I'm writing this post several months from when I visited Chaco Canyon. I visited Chaco Canyon in the first week of February on my drive up from Albuquerque to Monitcello. This was a beautiful drive.
I was listening to Brave New World as I passed valley and mountain. It just so happens Brave New World takes places in New Mexico in a region called Malpais not too far from my drive. There's a recent TV adaptation which I had watched earlier in my covid quarantine. One of the major differences in the TV show concerns the culture of the 'Savage Lands'. In the show the 'Savage Lands' was the American West, frozen and thawed so that the it fit no single time period. In the book it's the native american people of New Mexico (Puebloan, Laguna, Zuni) who we find in the futuristic theme park that provides our protagonist. This difference the two-fold effect of avoiding making the american audience uncomfortable and of centering American culture to make future events in futuristic London more relatable. It reminds me of how Time magazines have two covers, one for the world and one for the US.
Anyway, I pulled off the road to visit Chaco Canyon. It took 50 minutes of slow off-road driving to arrive in a remote canyon with a number of archaeological sites. Here are some photos.
Luckily I still had some pastries I had picked up that morning from the Mexican bakery in Albuquerque.
Here's the view through the window in the welcome sign.
This Butte stands much taller than it appears in photos. It's a giant landmark that stands at the entrance of the canyon and park. In the below sign you can read how it was used as a star watching location.
The parking lot.
One of several complexes you can see in the valley.
And another one.
This is a storage area.
I thought this stairway was interesting. If there hadn't been a sign I wouldn't have spotted it.
The butte in the distance. There are little fissures in the ground all throughout the canyon. You can make one out in this photo.
