Driving through the Southwest in the middle of the summer may not have been the best idea, but in 2013, my wife and I did it anyway. Our goal was to see nine parks in 17 days, and with a mix of camping and hotels, driving and hiking, we pulled it off. My most vivid memory from that whirlwind trip comes from a park that, unlike most others, protects a piece of human history rather than natural scenery.
Mesa Verde National Park, located in southwest Colorado, preserves nearly 1,200-year-old puebloan cliff dwellings. While they are empty and quiet now, they once were the epicenter of a thriving civilization that hunted and farmed the area's canyons and mesas.
Cliff Palace, the largest of the puebloan structures in the park, is tucked neatly beneath a large overhang, and is just barely visible from above. To really see it, you need to take a ranger-led tour, and it was on one of these tours that I experienced the national parks in a way I never had before.
I could see the cliff dwellings peeking out of the rock faces below as I milled with a tour group around a small holding area before the tour began. On the top of the mesa and in the canyons below, scrub brush and gnarled trees dotted the red rocks. After snapping a few pictures of what I could see of the buildings and the desert landscape, I noticed the narrow metal stairway, steep and rickety, bolted into the rock, descending out of sight toward the structures.
The tour started, and as we zigzagged down the rock face and meandered through brambly trees and brush, we caught little glimpses of the ancient buildings. After rounding a curve in the trail, and making our way up a wide wooden ladder, Cliff Palace came into full view. Tucked between the wide overhang above and a sturdy rock shelf as a floor, the buildings are carved out of and seem to spring up from the rock itself. Dotted with rectangular windows, sporting numerous floors, and all fused together in a patchwork conglomeration, the structures looked like nothing I had ever seen. Something out of a movie. Something fake — made with Styrofoam and spray paint.
As we got a little closer, the park ranger pulled our tour group aside to talk about the buildings and the people who built them. It became obvious that these ancient Mesa Verdeans weren't merely stacking some rocks together a thousand years ago, they had full, rich lives. They were architects and engineers capable of incredible feats. They were farmers and hunters. Wives, husbands, children. They were just like us.
The park ranger, having finished his speech, asked if there were any questions. The group was quiet until a child, probably not much past elementary age asked, "Were they peaceful?"
The park ranger didn't respond at first, and the group waited quietly for a response. "I don't know," he said finally. "Are we peaceful?"
He smiled and then offered a factual, historical answer, one with dates and names, but he'd already given the real answer.
The tour was coming to a close. As we made our way through silent pueblo rooms, skirted unused fire pits built from the floor itself and remarked at the tiny storage nooks that had once held food and supplies, I wondered what these people really were like. What would they have wanted us to think of them? And what would they think of us, strangers walking through the remains of their buildings?
The tour concluded and the group went on its way, but the park ranger's comments, there on the edge of Cliff Palace in Mesa Verde National Park, stuck with me.
Our civilization will leave behind pieces of itself, too, and I can't help but wonder how future generations will view us. Will they see us as silly and quaint? Embarrassingly barbaric? It's hard to know, but I do hope that they'll uncover whatever remains of our national parks idea and know that we did what we could to preserve and protect some of the most incredible and fragile places on Earth. That wouldn't be too bad a legacy.
Minnesota native John VanOverbeke of Eagan is a graduate student studying English at the University of St. Thomas. He and his wife want to visit all the national parks; they have been to 18.
