Where the Pavement Ends

When I was in elementary school and junior high I had a budding interest in archeology that has stuck with me all these many years (as if you couldn't tell, right?). One particular topic that caught my interest was the Sandia Man Cave excavations that took place back in the 1940s but were still being discussed when I was in school. I recall that they found some of the earliest examples of woven sandals and other items that were preserved because of the dry cave conditions. These were not just a few Indian things that were a couple hundred years old....some of these things were dated roughly back to 20,000 years ago. I had a grade school level of understanding of this stuff but I did know about Clovis and Folsom discoveries and that archaeologists thought that the Clovis people were probably the earliest arrivals in North America and dated to about 12,000 years ago. That made Sandia Cave big news and controversial.

My recent visit to New Mexico afforded me the opportunity to go on a afternoon hike to find Sandia Cave located up the canyon from the little village of Placitas, which is not far from where I hope to build my house one of these days. I stopped in the Sandoval County visitor center in Bernalillo to get directions. Basically it was "drive up the canyon until the pavement ends and keep going but don't go to far -- maybe a mile....look for the parking area and maybe a little sign".  Sounded pretty simple and easy to find.

The road climbed up out of Bernalillo and through Placitas and into the Sandia Mountains following Huertas Creek. These are two very old towns. Bernalillo dates back to around 1690 and Placitas dates to the San Antonio de Las Huertas land grant of 1745. Huertas Creek flows through a steep-sided canyon wooded with pines and junipers. This is much different from the more desert-like land lower down and closer to the Rio Grande.

It was actually three miles past the end of the pavement and on a gravel road that is pretty rough even for mountain driving. Eventually there was a little parking area and a small sign. This was during college spring break and there were several cars in the parking lot and some students relaxing after a hike in the Sandias. It was a warm day and they looked pretty hot and tired. One of them grunted and pointed me toward the cave trail and I started off up the slope.

The trail looked well used and I had the mental picture of a good-sized cave. I'm familiar with Graham Cave back in Missouri that was occupied about 10,000 years ago and that cave is big enough to park a couple school buses in the entrance...so that's what I expected to find.

The trail kept climbing up the canyon wall and the view down toward the river valley was impressive.  A real estate agent would call it "a million dollar view". These cave dwellers really had a knack for real estate.

Eventually the trail turned into a ledge and the ledge became narrower until it was too narrow to pass another person. The Forest Service installed a chain-link fence to keep people from falling off the ledge....which was about 200 feet above the canyon floor at this point.  As you walked along the ledge you saw that there was a spiral stairway up ahead leading up the face of the cliff.  These cave dwellers were a very determined bunch because 20,000 years ago there wasn't a fence or spiral stairway.

At the top of the stairway was a cave. The entrance was probably smaller than a Volkswagen Beetle but I don't think I could have gotten one up there to test that theory. Inside the easily visible part of the cave was very small. My guess is that it was maybe a room eight feet wide and fifteen feet deep. There was a small crawl way passage leading back farther but this one room was all that I could see with just daylight coming in through the entrance.

The people that lived here thousands of years ago must have been so frightened of something that they decided that it was best to live at an almost inaccessible spot. In bare feet or those primitive sandals it would have taken a couple hours just to climb down to get a drink of water. They had no pottery since it hadn't been invented yet so there was no easy way to bring water up to the cave.   The view was important since they could see anybody or anything coming to visit.   

 

Inside the entrance is a rough bench of rock that is shiny probably from many generations of cave dweller butts sitting there and guarding their home.        


I was a little disappointed in what I found because my expectations were not met -- this was a pretty little cave -- but I am impressed by how these people managed to live up there. It really couldn't be done very easily now but thousands of years ago it would have been even more difficult.   How did they find this place and why? This was the peak of the last Ice Age and there would have been herds of camels and horses as well as mammoths roaming around in the river valley. It would have been tough dragging a dead horse up to the cave. 

How did an archaeologist find the place. The red arrow in the picture shows the cave entrance. When it was excavated it was mostly full of dirt and debris. Workers had to hand carry the excavated fill out of the cave and down the slope to a place where it could be sifted and carefully examined.

There is a lot more to the story of Sandia Cave. It turns out that there were persistent rumors and unresolved questions about the excavation and the dating. There was already a lot of controversy about the pre-Clovis habitation dates but the rumors that perhaps the most important discoveries were not witnessed or were maybe subject to repositioning by rodents or other cave visitors detracted from the results.    Today Sandia Cave isn't generally included among the growing list of documented pre-Clovis sites. There is no doubt that people were living in the cave but the dates came into question. The debate still goes on as to whether people arrived in North America as early as 20,000 years ago.

Moon Rising

In March we had a close encounter with the moon. Not too close but closer than we will be for a very long time. I was in New Mexico at the time and decided to watch the full moon rising over the Sandia Mountains from my plot of vacant land on the slope west of Bernalillo.

I don't have a camera that is designed to take low light pictures or one that can accurately focus on the moon or anything else up in the sky. I tried to take a picture of Mars once and it looks like a dot. So, anyway, I decided that quantity might be almost as good as quality so I took three cameras.

Since prior experience kept my expectations pretty low I wasn't too disappointed. It had been a windy day so there was a lot of dust in the air and a few clouds. At first there was a reddish glow shining behind the mountains and then the moon started to rise above the mountain tops. This turned out not to be the Sandias but more likely the Cerillos Hills or maybe the more distant Ortiz Mountains. The town of Bernalillo is small enough that the lights added some interest but didn't interfere with the view.

Having a tripod would have helped but that would have required more advance planning. 

Let's start a new blog!

Okay -- this post is going to be a hodge-podge of pictures I've taken over the past couple years.

 

 An ambitious Robin selected my Basil pot for its nest. I figured she would give it up since it was under my deck by the back door and too busy. Nope. She raised a family there.

Katy Trail is across the river and a popular bike path. I decided to take a short walk along the trail and ended up spending most of the afternoon.

 

August, 2010 trip to New Mexico...one of many.

This is the less-than-famous Volkswagen version of Cadillac Ranch, located a couple interstate exits east of Amarillo. Cadillac Ranch is a few miles west of Amarillo and is being loved to death. It is now a tour bus stop where 30 German tourists or Chinese tourists or Japanese tourists show up every few hours. This is in addition to the many other people who stop on their way across the Texas panhandle.

 The Blue Swallow Motel is in Tucumcari NM and is a fully restored and renovated Route 66 motel that dates to the 1930s. This is owned and operated by a 'mom & pop' couple who enjoy visiting with the guests and continue to fix up those few things that remain to be done. There are interesting murals on some of the walls and inside the garages. The rooms are furnished as they were in the 1950s.

Matachines Dancers in the town of Bernalillo during the Fiestas de San Lorenzo. The dance has been held in this town every year since about 1693 and serves as a commemoration of the introduction of Christianity to the Aztecs. At the end of the dance the townspeople join in as a symbolic commitment to the church. The statues of San Lorenzo preside over the event and are paraded through the street to and from the sanctuary.

 What would a trip to New Mexico be without a visit to some sort of ruin?


This is the site of the San Jose mission in the Jemez Mountains. There were hundreds of Jemez Indians living here during the mission days but they eventually moved down the valley after the mission was abandoned. This picture shows Jill realizing that there might be rattlesnakes in the ruins.

The mission ruins are impressive and the location is very pretty. This is close to the little town of Jemez Springs and a short distance north of the Jemez Pueblo.

 Ranchos de Taos is a small village south of Taos NM and the site of the San Francisco de Asis church - famous for Ansel Adams' black and white photography. The interior is elegantly plain with the typical Hispanic New Mexican decorations.

The church is adobe and every few years the community comes together to put on a fresh coat of adobe mud stucco. This is a major undertaking and there aren't as many old adobe buildings anymore so the skill is becoming uncommon. There is a hacienda (a house museum) a few miles north in Taos that looks like it is slowly crumbling away.

The drive north from Albuquerque goes through Santa Fe and through part of the Rio Grande Gorge before getting to Taos. North of Taos the drive is very pretty and very empty as you cross over into Colorado

The Great Sand Dunes National Park is a tremendous pile of sand. The dunes reach several hundred feet in height and are continually moving and shifting with the wind.

The park was not very busy and there were only a few people out hiking on the dunes....a surprisingly difficult task.

Watching the cloud shadows moving across the dunes could occupy the whole day if you let it.