monument valley and antelope canyon

we visited monument valley and antelope canyon, both very shortly but they were two of the most amazing and beautiful places i have ever experienced in my life.  to me stones are alive and they relay messages and energy to us if we are open to receive it.  i was filled with feelings of respect and love for this planet that i call home.  mother earth is so amazingly beautiful, wise and loving.  i am so thankful to be able to experience such beauty, strength and power.

monumental are

these wise

majestic

huge

strong

spires 

of mother earth beauty

antelope canyon was found by a navajo grandmother, who is now 91 years old, when she was a young girl of 7 herding her sheep across the hot desert.  she would seek out the shade and coolness of the canyon during the intense midday sun.  the canyon is on the land that her family has lived on for many many years.  before they realized how popular antelope canyon would be the family sold part of the rights to the canyon, to a tourist company from the nearby town of page, arizona.  now the canyon is over run with tour groups which is quite unfortunate, but because of the breath taking beauty of the canyon it didn't matter that there were hundreds of people moving through while we were there.  the only way to get to antelope canyon is to book a guided tour with a navajo guide.  it was well worth it.  the play of sunlight on the smooth sandstone walls, through the narrow crack at the top of the ''slot'' canyon is something most amazing to see. 

arriving

going inside and

the play begins

light and shadow

matter and air

movement and stillness

 and so many people

but up there is

peaceful silence

flash flood remembrance

and i stand 

with my mother 

inside our mother's

sacred womb

where light penetrates the darkness and sand and sky and sometimes water move through the still air shaft of beauty and i am aware of the oneness of everything, every grain of sand, every atom of air. the mix of the sound of hundreds of feet crunching the sand softly beneath them. a baby crying and the mournful melody of the native flute singing a wishing song for silence to fall once again inside this crevice that is more then anything like the vagina of my mother earth from which i can be born again into the light of day and the darkness of night, the endless cycle of living and dying, of knowing and not knowing, of holding on and letting go and breathing into the flow

flow

flow

  

chaco canyon and mesa verde

these places are amazing.  ancient ruins of ancient pueblo tribes who lived on this continent from the around the year 900 to around the year 1200.  most native american indian tribes trace their ancestors back to these people.  the chacoan and mesa verde inhabitants built buildings with amazing precision and skill, building sometimes 4 or 5 stories high using only what they had, stones and mud and tree trunks.
the first place we visited was 'chaco cultural national historic park'.  these ruins are way out in the desert at the end of a 25 mile dirt road.  it took us almost 2 hours to drive the 25 miles because the road was in such bad condition that we could only drive between 5 and 10 miles an hour so that the camper didn't rattle apart, but the bumpy ride was worth every painful bump.  chaco canyon is an amazing place. it has about 6 main sites that have been excavated and many canyon walls with petroglyphs and pictographs. some of the buildings in the canyon were built in perfect alignment with the moon and the sun.  on certain days of the year the sun or the moon will shine into a certain window or a shaft of light will shine directly on a spiral drawn on a stone placed between two other stones. these ancient peoples were in tune with all that was around them, on earth and in the heavens.

the road in

sacred fajada butte

petroglyphs

sun window

thick walls

pueblo bonita

 great house kiva

doorways

amazing stone work

from the mesa above

the great kiva from above

mesa sand waves

our camp site

sun with venus transfer 

chaco canyon is a place of much mystery.  not a lot is know about why the ancient pueblo people built many huge building structures here.  there are more then 15 'great houses' which are very large complexes with one or two having up to 800 rooms.  some of these rooms are round and are called 'kiva' which is a place for ceremony.  the belief is that the ancient people came up out of mother earth through a hole in the ground and so their place of prayer and ceremony is down inside the earth to honor where they came from.  the pueblo people of today still build kivas in their villages. in some of the rooms that were excavated interesting artifacts were found like 15000 turquoise beads in different sizes, in one room were 20 clay pots all in the same shape, other clay pots with cocao powder and parrot feathers. chaco canyon is believed to have been a place where many different tribes would come together mostly for ceremony, trading and that at some times the population would swell to many thousands.

no one knows why the ancient chacoans and the mesa verde people disappeared, but by about the year 1200 the buildings were left empty and the people had gone.  if the native american people of today know why their ancient ancestors moved on, they are not telling us white men, this is one of the main unanswered questions of chaco canyon and mesa verde. 

mesa verde cliff dwellings

spruce tree house

inside a kiva

tower house

this valley is full of cliff dwellings

cliff palace

amazing

sun house

cliff palace

paintings inside the tower

in it

the ancient people of mase verde (green table, in spanish) built directly on the sides of the cliffs, in to the rock walls in amazing ways.  they had to climb up and down straight cliff walls to get anywhere. they had large gardens on top of the mesas and their water source was usually down in the valley.  these people must have been in great shape from all the climbing they had to do in their every day life. they had extensive ladder systems and in some places also hand and toe holds carved directly into the stone walls.  they also have kivas, round ceremony rooms. the skill of masonry is almost unbelievable if you think about how long ago these structures were build and how they are just stuck in/on the sides of towering cliffs. big time wow!!

when i was quite and not too many people were around i could hear the sounds of the ancient people still echoing through the ruins of both chaco canyon and mesa verde.  the women grinding the corn on the stone matates, the men calling to one another as they went about their work, hauling stones or tree trunks, the children singing softly as they played near their mothers and the sound of the drums beating and the chanting of the ceremonies in the smoky kivas.  it was very magical and beautiful.

assad's ranch and ojo caliente

i am finally back in front of my computer, online and am able to update! its going to take a while because a lot has happened since i was away from the internet..

after leaving the lama foundation, i went back to santa fe and picked up my mom.  we headed out to meet a friend of my berliner friend, mila.  mila had given me the contact information for his dear friend assad, a wonderful iraqi man who has a lama ranch in los vegas, new mexico. we had a wonderful visit with assad and his beautiful animals.

the ranch

lamas 

more lamas

the red shed

new friends

we spent two nights at assad's ranch, he took us on a long hike on his land and he took us into the old town of las vegas.  he is a very very interesting man and was a wonderful host.  he has been a buddhist for many many years and is happy spending his time taking care of his lamas and meditating in his meditation room.  we spent the evening hours talking about different interesting things, from spirituality to politics, his life growing up in old world iraq and the peace organization he has created with young people in the middle east over the internet.  he has many amazing stories to share and has a warm and open heart. he is 70 years old and can do a head stand!! amazing guy!!

head stand

main street vegas

las vegas lowrider

sunset over old town

assad on his land

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after our wonderful visit with assad we went to the ojo caliente hot springs for a day.  it was a beautiful relaxing day, going from warm healing water pool to the next.  the springs come naturally out of the earth at this spot, one is an iron pool, one is soda and the third one is arsenic. all have healing properties and are hot hot hot!

ojo caliente

the spring gardens

the ojo hotel porch

pool side

the cliff pools

the mud bath

this was a great day!  it was the perfect thing to just lie around in the sun and soak in hot water.  yum!!