Fluted vases proudly positioned themselves beside short pots with geometric designs. Starlight radiated from bowls with glossy finishes, and horse hair burned into the glaze of an ostentatious amphora slithered across its surface. Everywhere I looked, pottery crowded wooden tables and glass shelves, each piece vying for my attention.
Heather and I had just finished lunch following our tour of Cliff Palace, and we had been unable to pass up a gift shop whose windows tantalized us with rows of handmade wares reminiscent of those at Four Corners Monument. As I circled the room, not daring to approach a cluster of impossibly fragile vases with pencil-thin necks, I realized that the artisans who had created these crafts continued an ancient tradition. These fine, polished vessels harked back to the centuries-old utilitarian earthenware on display in Mesa Verde’s visitor center. In contrast to their mostly two-tone palette, however, here, a riot of color dazzled me: soft mossy green, ultramarine Yves Klein blue, sunset crimson and a spectrum of earthy desert browns. Journeying toward the remote western side of the park half an hour later, I recognized many of those same hues blanketing the valleys and hills that rippled in front of me.
Long House would be our final stop in Mesa Verde National Park, the most isolated of the three cliff dwellings on our trip. At the visitor center the previous day, a ranger had told us to allow forty-five minutes to drive from Cliff Palace to Wetherill Mesa, where we would join our tour. As we drew closer, I could see why we had been instructed to take our time: Our route took us down ever more serpentine roads nestled into the high hills of Colorado, and careening around their curves did not seem prudent.
Eventually, the road terminated at an open-air pavilion which could have passed for a remote outpost. Its thick wooden beams seemed out of place in an otherwise uninhabited landscape. We joined a couple dozen sightseers dawdling underneath to escape the direct rays of the sun, and before long, a tram rumbled up a dusty path behind the shelter and rolled to a stopped just outside. From here, we would ride to the Long House trailhead and then hike the rest of the way to the cliff dwelling.
After boarding, we began trundling past pines and junipers, the rhythmic sway of the tram and the clean air on my face relaxing. Just minutes after losing sight of the parking lot, however, the peaceful atmosphere evaporated as the healthy vegetation surrounding us abruptly transformed into the remains of a scorched forest. My breath caught in my throat as we passed the blackened skeletons of trees fighting to remain upright as their charred wood crumbled. With most of their branches already severed from their trunks, we seemed to find ourselves in a forest teeming with lifeless ashen reeds.
The devastation reminded me of a grotesquely gnarled tree I had seen in Bryce Canyon. We had been horseback riding on our second day in Utah, and as our trail guide led us through a maze of hoodoos, the park’s signature rock columns, we passed by a lodgepole pine whose trunk was so twisted, it appeared to have been wrung out like a wet cloth. Seeing our shocked expressions, the cowboy explained that this tree had been struck by a powerful bolt of lightning. Despite the catastrophic effects to the pine itself, however, the lightning had also given the tree an unexpected gift: It had provided the heat necessary for the tree to reproduce. The pinecone of the lodgepole pine is sealed with a resin which protects the tree’s seeds. Without exposure to the extreme temperatures needed to melt the resin, the cone would never be able to release its seeds. One could say that, like the phoenix, the lodgepole pine is rebirthed through fire and intense heat, what would appear at first glance to bode utter disaster and death.
It seemed counterintuitive to credit fire with the survival of a species, especially as our tram swept us through acres of ravaged land. But, as I traveled through the National Parks, I couldn’t deny that destructive forces could have positive effects as well. After all, without erosion, there would be no Grand Canyon.
The Barefooted Soul 