A Blog Anniversary

In our family, we are so casual about birthdays and anniversaries that we generally miss them and end up celebrating whenever we remember. It's not surprising, therefore, that although I marked it on calendars and scheduled email reminders to be sent to myself, I almost completely missed an important occasion (to me, anyway):

It's the 2nd anniversary of The Zees Go West!

I am certainly surprised that the blog has reached this milestone. I can clearly remember sitting in The Seedy Motel when we first arrived in Clovis, typing out my first post, Aux Arcs and Beyond, on July 5, 2007, and thinking, I'll never come up with anything else to post about.

You wish!

Since then, I've written 494 posts on subjects ranging from adobe houses to Zunis, from the White Sands Missile Range to Bottomless Lakes State Park, from life in a colonial New England home to the life of ancient desert peoples in New Mexico. Scanning through the post labels, I see subject headings for The Geneva Conventions, Alzheimer's Disease, and one called (gulp!) "ravings."

Along the way, I've done a lot of traveling, a ton of photography, a huge amount of reading and research, and I've learned a lot. I've had a lot of fun and I hope you have, too. As of today's count, the blog has received almost 12,800 visits since I installed the counter in October 2008, so someone must be reading all this stuff!

Skywatch Friday: Tornadoes on My Mind

We've only lived here in eastern New Mexico, right on the western edge of Tornado Alley, for a couple of years. When we get scary skies, I start to feel anxious and start scanning for the greenish tints that mean watch out! Take shelter!

Was the sky really this green on the stormy day when I took this shot? No, but this is just exactly how it felt to me.

Take a look at other skies, both stormy and peaceful, all around the world on Skywatch Friday.

The Pecos Pueblo in 1540

Along the trail

The Pecos people called their pueblo Cicuye (also spelled by the Spaniards as Acuique, Cicuique, or Cicuic). When the Spanish expedition led by Captain Hernando de Alvarado arrived in 1540, they found an impressive and well-fortified structure, as described by Pedro de Castañeda:

[Cicuye] is a pueblo of as many as five hundred warriors. It is feared throughout that land. In plan it is square, founded on a rock. In the center is a great patio or plaza with its kivas (estufas). The houses are all alike, of four stories. One can walk above over the entire pueblo without there being a street to prevent it. At the first two levels it is completely rimmed by corridors on which one can walk over the entire pueblo. They are like balconies which project out, and beneath them one can take shelter.

The houses have no doors at ground level. To climb to the corridors inside the pueblo they use ladders which can be drawn up; in this way they have access to the rooms. Since the doors of the houses open on the corridor on that floor the corridor serves as street. The houses facing open country are back to back with those inside the patio, and in time of war they are entered through the inside ones. The pueblo is surrounded by a low stone wall. Inside there is a spring from which they can draw water.

The people of this pueblo pride themselves that no one has been able to subdue them, while they subdue what pueblos they will.

Wall fragment today

Pecos; Witness to an Historical Procession

Trail at the Pecos National Historical Monument

Herbert Eugene Bolton, an authority on Spanish American history, had this to say* about Pecos:

[Pecos] was the gateway for Pueblo Indians when they went buffalo hunting on the Plains; a two-way pass for barter and war between Pueblos and Plains tribes; a portal through the mountains for Spanish explorers, traders, and buffalo hunters; for the St. Louis caravan traders with Santa Fe; for pioneer Anglo American settlers; for Spanish and Saxon Indian fighters; for Civil War armies; and for a transcontinental railroad passing through the Southwest.

It is no wonder that, to me, the silences of this very still place are amplified by the sensation that thousands of voices have, just the moment before, stopped talking, laughing, singing, crying out, and shouting.

Looking out from the Pecos Mission ruins

* Source for the Bolton quote: Pecos, Gateway to Pueblo and Plains; The Anthology. Edited by John V. Bezy and Joseph P. Sanchez. Tucson: Southwest Parks and Monuments Association, 1988.

Pecos National Historical Park

This northern New Mexican park, which contains ruins going back to 800 A.D., just gets better and better. If we are lucky enough to move to the Pecos area, we will get an annual pass. There is so much to explore, experience, and think about. And then, there is all that magic to soak up, up there on the trails in the deep, deep silence.

At the base of the trail in the visitor's center, there is a display table that contains some of the pottery shards picked up by visitors who didn't know any better. As the sign explains, removing such artifacts from the site where they are found makes it very hard to learn more about what they are and how (and when) they were used. I was stunned to realize that all those little bits of clay that litter the sides of every trail are actual pieces of ancient pottery! I had just assumed that they were sharp little rocks.

Over the next little while, I am going to be learning more about this amazing historical park. You can be sure that I will share what I find with you.

Late June Flowers

June Afternoon Rainbow for Skywatch Friday

I see lots of photo opportunities. I am slowly learning to have my camera close by to take advantage of them. I was lucky this time.

To see rainbows, clouds, and skies all over the world, be sure to visit Skywatch Friday.