DAY 19

 "Adobe Solitude"

8x10" Oil on Canvas

Yesterday we toured the breathtaking "Cliff Palace" rock dwellings where the first ancestral peoples in this area were hunters and gatherers some 10,000 to 15,000 years ago. A rigorous descent and assent beginning from the top of the mesa down very steep and narrow rock stairs and wooden ladders. Here are some photos. If you have never been to this archeological site, it is well worth the brutal heat, steep grades of windy switchbacks and difficult camping conditions.

Sadly to say, all of the mountains here are stripped of tall green trees only underbrush provides color. What once were forested mountains now appear as a graveyard full of stark bleached white skeletal remains of the trees due to natural wildfires caused by lightening strikes. Everywhere I look, twisted bones of flailing arms and fingers grasping toward the sky as if pleading to be rescued in their last moments from the inevitable fate of destruction. In the late 1200s, the Pueblos in these same mountains suddenly abandoned their dwellings for some unknown reason, perhaps choked out by the fires of drought.

Posting and phone service have been iffy at best the last couple of days along without any electricity, air conditioning or running water, so we are heading for the higher mountains to the north. 

DAY 17 & 18

Heading north on Hwy. 84, we left Santa Fe setting our sites on Pagosa Springs, Durango and Mesa Verde, Colorado. The highway is a beautiful drive right through Abiquiu and Ghost Ranch tucked away in Georgia's beloved terracotta mountains, all peppered with desert scrub, reminding me of three-day stubble on the slopes of ruddy cheeks and chin. I remember as a child drawing that same kind of beard on my Etch-A-Sketch. It's no wonder Georgia was willing to endure so many hardships in the early 1900s living alone in those high canyon walls. A short drive further, on through high cliffs that look as if they were sculpted with a chisel and buffed smooth with fine pumice to display distinctive colored layers of strata like towering confections at the stiff-peak stage of seven minute icing.

Over the last tall ridges of New Mexico, as if by magic, we coast into new landscapes. The scrub brush is now replaced by viridian walls of towering pines above valleys of lush lime-green farmland, and pastures dotted with livestock. Black Eyed Susans line the edges of the highway brightening our path. The mountains on all sides have turned from warm earthy tones of burnt sienna and ochre into cool misty blues that soften into periwinkle purples in the distance. We are now in the southwest corner of Colorado... back to the Rockies I knew from my college days.

My photos were all taken out the window going 60 mph, so bear with me here but I think your will get a glimpse of what I am trying to describe. Dave hates to stop while towing the trailer so I have to make do with the blur. I didn't get to paint yesterday since we were on the road most of the day, and then I was unable to post (until today the 18th) since there was no Wifi, water or electric hookups in our primitive campground high up in the canyons of Mesa Verde.

It was great sleeping last night, 60 degrees under a half moon and millions of galaxies of stars and planets. All night long I could hear the quiet hooves of elk nibbling on the tall grasses and wildflowers around our camper.

This morning we will be hiking and touring some of the numerous ancient cliff dwellings of the Puebloan people who first settled here 2,200 years ago. I hope to paint later this afternoon but have been painting miles of canvas on my mind. I believe when artists are creating, no matter what the genre, God is using us as His instruments to play and have fun in our world...I sure love being one of His brushes.