What are your foundations? Eight year reverie

I wrote the following eight years ago this month, and have forgotten about it, till I noticed that some one clicked on it and read it today--someone from the U.S., the U.k., Portugal or Australia, according to my stats.

So I read it again, and think it's more apropos than ever, as foundations crumble.  Here it is:

What are your foundations?

I grew up where foundations lasted longer than the people who made them. Never much thought about it, just took them for granted.

Some of the ruins, and foundations, of the Pecos Pueblo, east of Santa Fe

In the arid Southwest, especially New Mexico, we'd visit Indian ruins where you could see the crumbling rock walls of buildings set in place hundreds of years before. The climate helps preserve them. In more recent times, I've camped at Chaco Canyon http://www.nps.gov/chcu/index.htm  amid ruins at least 1,000 years ago.
I came across this photo of the ruins at Pecos. http://www.nps.gov/peco/index.htm I always wondered about the people who lived in those rooms so long ago, and I wonder more now about the people who put those stones together. I wonder what they thought, how they talked, how they lived. I know they had a different sense of time than us, that they were tougher than us without electricity or central heat, or running water.
Yet they put in place stones and foundations that outlasted them, and will outlast us. Some would call it primitive, but it was not. Much, especially the Anasazi, was precise and oriented with the heavens.

Ruins at Chaco Canyon, New Mexico

Started me thinking about foundations in humid Oklahoma and Texas, where I've seen rotted or termite -eaten boards sitting on the ground, and crumbling concrete or concrete blocks serving as foundations sinking into moist earth.
Archaeological digs on the east coast can barely recover traces of early white settlement...the foundations are gone, sometimes no more than mounds of earth.
Have you lived in a house where the foundation cracks, or sinks, or decays? Then you  get bugs and rot and slugs in the house. We're luck today we have building codes---yes it costs more, but at least, especially with slab floors, there are standards to prevent foundation decay.
But other foundations are crumbling...personal, social, and political, in this country and elsewhere. Religious and political turmoil here at home are common with others around the world.  I know...I disagree with many of my kinfolk, and as long as we can respect each other and still disagree, but even argue--we're ok. But when we can't the foundations of our country crumble, as they are now
The foundations of civility in disagreement, of compromise for  the common good, of listening to people.
I'm reading Thomas Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum's book "This Used to Be Us," http://www.thomaslfriedman.com/bookshelf/that-used-to-be-us about how America fell behind in the world we invented.
They essentially say the same thing...the foundations are crumbling.
I'm reminded of the foundations I grew up with, especially from my East Texas  mother...love your family, care for your family, be respectful of others, hear them out, look them in the eye, don't be rude, have manners, be polite, say "Yes Sir" and "Yes ma'am," and don't hate.
I started thinking about this during the reunion of first Culp cousins last April in East Texas. We have many differences, but solid foundations. I know personally, that when I've strayed from those foundations, or neglected them, or ignored them my life has suffered.
Sounds like stuff from the Sermon on the Mount, doesn't it?  It really bothers me that many of these people preaching hate and discrimination and violence today claim to be Christians. They need to read the foundations--Matt. 5-7.
But this isn't about just politics or religion, it's about every foundation we have. If we're civilized, we keep our foundations strong and build on them. then they'll last. Every stone has a place, every stone contributes to the whole. Damage one, and all suffer.
And if we don't--a century ago, England was the  world's  greatest nation and civilization. It's not today. All foundations can  rot and crumble and disappear...and an arid climate won't sustain them.

Equinox--where you can travel in time

Fajada Butte at dawn

Equinox--I always think of Chaco Canyon, having camped there a few  years ago on a personal pilgrimage. You travel 25 miles off the paved road in northern New Mexico, back in time. 

Actually, you travel back into time on those special days. 

I camped there one spring equinox, and about froze to death, but I'd do it again...to be alone, to see the stars, to see the universes glowing in the campfire coals, to write that poetry.

Silhouetted against the night sky is the bulk of Fajada Butte, where the old ones built the "sun dagger" on top of it a thousand years ago to accurately measure equinox and more, their guide to the seasons and life and the powers of the universe.

What follows is from an earlier post.

Camping at Chaco Canyon, watching time move in morning shadows on equinox

The sun blinds you, driving due east or west, morning or evening. You can almost feel the earth move under your feet, each day this September as the sun inches due west or east. It's not moving, but we are.
As urban dwellers, as citizens of the age of science, as people removed from nature, we may not notice, other than the inconvenient glare in the windshield or rear view mirrors early and late in the day.
Our media will announce the official start of autumn, but we miss the point that our ancestors, and those still in tune with the earth, know well.
Equinox--the day the night and day are of the same length, the slow tilt of the earth's axis that will bring the end of the planting seasons, the start of the harvest seasons, the coming of the cold seasons, the preparation for another year's "end."

Many people will gather at ancient sites like Stonehenge in England and Chaco Canyon in New Mexico to observe the day, to relive rituals lost in time, trying to retouch our instinctual past, and something more.
There is something powerful about the day, about those sites, that transcends science, but we've largely forgotten it the more removed we are from the physical world as we dwell in air conditioned cocoons. Perhaps, like our appendix and shortened tail bone, there is a vestigial element in our memory that calls out to us. I hope so.

'You can see time there, time moving, shadows moving up and down sandstone cliff faces'

Having camped in  Chaco on more than one spring equinox, I know you can see time there, time moving,  shadows moving up and down sandstone cliff faces. Those ancient "Anasazi" measured and marked with great accuracy over the years-- in feats of patience and civilization--the movements of the sun and moon. 
It may have been of necessity for an agricultural society, and it almost surely had religious significance. When you're that close to nature in  everyday existence and survival, the earth and universe are certainly alive and spiritual. You know who you are and how small you are. At night there, watching the stars wheel across the sky, you can almost  feel the earth move beneath your feet. 
You are not in charge of the world, or your life, but just a small part of it, and it's best to honor and respect that universe.
You can still feel that power at Chaco, and  dwell on what we "civilized" people have lost with science, as you watch the sun "come up," on equinox here in Oklahoma and elsewhere.

What are your foundations?

I grew up where foundations lasted longer than the people who made them. Never much thought about it, just took them for granted.

Some of the ruins, and foundations, of the Pecos Pueblo, east of Santa Fe

In the arid Southwest, especially New Mexico, we'd visit Indian ruins where you could see the crumbling rock walls of buildings set in place hundreds of years before. The climate helps preserve them. In more recent times, I've camped at Chaco Canyon http://www.nps.gov/chcu/index.htm  amid ruins at least 1,000 years ago.

I came across this photo of the ruins at Pecos. http://www.nps.gov/peco/index.htm I always wondered about the people who lived in those rooms so long ago, and I wonder more now about the people who put those stones together. I wonder what they thought, how they talked, how they lived. I know they had a different sense of time than us, that they were tougher than us without electricity or central heat, or running water.

Yet they put in place stones and foundations that outlasted them, and will outlast us. Some would call it primitive, but it was not. Much, especially the Anasazi, was precise and oriented with the heavens.

Ruins at Chaco Canyon, New Mexico

Started me thinking about foundations in humid Oklahoma and Texas, where I've seen rotted or termite -eaten boards sitting on the ground, and crumbling concrete or concrete blocks serving as foundations sinking into moist earth.

Archaeological digs on the east coast can barely recover traces of early white settlement...the foundations are gone, sometimes no more than mounds of earth.

Have you lived in a house where the foundation cracks, or sinks, or decays? Then you  get bugs and rot and slugs in the house. We're luck today we have building codes---yes it costs more, but at least, especially with slab floors, there are standards to prevent foundation decay.

But other foundations are crumbling...personal, social, and political, in this country and elsewhere. Religious and political turmoil here at home are common with others around the world.  I know...I disagree with many of my kinfolk, and as long as we can respect each other and still disagree, but even argue--we're ok. But when we can't the foundations of our country crumble, as they are now

The foundations of civility in disagreement, of compromise for  the common good, of listening to people.

I'm reading Thomas Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum's book "This Used to Be Us," http://www.thomaslfriedman.com/bookshelf/that-used-to-be-us about how America fell behind in the world we invented.

They essentially say the same thing...the foundations are crumbling.

I'm reminded of the foundations I grew up with, especially from my East Texas  mother...love your family, care for your family, be respectful of others, hear them out, look them in the eye, don't be rude, have manners, be polite, say "Yes Sir" and "Yes ma'am," don't hate.

I started thinking about this during the reunion of first Culp cousins last April in East Texas. We have many differences, but solid foundations. I know personally, that when I've strayed from those foundations, or neglected them, or ignored them my life has suffered.

Sounds like stuff from the Sermon on the Mount, doesn't it?  It really bothers me that many of these people preaching hate and discrimination and violence today claim to be Christians. They need to read the foundations--Matt. 5-7.

But this isn't about just politics or religion, it's about every foundation we have. If we're civilized, we keep our foundations strong and build on them. then they'll last. Every stone has a place, every stone contributes to the whole. Damage one, and all suffer.

And if we don't--a century ago, England was the  world's  greatest nation and civilization. It's not today. All foundations can  rot and crumble and disappear...and an arid climate won't sustain them.

Chaco power--watercolor

Dawn at Fajada Butte in Chaco Canyon in New Mexico 12 by 9 watercolor, 300 pound Artistico paper

There are places of power in the earth--where the universe is thin--and this is a favorite. The Anasazi's sun dagger atop it wasn't discovered until the 20th century...predicting sun and moon and seasons 1,000 years ago. You can camp nearby today and sense the ghosts and greatness. Fortunately its 25 miles off a paved road.

Landscape I love--for Dad

5 by 7 watercolor, 140 pound arches paper

The landscape northwest of Albuquerque on the road to Chaco is dramatic, captivating with geologic formations and colors you can't imagine. This is near the turnoff to Jemez Pueblo, and is part of the uplift and tilting of once sedimentary rocks by the huge volcanic activity that produced the Jemez caldera. (Pronounced  Ha-mez if you don't know)

It's still a violent and peaceful local...the location of Los Alamos nearby and the development of the A-bomb is symbolic, but not as old as the dances of the Jemez Pueble where you can watch but not take photos nor write nor draw--the descendants of the Anasazi (the old ones) at Chaco ruins who disappeared without a trace 1,000 years ago...and where I camped four years ago, alone and happy and freezing on spring break. Fortunately, I photographed this sentinel on the way up/ The formations remind me of beached WWI battleships...Indeed they are beached in time so old we cannot imagine.

Dad, from you I inherited a small portion of artistic talent, and a huge love for your New Mexico. Happy Father's Day.

Equinox snow

Yesterday was in the 60s. Today is the equinox, though we can't tell it. I had to look at our primitive calendar on the wall to make sure it was equinox. Tomorrow?

I keep thinking of the Anasazi in their stone houses in Chaco canyon or their cliff dwellings at Canyon de Chelly or Mesa Verde 1,000 years ago in New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado and Utah. They lived by the sun and measured their calendars precisely by it. What happened when their equinoxes were days like this? They'd have to wait an entire year for another chance to precisely note the passage of time, the time for religious rituals, and all else. The sun dagger stone clock atop Fajada Butte in Chaco the showed the exact equinoxes and solstices, as did windows marking sunrise and sunset in the great kiva and elsewhere, but it took years to mark and record. On days like this, they'd be huddled around small fires inside their stone-walled, smoke-filled homes with the temperature in the 20s or below.

I think there is a story here, of the main priest or shaman in charge of trying to build those stone clocks. And first decided they  needed those clocks?

I wonder if a thousand years from now someone will wonder similar things about us and our "civilized" practices.