A paintbrush plant adorns the hillside near the Great Kiva.
National monument?
Efforts are underway in Congress to make Chimney Rock a national monument. (at press time, the bill had passed in the House, and was waiting Senate approval). I ask Barry how that might affect the area. “Well, it would certainly increase our tour
load. Right now our cutoff is about 30. We don’t have the parking area up on top for a lot more traffi c, so we think we probably would have to use shuttle busses to bring people up. Other than that, they say they want us to keep doing what we’ve been doing.”
For people who needed to know when to plant crops, the movement of the sun, moon and stars served as a calendar.
Chimney Rock is not for everyone. The walk
the valley toward a distant butte known as Peterson’s Mesa. “There’s a Chacoan-style pueblo on that
ridge,” he says. “If you stood in its courtyard and looked east, you would see the sun rise between Chimney and Companion Rocks at the summer equinox.”
Lunar standstill
Like the sun, the moon rises from various points along the horizon. While the solar cycle repeats itself every calendar year, the moon’s offset orbit makes its cycle take 18.6 years. That northernmost point from which the moon rises is called the major lunar standstill. “If you’re standing on the north side of the
Great House at the time of the standstill, you’ll see the moon come up directly between the two spires,” Barry points out. “We believe the main reason that the Great House was built here was because of the lunar cycle.” Monitoring the sun makes seasonal sense,
but it’s diffi cult to fi gure a practical value for keeping track of an 18.6-year lunar cycle. Yet archeologists see similar sites around the world, the most famous of which is Stonehenge in England. Chimney Rock remains the only known standstill sighting site employing natu- ral topographic objects.
to the top may challenge out-of-shape visitors, and the tours are small, casual and not highly choreographed. Compared to Mesa Verde or Chaco Canyon, some may fi nd the size of the site underwhelming. For others of us, the smaller scale offers a degree of intimacy not found at the big guys. Here, I feel I’m part of the place and not an outsider looking in. Back at the visitor cabin, I see the stuffed rattle-
snake staring at me. Out comes my wallet. I can’t wait to see the glee on my wife’s face when she dis- covers her little gift coiled in some unanticipated spot at home. The question is where best to sur- prise her with this unexpected treat. After all, the magnitude of my wife’s screaming exhilaration will be all about location, location, location.
Directions
The Chimney Rock Archeological Area lies 20 miles west of Pagosa Springs off U.S. 160 and Colorado 151. The site is open May 15-September 30 from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Four guided walking tours depart daily and cost $10 for adults and $5 for children 5-11. For more information, contact the Chimney Rock Interpretative Association, 970-883-5359,
www.chimneyrockco.org
Dan Leeth (
www.lookingfortheworld.com), a writer and photographer from Aurora, has long been fascinated with Ancestral Puebloan culture. Over the years he has visited and photo- graphed everything the mega-dwellings gracing national parks and monuments to tiny “moki” granaries tucked into remote, wilderness can- yon alcoves. “It’s always great,” he says, “to discover some new twist of information about these ancient inhabitants of the Southwest.”
EnCompass July/August 2012 31
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