A Visit With Lizard Man, The Spirit of Pueblo Bonito
When I arrived at Chaco Canyon in May 2011, it had been two years since my previous visit. That two-year hiatus represented one five-hundredth of the time since the crash of Chaco’s Pre-Puebloan culture. From the perspective of Chaco Canyon history, my time away was insignificant.
Arriving at the park after nightfall, I had searched the visitor’s area
for water to fill the tank on my RV. To my chagrin, the old water tap
lay capped-off and hidden behind the temporary park headquarters. After
searching for a while, I found the new water tap in a far corner of
the parking lot. Whoever placed it there was not thinking about RV
service. The only way to use the faucet was to fill containers and then
transport them by hand. The new manual system encouraged conservation,
but mainly through inconvenience.
After investigating Gallo Campground,
I visited a large yurt that serves as the temporary visitor’s center.
Across the parking lot, the old center had disappeared, almost without a
trace. Early that morning, I had seen a large cement truck rolling in.
Where the old center had stood, construction workers were busy pouring a
concrete slab for the new one. Based on the remoteness of the worksite
and progress to date, I estimated summer of 2012 for the opening of
the new center.
After paying my park entry fee, I purchased the book, “ Finders Keepers: A Tale of Archaeological Plunder and Obsession”, by author and naturalist Craig Childs.
Early twentieth century archeological exploitation at Chaco Canyon had
left it barren of in-situ artifacts. In the name of twentieth century
archeological science, every human-made object found at Chaco Canyon
disappeared into private or institutional collections. Today, many of
those treasures linger on dusty shelves at various museums and
universities. That void leaves Chaco Canyon as a place with
insufficient context. For current visitors, putting the ancient puzzle
together from only its architectural ruins can be daunting.
At the northwest end of Chaco Canyon lies Pueblo
Bonito, the largest and most elaborate of the park’s great houses. At
its zenith, as a gathering place of the ancient world, Pueblo Bonito was
still centuries away from European contact. Seeing its similarity to
historical Hopi, Zuni and Pueblo Indian dwellings, early Spanish
visitors named it as such.
Early European visitors found Chaco Canyon deserted and destroyed by its
ancient inhabitants. It was that event, about 1100 CE that we now call
the Great Disappearance. Within less than one hundred years, Chaco Canyon, Hovenweep and Mesa Verde all fell to disuse and abandonment. Until the ancestral Navajos arrived centuries later, most of the Colorado Plateau remained uninhabited.
Why did the Pre-Puebloan residents of Chaco Canyon build their grandest structure in the shadow of “Threatening Rock”,
or tse biyaa anii'ahi (leaning rock gap) in Navajo? Archeologists say
that early reinforcement of that fractured sandstone slab indicates
ancient knowledge of its peril. Was their choice of location an example
of ancient risk-taking behavior, or was something else involved?
Seeking answers to this ancient mystery, we may wish to look at
contemporary human behavior. If you visit Pueblo Bonito in the late
afternoon, you will find others awaiting sundown from within its walls.
With few exceptions, those pilgrims wait in reverent silence. Was
ancient Pueblo Bonito also a place of silence? Once twentieth century
archeologists began studying and excavating the ruins at Chaco Canyon,
automobile traffic became ubiquitous in that area. Accompanying those
vehicles were new and louder sonic vibrations, thus ending one thousand years of silence in that place.
In
January 1941, Threatening Rock, which stood 97 feet (30 m) high and
weighed approximately 30,000 tons crumbled on to the northern section
of Pueblo Bonito. As it fell, the once intact slab broke into untold
numbers of jagged boulders, both large and small. Like a flood of stone
fragments, the rock fall released its energy over a large part of the
great house ruin. Since the fallen rock and the building blocks of the
great house are similar in color and texture, only their haphazard
angles of repose help an observer to differentiate the natural elements
from the constructed ones.
Threatening Rock stood both before, during, and for a millennium after
habitation at Pueblo Bonito. Why, within forty years of modern
rediscovery did the great stone slab crash down upon the ruin? Did the
sound of human voices, the vibrations from their machines, or time
alone topple and shatter that monolith?
During
my recent visit to Pueblo Bonito, I made a clockwise circuit of the
ruins, observing in turn, the south, west, north (rock fall area) and
finally the east. Although there is much to see and feel within the
walls of the great house, I was intent upon finding and visiting with
an old friend that day. With any luck, I would find him hiding among
the broken boulders of the rock fall. Was he still there, or had he
vanished in the two years since my last visit?
As I walked along the path leading to the rock fall, there was no trace
of my friend. Then, at a sharp left turn, I saw him under the overhang
of a large boulder. He stood in profile, as if part of a natural
frieze, sculpted and then released from ageless bondage in stone. Freed
from his bondage in stone after one thousand years of silence, I
offered my silent words of greeting to Lizard Man, the spirit of Pueblo Bonito. Although his wise countenance stared back at me, he remained silent.
It
was not until I edited the photos that accompany this article that I
noticed a vertical slab of stone framed in my first photo of Lizard
Man. In the gap between boulders, behind where he stands a tall fin of
sandstone stands away from the canyon wall. Was Lizard Man nonchalantly
asking us to observe more of this scene than just him? Indirectly, was
he pointing to the new Threatening Rock?
After taking several photos of my friend, I continued on my circuit of
Pueblo Bonito. While taking the longer, temporary path to the parking
area, I turned to look back. From there I could see the wavelike
pattern of broken stone left by the 1941 rock fall. Turning my gaze to
the canyon wall, I realized that I was now on the far side of the rock
fin that Lizard Man had pointed out to me. It was indeed a new
Threatening Rock, which had sliced away from the canyon wall. Narrow at
the bottom and wide at the top, this slab was far smaller than the
original Threatening Rock. How much longer that second Pillar of Hercules might stand, I cannot say. Only Lizard Man knows, but he is not talking.
Email James McGillis
On that final trip to Phoenix, I chased a desert thunderstorm east along Interstate I-10 through the Tonopah Desert. Not to be confused with Tonopah, Nevada,
the Tonopah Desert of Arizona features a series of mountain ranges,
just to the north of the interstate highway. From West to east, those
are the Big Horn and Belmont Mountains, followed by individual peaks
named Hot Rock Mountain and Flatiron Mountain. In the east, the
majestic White Tank Mountains rise above this lightly inhabited stretch
of Sonoran desert.
The
most significant human created features within the Tonopah Desert
Aquifer are Interstate Highway I-10, The Arizona Public Service Palo
Verde Nuclear Generating Station and the Central Arizona Project settling ponds, which are designed to bring Colorado River water
to the desert. If you think that nuclear power plants do not use much
in the way of natural resources, it is time to think again. Via a large
canal, water is diverted to the ponds, where some of it evaporates, but
much of it seeps into the aquifer. Photographic
images of the nuclear plant show it sitting beside a huge lake. All of
that cooling water comes either directly or indirectly from the
Colorado River. No wonder the Colorado River runs dry before it ever
reaches the Sea of Cortez. The whole system is like one huge nuclear
swamp cooler designed to cool Phoenix, Arizona.
