[On March 3rd, 1849, Congress created a new federal government agency, the Department of the Interior. One of the department’s most significant focal points has become the National Park System, so this week I’ll celebrate Interior’s 175th birthday by AmericanStudying a handful of our great Parks, leading up to a post on National Historical Parks!]
On two
distinct but complementary effects to a foundational AmericanStudier moment.
When I was
in 7th grade, my family and I took a trip out West to visit a number
of Southwestern
National Parks. We saw Zion, Bryce, Four Corners, and the Grand Motherfucking
Canyon (pardon my French, but I’m pretty sure that’s the full official name),
and even checked out a bit of
Las Vegas when we flew in and out of the city. But there’s no doubt at all
that it was Colorado’s
Mesa Verde National Park that most affected this 12 year old
AmericanStudier. There were lots of spaces and moments in Mesa Verde that hit
me, but by far the most moving was a post-sunset encounter with a coyote as we
explored an aboveground (ie, not a cliff dwelling) Pueblo ruin in the park.
Probably didn’t hurt that I had been reading a
bunch of Tony Hillerman mysteries on the trip, as the moment felt
right out of such evocative Southwestern thrillers (although luckily we didn’t
stumble upon a dead body or awaken an ancient curse or the like). But I would
say that the moment affected me, and indeed was foundational for my lifelong
AmericanStudying, in a couple key ways that go well beyond Leaphorn & Chee
mysteries and that also reflect essential elements to a site like Mesa Verde.
For one
thing, the moment made crystal clear something that a know-it-all 12 year old
(or 46 year old…) can sometimes have difficulties remembering: just how much I
didn’t and don’t know. As I wrote in that same blog post
on Hillerman, Mesa Verde has long been defined by a couple central mysteries
of its own: the question of why the
Anasazi people abandoned their
cliff dwellings, and what happened to them after they left. It appears that some
significant recent progress has been made in answering those questions,
which of course is part of the historical and cultural process as well. But in
truth, the mystery of Mesa Verde is just a more extreme version of a
fundamental but all too easily forgotten fact about all historical
knowledge—there’s a lot more that we don’t know than we’ll ever know, and most
of the things we do know we only kinda know (to get all Rumsfeldian on ya).
And that’s never more true than when it comes to the simple but crucial
question of what it meant, or really what it felt like, to live in these
historical periods and places. I love the interpretations of the past at places
like Plimoth
Plantation and Colonial
Williamsburg, but that’s all they are, interpretations; we’ll never really
know what life was like for those folks in those worlds, and I felt that
divide, acutely and potently, as I stood atop that darkened Mesa Verde ruin.
But at the
same time, I felt something else, something I’d call not contradictory so much
as complementary: I wanted to bridge that divide. I wanted to learn as much as
I could about periods and places and peoples, really all of ‘em but most
especially all those that felt most distinct from me and mine. I wanted to read
about them and talk about them and, perhaps most of all, write about them, help
create stories that could, not exactly bring them back to life of course, but
make them a part of our own moment and world as fully as those unavoidable gaps
would allow. I don’t think that was the first time I felt that desire so
acutely (I’m sure I did on my Camp
Virginia trips, for example), but it was one of the strongest such moments, and
it has stuck with me to be sure. I’ve visited and been inspired by a lot of
cultural and historic sites in the decades since, including a number of federal
National Historic Parks, and will write about some of my favorites in that
latter category in the weekend post. But Mesa Verde remains striking and
perhaps singular in that regard, a place and moment with which I was confronted
with especial force with both the challenges and the call of all that I’ve
tried to spend my career doing. So, y’know, it’s well worth a visit if you’re out
that way!
Last Park
tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What
do you think? Other National Parks you’d highlight?
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