Ancient Enemies

    Our days visiting Sedona were winding down, the grandeur of the outdoor scenery and the humility of walking among such ancient and evolving structures having nearly completed the effect we had hoped for, that of returning us back to ground here on earth and making us realize that we needed to look no further than right where we were now.  Alleged problems be damned for there was actually beauty everywhere once our way of seeing was again fresh and unclouded.  We were now grabbing a few final walks with us now on the Scorpion Trail, a short loop trail likely named more for its circuitous route than for whatever stinging insects might be hiding under crevices for we had still seen few bugs or animals.  It was as if the red rocks both surrounding us and off in the distance were eerily alone, they being the lone victors in this competition against time and weather.  This wasn't true of course, the howling of coyotes during the night almost as stark as the sirens that would race across the quiet, sounds that made us wonder which one was truly out of place, the answer likely being the conversations of our own voices.  We really didn't belong here, even as some of the more expensive homes covered themselves up in brown and sand-colored paints to blend in.  We were tourists, certainly, a human swarm that was gently welcomed for its arriving income and greeted as such with politeness and smiles as if even they (as residents and business-owners) knew that in the larger scheme of things they were once as transient as we were.

   The town does a nice job of trying to let visitors know this, that people were first here admiring this rugged landscape well over 10,000 years ago.  Back then, rugged was likely a mild term, for this would have been a time of primarily searching for both food and water with both the hunters and the hunted struggling to survive and probably thinking to heck with the scenery.  If one could go back in time to 1 AD, that is when the Sinagua peoples supposedly arrived (archeologists from the U.S.Forest Service dispute this figure a bit and put the period of arrival and the building of structures at sometime around 600 AD); and even with their name of Sinagua roughly translating from Spanish into "without water," the Sinagua would manage to live here until 1400 AD...and then promptly disappear (again, the USFS rangers I spoke with tended to feel that this particular culture didn't "disappear" at all but simply migrated away as the living conditions changed, although even they admitted that even among experts this is left to speculation).  One interesting side note was being told that the popular term of Anasazi is apparently one that is frowned upon; one ranger telling me that modern-day archeologists as well as many native Navajo feel that the term simply meant "ancient enemy" and not a separate group of people or native Americans; seeing some intruders arriving might simply gain a reply of "...those were Anasazi," not Pueblo, not Hopi and not Navajo, a term perhaps ironically appropriate to their current history, a "tribe" of unknowns left to disappear once again when they may have just been a people moving on simply because they didn't care for what they saw or what we newcomers were becoming. 

    But this was indeed a land of survival.  Just a glance around as in any such desert area and one would be left to wonder how did early arrivals to the area survive (history shows that the Sinagua hunted not only deer but antelope, a species believed to be native to North America).  What caught my eye the most however were the cacti scattered throughout the juniper and pine trees, at least at this elevation.  As a plant that could hold precious water, they would be ripe for harvesting or eating, so how best to defend against both animals and humans?  Given a set number of "leaves" or thorns to work with, what would be the best arrangement to cover the largest area.  Some of the thorns were in sets of five, three elongated ones and two smaller ones.  Looking straight into the lobe, this wouldn't seem to be the ideal placing but as seen from the side, this arrangement would appear fairly intimidating.  It was yet another wonder of the evolving nature of surviving out here.  Now, asked the ranger, did the native American settlements appear to display any of this defensive positioning in their structures?  Surprisingly the answer was no or at least not according to what they speculate.  The dwellings seemed to have been placed against walls and higher up as if to face their crops, the marking and displays etched or painted on the walls nearby meant to signal something, either "this is our community" or "welcome " or "stay away."  The truth is, no one truly knows, for even among the various current tribes the history takes different turns.  One similarity seems to be the belief that we all came from Mother Earth.  Walking through this land, the sparseness so mixed with the beauty, it was easy to imagine and believe that in many ways, the ancients may have known much more than we did about survival and the appreciation of time and life...perhaps as our our own days of visiting here were winding down, we were simply becoming Anasazi, unknowns or perhaps to this land itself, ancient enemies.

View from uptown Sedona overlooking the city