Earth oscillates or wobbles, gradually causing the moon to rise at different points on the horizon over the years. The entire cycle of wobbling north to south and north again takes 18.6 years. At each end of its swing, the moon appears to pause for about three years, rising at the same point on the horizon before beginning to move back toward the opposite end of the swing. This pause is known as a Major Lunar Standstill."

"Why Chimney Rock?
"The majestic natural stone pillars of the Chimney Rock formation have a unique connection to the major standstill of the moon. Seen from the Great House Pueblo, the stone towers are slightly out of line with each other, framing a narrow window of sky between them. At sunset near the day of the Winter Solstice during the MLS, the full moon rises between the stone pillars, caught in this thin window of sky. The phenomenon is only visible at limited locations on the mesa top (from the center of the eastern kiva to the north)."

The construction of the Great House seems to have occurred in two phases, both coinciding with MLS years, which gives credence to this theory.

By the way, the last MLS was 2004-2007.  The next starts in 2021, and the volunteers at Chimney Rock hope, with the public, to watch the moon as it rises during the MLS.  They have started planning already.

 

This next view is of Chimney Rock, looking up at it from the valley below.

By the way, this area abounds with prairie dogs.  We haven't seen prairie dogs since we were in Montana, Wyoming, and South Dakota a couple of years ago.  Cute little guys.