#144 Chaco Culture National Historical Park. NM

Chaco culture turned out to be quite an experience. Near the site, there was some camping but it seemed to have no vacancy. I had gone to some effort in the week before trying to find a place to Boondock down there. I thought that if I were to be the right kind of European type white person I would ask permission first. For 400 years people like me just took whatever they wanted and they never asked permission from anybody. We’ve had endless conflicts with the native people so I thought well you know even it's been a long time coming why don't I ask permission instead of just boondocking anywhere I wanted to. I had called the national parks and they said the best way for them to describe the areas is called checkerboard land. I think now that I've looked at it you'll be on native Navajo territory for a while and then suddenly you're in the US again and then another mile you'll be in Navajo and then another mile you'll be in the National Park or Bureau of Land Management or an oil company You almost never know where you're at unless you looking at the map very closely. They pointed out that if I just pulled over or like on the shoulder or a nice little Boondock I might be on somebody's Land. I began to try to find out who's land I would be parking on. It took a while but I figured out that it was the Nageezi (Nah heez e) people. I googled and it took me to a website that showed info for a chapter house. When I called nobody answered. I figured I would contact the Navaho people to see if we could stay at Chaco on some reservation land in barter for some electrical work. I was never able to reach anyone in time but here is some of the contact info I found. Nageezi Chapter House Mailing Address: P.O. Box 100 Nageezi, NM 87037Physical Address: 11553 US 550 Nageezi, NM 87037Phone #: (505) 960-7200E-mail: nageezi.navajochapters.org.

I did talk to a nice young representative from a different chapter house. I explained to her what I wanted to do and she didn’t know quite what to offer. She pointed out native people are easy to get along with and probably no one would care if I boondocked for a night. Later I realized it was very sparsely populated and mostly road and no anything. I had tried to convey that for all these years ago people like me didn’t ask permission first. They were arrogant and I wanted to make sure I wasn’t like them. She said well I appreciate the call. I started to realize any people living down that way were a few a far apart. I figured maybe I would park at a post office over in the corner.

I decided to just be optimistic and we drove the RV all the way to Chaco culture.

We followed google's instructions and when we got pretty close I say about 20 miles away it actually turned into a dirt road. I don't want to say anything bad about it because it was an extremely well-maintained road. I mean were really flat with no ruts and perfect gravel so we could go like 50 miles an hour. After 10 miles it got a little worse it went from being extremely wonderful to sort of like just dirt and no longer gravel. This particular stretch was probably 3 to 5 miles and it was extremely dry now but if it had been the wet season you would have been up to your knees in muck. Then it gets really bad. We got a stretch of the road that had potholes the size of a dutch oven every 5 feet. It felt like you were going across the surface of the Moon or something. Now we're going about 2 mph.

We got to the top of the hill and I saw it really big driveway going to nowhere off to the left. There was an old house that looked abandoned for a while. I decided to just back right in there because it was getting very hard to be on this road.

It turned out to be such a cool place and we boondocked there that night. We disconnected and took the truck on down to Chaco Culture and the road remained really bad for maybe another mile and then it turned to asphalt. At this point, it was a National Park or at least under the parks supervision, probably a National Monument.

I started to figure out the 15 miles of road we just finished with. When we first left the highway I did see a lot of oil rigs and stuff like capped off wells and pumpjacks. I decided this section was maintained for used by oil companies so they're going to make sure it's perfect. Then you get to that part where it’s just awful. That's the part that's maintained by the Navajo people and maybe they don't have any real money to do anything with the road. Then I thought maybe they don't want to fix it because they don't want it to be a race track to Chaco Culture. Only the most stubborn people come down this way so that makes a little bit of sense but I think it's more about economics. When you get to the next section the National Monument people are in control and they probably get a pretty good chunk of money so they can have asphalt. The oil companies keep their part nice of you got National Park people who keep their part wonderful and then the Navajo people, man they just got no money, that road was so rough.

After we parked the rig we went on down to the Chaco Culture. There were all sorts of things that you could go see and hike around. There was one particular part that was kind of the most famous. It’s the ruins of an amazing city and the people were such skilled stonemasons.

The park tells the story of these people being very closely related to the Mesa Verde culture. People which we usually call the Pueblo. They had a very organized society and were great builders. I mean that the craftsmanship of their walls is perfect. They are so plumb and seem to have the precision of any stone cutter in today's world with laser tool assistance.

It's a rather large city and there are very large cistern-type cavities. I thought they were for storing water but I believe I read it was more for grain. This was a very complex and wonderful city and this was built about 800 years ago. There's a bunch of stories on why the people left but it always seems weird to have such a very complex city and then just walk away. They had a reason. Google says,

By the end of the 12th century, Chaco Canyon had been abandoned. No one knows why for sure, but the thinking among archaeologists has been that excessive logging for firewood and construction caused deforestation, which caused erosion, which made the land unable to sustain a large population. It would appear that after a while people just didn't live here anymore.

Someone said where did all the pueblo go. The answer was they’re everywhere. They are the indigenous people that you see when you're at Walmart or wherever you go. They are all around you. They may not live here at Chaco culture or Mesa Verde anymore but as a people, they didn’t disappear they just assimilated with other indigenous folks.

We liked it and it made us feel like we had gone back in time. When we walked around we were walking the same steps that people walked a thousand years ago. I kept imagining the skills that built the stones and how smart they were. Pretty cool.