It is fascinating to read this essay and the deep history of the place you sketched. I visited the place with my mother sometime in the mid sixties I believe and the ruins made an indelible impression on me.
We had the park almost to ourselves. There were very few visitors- maybe less than a dozen cars at the Visitor Center. Never has a place seemed so haunted to me, by the ghosts of a vanished civilization.
I read one theory that the Chaco people had to relocate due to deforestation. But whatever the reason, they left a place that is lonely and windswept. A good time to visit is in the Autumn when school season has started and the crowds have thinned. Then one can commune with the ancient civilization and contemplate how our own civilization will depart someday and leave behind its own ruins for later visitors to ponder.
It is fascinating to read this essay and the deep history of the place you sketched. I visited the place with my mother sometime in the mid sixties I believe and the ruins made an indelible impression on me.
We had the park almost to ourselves. There were very few visitors- maybe less than a dozen cars at the Visitor Center. Never has a place seemed so haunted to me, by the ghosts of a vanished civilization.
I read one theory that the Chaco people had to relocate due to deforestation. But whatever the reason, they left a place that is lonely and windswept. A good time to visit is in the Autumn when school season has started and the crowds have thinned. Then one can commune with the ancient civilization and contemplate how our own civilization will depart someday and leave behind its own ruins for later visitors to ponder.