Anasazi ecosystem
| You do not wonder what the Anasazi saw in this desolation. You see what they saw. Life resources were sparse, but they were there and in more abundance than now. Your ability to adapt can reward you. Farming is possible. Hunting is available–flint is, too, and flint chippings and finished points are everywhere. If you know how, available clay can be used to make pottery, and fibers can be used to make clothing, cordage, even sandals. Tree rings suggest that in about 1276 something shifted the weather patterns and made this desert drier. The Anasazi seemed to have moved on about then. The Hopis and Zunis are their present-day descendants. |
GLEN
CANYONEERS: PLEASE CONSIDER
HOW TO LINK TO YOUR SITE HERE.
From that search
plane, I had seen a place that I had only heard about. Seeing was
discovering. Discovering for myself something that nothing in my
experience could prepare me for. I had first heard about Glen Canyon
in 1949 when I was a college freshman and had just met new friends with
experiences far beyond my limited life in the state of Colorado.
One was from California and had travelled extensively and even worked for
a while at the bottom of the Grand Canyon: he knew of some of the grandest
canyons in the world. One was from an oil-industry family in Wyoming
and had an insatiable curiosity about everything geological–plus anything
else related to geology, such as chemistry, physics, mathematics, etc.
He knew specifically of Glen Canyon. One was from California and
his father was the city surveyor for the city of Los Angeles, the city
that had plans for Glen Canyon, hoping to build a dam there and take more
of the water of the Colorado River for consumption in the Los Angeles basin.
I much later–after we had graduated–heard about float trips through Glen Canyon by the two Californians. They reported grandeur beyond anything they had seen up to then. One reported being terrified by the rapids. The other reported that there were no rapids; only the mildest of "riffles." The first told of waking up in the night with nightmares about the roar of rapids, frantically paddling in his hypnogogic state with his hands in the sand. The other reported that the roar was usually little twigs on shoreline trees dipping into the moving water. Both assured me I must see for myself what I would never forget. Both spoke glowingly about Glen Canyon.
I had good intentions,
but I kept putting it off. Looking from that search plane, I knew
what I must do. And I must do it soon, because construction of the
dam had gone far.