Chaco: Notes on Light and Darkness / J. Allen Whitt

chaco: notes on light and darkness

J. Allen Whitt, Ph.D.

Under the open sky of the high desert, preserved in eloquent stillness, lies a small canyon. A place of both natural splendor and human artistry, the canyon has the power to enthrall, to baffle, and to shock. This sun-lit gallery merges perfectly with the land, leaving no clear line between the two. Here, the sun probes red-orange bluffs, white and silver clouds tumble soundlessly above distant blue-green mountains, and the glossy black beetle seeks shade.

In equal measure, the canyon is haunted by watchful spirits, threatened by somber and disturbing places it hides from the eye and the sun, and entangled in many-layered mysteries that confound our understanding of what happened here.

For perhaps eight thousand years, the canyon was the home of a people who left no written words, and no name for their canyon. We call it Chaco.

The canyon is a shallow, flat-bottomed cut in the earth that fingers out among the cliffs and tablelands of sun-bleached sandstone. Winds, the sun, and infrequent rains have split and honed the cliffs into countless facets and grooves. They show different shapes and colors at each hour of the day: a fresh and subtle rainbow in the morning light, but timid and muted during mid-day. In the long shadows of evening, the landscape becomes bold and sharp-edged. Hues shade from yellow and orange into the browns and dark purples of desert varnish, the surface coating on rocks exposed for centuries to the unrelenting elements.

Talus slopes start out from the rock faces, succumb to the peacefulness and abundance of time, and soon play out among the desert scrub. A small stream, barely moist most of the year, winds through the middle of the canyon, submerged fifteen or twenty feet below its fragile vertical banks. Here and there, rising from the stream banks among the gravel bars, loom craggy old cottonwoods — gray-green sentries, on the lookout for water-thieves.

Profound silence... Soothing and patient...

A sudden jolt — an itinerant insect buzzing by the ear.

The ancient residents of Chaco built complex structures in stone: many-roomed pueblos, giant sunken ceremonial chambers (kivas), large public spaces, and cool dark chambers for the fruits of farming. Artists incised hundreds of petroglyphs into the sandstone canyon walls around the pueblos. Some of the images are familiar (big horn sheep, frogs, lightening bolts) and some fantastical (intricate geometric patterns, repeated arrangements of dots and lines, strange human forms — or gods). Endowed with power, they compel attention.

The people of Chaco heard the night songs of insects, and watched as the moon, rising behind orange and purple rays, outlined mesas and cliffs against the sky. Prayers and dances, properly performed, drew clouds and rain to the plateau above and to the far mountains; waters flowed down through natural and human-made channels in the warm rock, filling basins and irrigating fields, bringing life to the canyon. For generations, hands carried timbers down from the mountains, shaped stones according to use, and constructed walls and rooms satisfying to the touch, comforting to the mind.

By the middle of Twelfth Century — three centuries before the Apache and the Navaho came from the north (and Columbus found his India) and eight centuries before others would proclaim the land New Mexico — something stopped the voices of Chaco. The masons built no longer. The discarded sandal and the broken pot remained; the hands that made them disappeared. For reasons lost to us — some say deforestation, some say drought — the Anasazi ("Ancient Enemies" in Navaho) abandoned Chaco. The sacred kivas slowly filled with sand and rabbitbrush, and the assaults of frost and sun randomly toppled walls. During long centuries of silence and abandonment, Chaco lay mostly forgotten. And — by those who knew of it — often avoided and feared.

Today, those who create new myths celebrate the canyon. Behind windshields and sunglasses, we clatter across many miles of dirt road and vengeful rock outcroppings. Upon arrival, the road descends, almost imperceptibly, on a meandering track into the canyon.

In the canyon, there is the sense of remoteness from the last thousand years of history, of an inhabited landscape that still rings, like a struck bell, with unheard vibrations from lives and events and struggles of long ago. Visitors stand quietly and sweep their eyes over the angular surfaces of the canyon. They touch the finely crafted walls of stone, works of art and of function. Many linger, studying shards of pottery, and trying to interpret the marks left by canyon artists.

Some know of the spiral calendar carved into a rock ledge — high on a butte, inaccessible — that, with faultless dedication, continues to announce the stations of the sun and moon. Aerial photographs reveal long-disused pathways, of unknown purpose, extending arrow-straight, like ice crystals in a winter pond, for great distances from Chaco.

A hike of a mile or so along the side of the canyon — through alternating patches of cool, deep shade and intense sun — calls visitors to a remarkable sight. Up on the side of the canyon wall, a pictograph clings to the underside of a rocky overhang, protected from the elements. The rock painting, executed in bright red, consists of a large ten-pointed star, a crescent moon — and the left handprint of the artist. As befits Chaco, such a pictograph is extremely rare in the world: we likely know with some certainty the event which inspired the work, and the time of its creation.

Ancient Chinese astronomers recorded the sudden appearance in the skies of a supernova, an exploding, dying star. It glowed as brightly as the full moon. In the day and in the night, the wide sky dominates Chaco. And for the people of Chaco, the supernova would have flamed above their canyon, next to a crescent moon. By our reckoning of time, the supernova — we call its remnant the Crab Nebula — became visible on July 5. The year was 1054. The images in the Chaco pictograph, sealed against the centuries by the dry desert air, are still vivid; the artist seems intimately present.

There is serenity, allure, and otherworldliness in Chaco. Yet some scholars who study the rubble heaps underneath Anasazi sites have come to see the extraordinary beings depicted on the rocks not as gods, but monsters. Under the crust of the earth, in similar locations across the Southwest, often connected to Chaco by the ancient roads, lie human bones bearing knife cuts and polish from the stew pot — and petrified human excrement riddled with human remains.

It is an uneasy mixture for the mind, the sounds of Bach caressing an extermination camp. Impassioned voices debate: A way of incorporating and honoring already-dead ancestors? A ritual sacrifice of the chosen? Or, brutal cannibalism of the weaker, the less favored, the enemy?

Dark doorways, starkly visible under the brilliance of the sun, breathe out dank smells of the earth, smells from a forgotten underworld. Did horror once reign inside these walls? Did subjugation advance along the radiating roads? Did conflict and turmoil finally condemn Chaco to destruction and abandonment?

And we think: What, then, is left for us? Does corrosion spread under the bright surfaces of our world too — and does all end in silence, and mute and scattered artifacts?

During the day, the canyon crouches low under the sun, faded, its life somnolent. Yet, in the distinct shadows and vivid colors of the evening, the ancients return. Feeling their presence — on a ladder of steps carved into a cliff face, or on a path beside a dry arroyo — we turn quickly to catch them, but never succeed. They are just out of sight, but beyond all seeing.

The breeze of evening flows down the canyon, barely stirring the leaves of night-blooming plants. The sun, having once more demonstrated its power, touches the canyon rim. Insects sing, grow quiet; colors evaporate; warmth dissipates into the thin air. The departing light hides the splendid wreckage of Chaco, and draws its shroud over those who ask questions. Through the silent hours until dawn, there are only the vague, crenellated outlines of cliffs and walls against a limitless, cold, star-filled sky.

In the darkness, the spirits of Chaco reconvene to reflect on its long-held secrets. But, when the sun returns, they will not speak of the things they have seen.

J. Allen Whitt is a writer, professor, and a former resident of New Mexico who has visited Chaco many times. Having long been fascinated by the canyon and the history of its ancient inhabitants, he has written an appreciation of Chaco. The piece is an attempt to convey through word-pictures a sense to beauty and mystery of the area and its history to people who have never been to Chaco.