Anasazi!

One of the wonderful people who got in touch to find out if I was okay was my sister, who in the course of our conversation happened to mention that she and my brother and their spouses and kids and my parents are taking a spring break trip to Mesa Verde National Park, and invited me to join them. Yay!

I haven't even asked for the time off yet, but in my mind I'm already there. I've been totally fascinated with this place ever since I first saw pictures of it in elementary school, and later came across some wonderful descriptions in Willa Cather's The Song of the Lark, which I'm excited to re-read again, now that I'm finally going to go there myself. I can't wait!

Click here to see more recent photos of this amazing place. The one at the top of this post is from Google images and was taken by Gustaf Nordenskiöld in 1891. Suddenly I'm feeling super-motivated to get around to researching and buying a great new camera (my big Christmas present from Mr. A, which I still haven't chosen yet), so I can take my own pictures on this trip.

Man, I miss the desert so much sometimes. Open spaces, huge skies, wild earth energy instead of tamed-by-humans energy, dramatic storms, all the amazing colors and smells. I've been needing a trip like this for a long time, I think.

Funny how this whole trip came about, in a way, as a result of the upsetting thing that happened last week. I was upset, I reached out (which I don't do very much, most of the time), people responded, and now I'm going to Mesa Verde.

In the Song of the Lark, the heroine spends time at the mesa as a way of re-grounding herself in her own life before going back to her work as an artist. A hundred years ago, when the book takes place, I guess people could just walk up into the old buildings and hang out there by themselves as long as they wanted to. Now that it's a national park, I'm thinking I probably won't be able to do that. I still can't wait to be there, though. Sharing that experience with my family – including eight little kids, roughly half of my nieces and nephews – I am really looking forward to this.