two investments in looking back

 Mesa Verde

somehow the U.S. found the way

to make a huge Colorado mesa into a national park,

with tens of miles of excellent paved roads,

rising from the flatlands below

and shouting above and along steep drop-offs,

till the road settles on a high forested plateau,

and then delivers us to where impressive cliff dwellings

fill the protected spaces underneath a great thrust of sandstone,

this is where what the Park calls Cliff Palace

allows us to look down on elaborate structures

laboriously built to serve the vision of the builders,

they who decided that kivas were vital to the whole,

those circles of stone that connect the Earth with the Heavens,

the alive with the dead,

the past with the present with the future,

something about these cliff dwellings

broke through the stasis and lethargy

that plagues our society now

and too often keeps us from investing in the future

by investing in access to the past,

why did Mesa Verde get protected within such an impressive national park?

while to get to Chaco Canyon tens of miles of dirt road must be navigated,

roads easily made impassable by only a rainstorm?

what Indigenous people created at Chaco Canyon

is at least as impressive as what those people 

built high up the cliffs at Mesa Verde,

one answer to the challenge of rememberig 

is the fulsome response of Mesa Verde National Park,

another answer to the challenge is the minimal response to Chaco Canyon,

I would bet contemporaneous Indigenous people would not be surprised 

at the absence at Chaco Canyon

but may be be surprised by the presence at Mesa Verde.

by Henry H. Walker

March 10, ‘26