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

[larryhammer]

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.

Comments

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Ring and the Book, wow, that takes me back.

[larryhammer]

Yes, but back to what? (And what did you think of it then?)

---L.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Back to...the images are high school, though I'd swear I read it my freshman year. I was bored by most of it, finding only the woman's poem emotionally affecting, and the pope's poem really effective. It wasn't until years later I found out about its background, and I wondered if Wilde and Co's shortlived Yellow Book magazine was named after the source stuff, but as I recall some cursory delving into that question didn't go anywhere. Gosh, that would have been around 1970, so yes, way, WAY back.

[larryhammer]

Oddly enough, I'm finding the pro-husband parts to be the most effective rhetorically -- odd because of Browning's clear sympathy for the wife. It's especially illuminating to compare the patterns and inversions of imagery in the husband's first part, then the wife's, then the husband's second part.

Not effective legally or morally, mind, but rhetorically.

---L.

Cliff Dwellings

[pdlloyd.livejournal.com]

It's been many years (14-15?) and my memories are a little bit fuzzy, but I very much enjoyed visiting the Gila Cliff Dwellings and similar sites in SW Colorado. The ruins, and the landscapes within which they are located, are simply extraordinary.

Re: Cliff Dwellings

[larryhammer]

The landscapes make for excellent camping, too.

---L.

[harvestar.livejournal.com]

ooh, I loved Chaco Canyon (except for the horrid dehydration I experienced there). We were most interested in the Crab Nebula Supernova petroglyph, of course. But also found Pueblo Bonita really amazing.

Bandolier we spent much time at (being near to Los Alamos) and got to experience it with our friends' kids too, which was much fun! yay for climbing into and around history!

[larryhammer]

Every time we visit Bandelier, we're reminded of wanting to do a backcountry hike, what with it being so close to the parentals' place. We've never made it past the main loop trail.

In its way, I was more astonished by the Pueblo Alto complex than Bonito, which you see so often. Especially the New Alto ruins, which once you know to look for, you can spot on the mesa above like a rusty Stonehendge, marking all sorts of straight lines from other pueblos.

---L.

[sfmarty.livejournal.com]

I had always planned on going to those sites. Then one day I was too breathless. Will get there somehow tho.

[larryhammer]

At the very least, a trip to Chaco and Mesa Verde, yes.

---L.

[lenno-cornish.livejournal.com]

It pushed me to read a lot of things, thanks.

[larryhammer]

De nada. We aim to entertain.

---L.