"These shadows are knives / they push me back home / but I can still see / the edge of this dance"

I just spent the last week reading* most of the last two-thirds of Browning's The Ring and the Book while visiting Gila Cliff Dwellings N.M., Chaco Culture N.H.P., Aztec Ruins N.M., and Bandelier N.M.. You might think that a four-centuries-old Italian murder case in longwinded Victorian blank verse might clash with a camping trip focused on the Artists Formerly Known As Anasazi -- actually, a story of multiple unreliable narrators complemented the ruins of different times** and myriad modern interpretations. I'm still synthesizing my reactions to, especially, Chaco but for now I can say that any civilization that is the dominant cultural influence for a-several-days'-journey around for over a century, and that builds several enormous complexes then inhabits only 5% of the rooms,*** elaborate flood and erosion controls,**** and a network of roads that travel in straight-line segments with a never mind the cliffs or canyons in the way attitude has some REALLY interesting tales to tell, if we could hear them.


* I thought it was a rereading, but I've no memory whatsoever of the Pope's section. Guido II, yes, but not the one before it. This may be explained by having read it piecemeal, instead of straight through, thus my calling it a reading.

** Gila = 1260s to 1300, Chaco = 850 to early 1200s, Aztec = early 1100s to mid 1300s, Bandelier = 1250 to 1600. Note that Gila is technically Mogollon, rather than Artists Formerly Known As Anasazi.

*** These were surrounded by small, fully inhabited villages where daily life, including agriculture, took place.

**** Including a retaining wall to shore up a 130-kiloton chunk of collapsing cliff, which finally fell on Pueblo Bonito in 1941.

ETA: janni's impressions of Chaco.

---L.

"These shadows are knives / they push me back home / but I can still see / the edge of this dance"

I just spent the last week reading* most of the last two-thirds of Browning's The Ring and the Book while visiting Gila Cliff Dwellings N.M., Chaco Culture N.H.P., Aztec Ruins N.M., and Bandelier N.M.. You might think that a four-centuries-old Italian murder case in longwinded Victorian blank verse might clash with a camping trip focused on the Artists Formerly Known As Anasazi -- actually, a story of multiple unreliable narrators complemented the ruins of different times** and myriad modern interpretations. I'm still synthesizing my reactions to, especially, Chaco but for now I can say that any civilization that is the dominant cultural influence for a-several-days'-journey around for over a century, and that builds several enormous complexes then inhabits only 5% of the rooms,*** elaborate flood and erosion controls,**** and a network of roads that travel in straight-line segments with a never mind the cliffs or canyons in the way attitude has some REALLY interesting tales to tell, if we could hear them.


* I thought it was a rereading, but I've no memory whatsoever of the Pope's section. Guido II, yes, but not the one before it. This may be explained by having read it piecemeal, instead of straight through, thus my calling it a reading.

** Gila = 1260s to 1300, Chaco = 850 to early 1200s, Aztec = early 1100s to mid 1300s, Bandelier = 1250 to 1600. Note that Gila is technically Mogollon, rather than Artists Formerly Known As Anasazi.

*** These were surrounded by small, fully inhabited villages where daily life, including agriculture, took place.

**** Including a retaining wall to shore up a 130-kiloton chunk of collapsing cliff, which finally fell on Pueblo Bonito in 1941.

ETA: janni's impressions of Chaco.

---L.