Parable of the caves, New Mexico

The old man and the cave

These "caves" are much older than Plato's "cave parable," and while many people will think of Carlsbad Caverns when you mention caves and New Mexico, others dominate my memories. We go way back too.
Actually, they're not so much caves as hollows in volcanic cliffs left from the Jemez Caldera explosions millions of years ago, and humans have populated this area in Northern New Mexico for more than 1,000 years. 
Today, it's known as Bandelier National Monument, in Frijoles Canyon, and  we visited there last month, both of us returning after many years.

With my son Vance, 1960s.

Lots of change in improvements and regulations since I was last back, as there have been with me, but it was good to walk again in that canyon, and think about the people who have gone before, including myself. To me, it is a canyon of memories. Somewhere there's a photo of me peering from inside one of those cavities, but I can't find it.To me, the meanings of theseparables of these caves are about change, aging and eternity.
That's the background for these photos, marking the years and eons.

Mom, Jerry and I, 1950s

Uncle Mike and I, 1950s

The allure of caves, what a picnic

Dawn on the stark, flat beauty of the Llano Estacado, Texas

What is it with caves?

The Bells hiking to the cave in Palo Duro canyon

You see one, and you're instantly curious, instantly attracted.

• Is it some atavistic beckoning from our long distant past, when our ancestors lived in them?
• Is it some philosophic DNA that draws us, that is in our deep subconscious?
• Is it just our natural curiosity that has helped us survive and progress through the eons?
• Or is it much simpler than that?

Plato's mythological Cave Parable comes to mind, where we are prisoners of our words, shadows of reality.
Growing up in the Southwest, I know cave dwellers are much more recent than those from the distant past. Visit the great cave cities of the Anasazi in Mesa Verde, or at Bandelier, and you know.  More recently, consider the dugouts and soddies homesteaders in Oklahoma and Texas lived in not long ago.
Yet, we still live in caves, if you look at crowded cities and the skyscrapers people call home, gathered around their modern fires, seeking safety from the wild world below.
Perhaps that's just too complicated and philosophical. 

Cave dwellers

All these thoughts came to mind this past week when I went on a picnic in Palo Duro canyon in West Texas with my son and daughter in law and three grandchildren, Todd and Dallas Bell, Erin, Abby and Max.
I love Palo Duro canyon because it's easy to go back in time in imagination and see the Comanches camped there, and the cattlemen like Charles goodnight who had a dugout there. After the stark flat beauty of the Llano Estacado, the dramatic colors and erosion of the canyon are always surprising and magic.
Which leads us back to a cave. There are more than one in the eroded cliffs of the canyon, but one is huge in terms of height if not depth.
The kids were talking about it before we even descended into the canyon, wanting to hike to "the cave."

We stopped to eat at a roadside table as it loomed in the distance, and then we hiked there in bright sunshine, up through the sandstone and rocks.
 In the cool of the shade, we relaxed--modern "cavedwellers." Then the Bells gingerly inched up the cliffs to look down into the cave from the top. 
Looking down, you could see the allure of a cave in a wild canyon. We were not alone, as it beckoned several families  before we descended.

Max and the kids looking in from top

It's easy to see time in the canyon, in the layers of rocks and imagination, and we were time travelers, into the past and back to the present. All because of the allure of caves.

Looking back from whence we came--something caves enhance

Palo Duro canyon--surprising and magic