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An ancient place to wonder about our survival |
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Written by ANDY GULLIFORD, Writers on the Range
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I’ll never forget losing two clients somewhere in the 164,000-acre Canyons of
the Ancients National Monument in southern Colorado. On a glorious
May morning, the two friends walked too fast ahead of the group I was leading
for the Smithsonian Associates Program. The couple disappeared, and the other
members of the tour were worried.
Anxiously, they asked, “Will you find them?” I explained that Canyons of the
Ancients was a new BLM national monument proclaimed by President Bill Clinton.
He’d set it aside because it has the highest known density of archaeological
sites in the nation in a rugged landscape that “offers an unparalleled
opportunity to observe, study and experience how cultures lived and adapted over
time in the American Southwest.” That was all well and good, but folks on the
tour wanted to know if I’d find their two friends.
“Sure,” I said, and
pointed to the sky where four turkey buzzards slowly circled. “We’ll find them,
but I can’t say when.”
We found the strays in about 10 minutes, and
after that the group stayed close to me. Canyons of the Ancients seems to
inspire people to roam. It’s a stunning setting with its multi-colored sandstone
layers, hidden small cliff dwellings and the palpable presence of a missing
people now called Ancestral Puebloans.
Unlike Mesa Verde National
Park, which attracts 600,000 yearly visitors,
Canyons of the Ancients hosts only 45,000 annual visitors in its vast outdoor
museum with no asphalt paths, interpretive signs or excessive rules. Potsherds
and arrowhead flakes remain in place. I’ve encountered visitors on foot, on
horseback, and on mountain bikes, often with canine companions. I’ve dubbed one
extremely remote ruin the “invisible ruin” because it can only be seen with
binoculars in very special light. And that’s what the Canyons are all
about—exploration, discovery, and understanding the prehistoric past slowly as
awareness of the landscape increases in different weather and
light.
It’s a fairly pristine desert landscape. When former Interior
Secretary Bruce Babbitt recommended national monument status for the area to
President Clinton, he said, “this landscape offers us a chance to study an
entire culture, one that may have been as rich and diverse as the one we have
today.” He argued that archaeological sites should not just be protected
individually, “but rather as part of a landscape or ‘anthropological
ecosystem.’” He said, “The real science on these landscapes doesn’t come out of
digging out a room and extracting a few pots. The real discoveries today come
from asking the deeper question of ‘How did communities live in spiritual and
physical equilibrium with the landscape?’”
That’s a question we’d still
love to answer. But here’s the rub: Over 85 percent of Canyons of the
Ancients National Monument is leased for oil, gas, and CO2
exploration, and revenues from those fluid minerals are a vital part of the
budget of Colorado’s Montezuma County. The Anasazi chose a beautiful
place to live and farm, but it happens to lie atop the largest carbon dioxide
dome in the world. Ironically, even though CO2 is the chief culprit causing
global warming, corporations drill for it because the gas is pumped deep into
the earth to force the last drop out of aging oil wells.
In the last
half-century, 190 wells have been drilled within the monument’s boundaries, but
future plans may call for as many as 1,000 new wells. All will bring
accompanying roads and inevitable damage to archaeological sites. In Canyons of
the Ancients, America’s prehistoric past and its
energy future are about to collide.
There’s no doubt that the monument
represents world-class resources, yet federal land managers and the public need
to think about drilling impacts into the next century -- and beyond -- as the
American appetite for energy increases. It is to be hoped that Canyons of the
Ancients and the Bureau of Land Management will help re-define the protection of
archaeological resources on a landscape-level in the 21st century.
We
have a lot to learn from the Ancestral Puebloans. Estimates are that there were
more of them living in what is now Montezuma County in the year 1200, than there are
residents living there now. And they somehow survived in the arid Southwest for
800 years.
Given our heavy water usage and demand for energy, how many
centuries will we be able to survive and thrive?
Andy Gulliford is a
contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High Country News (hcn.org).
He is a professor of Southwest Studies and History at Fort Lewis
College in Durango, Colorado.
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Last Updated ( Thursday, 17 July 2008 )
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