I am pretty fired up after a great spring break.  I tend to have a hard time sitting still and can’t say that this was a relaxing spring break.  But, it was energizing.  I loaded my 4Runner with camping gear, stocked my iPod with hours and hours of audio books, and convinced my three children to join me on an adventure to the Canyon Country of southeastern Utah. 

 

Our destination was the Cedar Mesa area outside of Grand Gulch near Bluff, Utah.  I took my kids there last year, and I think we have cemented a new tradition in the Davis household. I’d like to think of it as, “spending quality time with Dad exploring archeological and cultural sites of the Ancestral Puebloans.”  They probably think about it as, “endless drives over torturous four-wheel country, followed by death marches with Dad through never-ending canyons.”  In all seriousness, we had a great time and are all excited to go back again to a remote part of America. 

 

This is an area where the Ancestral Puebloan or Anasazi people lived periodically for a long time.  There is evidence of occupation from 1500 BCE to 400 AD.  The Anasazi left the Cedar Mesa area for 150 years and then returned in 600 to 725 AD.  Then, they left again for 300 years and returned from 1060 to 1270.  During this last phase, they built hundreds of structures, houses, and granaries throughout the region.  There is evidence of defensive sites and warfare.  When they departed from the region, it happened suddenly.  The first archaeologist in the area found all kinds of artifacts that looked like they had been abandoned.  Although we may never know the specific reasons why they left, it probably had to do with resource depletion, population pressures, and climate change.  I have heard from one authoritative source that the Ancestral Puebloans who lived in southeast Utah are directly related to the modern day Hopi people.

 

As a child, my dad took me to the cliff houses of Mesa Verde, Canyon de Chelly, and the Gila Wilderness. This sparked an interest at an early age in the Anasazi.  I remember as a kid that scholars spoke of the Anasazi in concrete, authoritative terms. They spoke about the “mystery of the Anasazi disappearance.” Yet, we know now that there are no concrete answers, and many assumptions are flawed. The term Anasazi is a Navajo word meaning “ancient enemies” and is inaccurate, as the Navajo came to the four corners region two hundred years after the Anasazi left.  We know now that “Anasazi” are actually related to the modern-day Puebloan people. They didn’t “disappear”; they moved south to Arizona and to the headwaters of the Rio Grande in New Mexico.  There is a greater sense of humbleness about the limits of our knowledge.  From my readings of writers who share my passion for understanding this part of history, it is very clear that the modern-day Puebloan people have strong traditions of oral history and a deep understanding of this era that surpasses even the most cutting-edge archaeological research.

 

It is an area that brings history alive for children.  We went to a famous petroglyph site called the Procession Panel.  It is located along Comb Ridge, a wave of sandstone that rises gently from the plains for a mile and then drops 1,000 feet into the basin below Cedar Mesa.  It has tens of animal and anthropomorphic figures that are portrayed moving toward a circle. The images could represent the Anasazi moving along one of the ceremonial roads that scholars suspect led from Bluff over Comb Ridge toward Cedar Mesa. It could also depict come kind of ceremonial gathering with the circle representing a kiva.  It could also represent some kind of migration. 

 

On the hike up, my kids sang about every song in their catalog from Adele to a song about water they learned from choir instructor Cindy Jordan. However, they fell silent when they got to the site. All of us were in awe of the figures and then we spent time talking about what these ancient figures represented.

 

I suspect that it must represent some kind of passage or travel over Comb Ridge.  After lots of scrambling, I climbed down below the lip of ridge. Looking straight down several hundred feet, I found clear evidence of “steps” that had been carefully carved out in the sandstone.   These steps went down a sheer cliff and provided the ancients with a way to pass from the one side of Comb Ridge to the other.  Walking from the site of the staircase. One of my daughters and I came across a small circle of stones hidden among the sage. They were five slabs of sandstone erected upright in the sand.  What did these represent?  Clearly, they had been there a long time, and most likely, was a storage cistern from the Basketmaker II period.

 

 

Anytime I find myself in the wilderness, I tend to do a lot of reflection.  Sharing this learning experience with my children reminded me of how education is a process that requires the active engagement of parents.  Schools will certainly provide learning opportunities.  But, students need to be active –-not passive—participants in this process. Parents can help support the school by reinforcing the value of being of intellectually curious.  We can’t take our children on exciting adventures very often, but we can share our interests and have conversations all of the time. These really matter.

So, be sure to spend quality time with your children around the dinner table or in the car talking about issues that matter to you and them. All of these conversations inspire intellectual curiosity.