Cave Dwellers

My brother is pressuring me again to write something about our Big Trip...[note the capitals] So, this is for you, Jon. What do I remember best...let me think. One of my favorite parts of the trip had to do with cave dwellers. The Anasazi people before memory, and the Southwestern natives who were there when the "Americans" arrived.
We stayed a few days at Bandelier National Park in New Mexico. The cliffs here were accessible by ladders that were replicas of those used by the inhabitants. It was cool to climb up into the cave apartments and look at the smoke residue on the ceiling.



We visited Canyon de Chelly [pronounced du Shay], and camped on the rim for a week or so. One day my sons and I climbed down to the floor of the Canyon in the company of a flock of sheep. We hiked across the floor to the White House Ruins. Standing on the bottom of the Canyon, looking up at the ruins, we marveled at the people who had built these walls in a cleft of the cliff, using ladders to haul up tools and supplies, and raised families in the apartments they had fashioned.
Earlier we had hiked along the rim of the Canyon and found the site where U.S. soldiers had stationed themselves to shoot at the families who had taken refuge in a less protected cleft of the Canyon walls. It was hard to fathom what those soldiers were thinking as they shot and reloaded and shot again at men, women and children huddled in the open cave.