Hopi Art and petrified wood

I spent the early morning hours looking for petrified wood. It surprised me that the pieces I found had been tumbled by an ancient river so that they were rounded and covered with calcium carbonate so that many were cemented together in chunks. At the bottom of steep hills the individual rocks had eroded out of the matrix. I collected enough samples for students to crack open this fall.

Silicated rock, but is there petrified wood here?

I spent the afternoon yesterday at the very fine Museum of Northern Arizona for the Hopi Festival. The permanent galleries were very well done, but my favorite exhibit was a retrospective of a contemporary Hopi artist. I'm going to a Hopi Festival back at the museum next, and then it's off to camp. I expect that the next time I post it will be from Utah.

Kiva by Michael Kabotie, Lomawywesa (Walking in Harmony)

Sedona

Since leaving the Acoma Pueblo I've been staying in Sedona, courtesy of a generous Ancona family. The lizards and plants are interesting, but the rocks are what I came to see. These late Pennsylvanian/early Permian rocks are at the southwestern edge of the Colorado Plateau. Lots of people come to see the beautiful red rocks, which are oxidized limestone and sandstone. I did a few solo hikes on the Red Rocks trails and spent a lot of time driving around the area. I especially liked swimming in Oak Creek with a view of the Cathedral. Amazing views just getting groceries. Best Sedona wildlife sighting: a pair of roadrunners with ten chicks atop Airport Mesa. Wednesday I drove my own family to Phoenix and saw them onto the plane for Chicago. Since then I've been doing more serious rockhounding, including collecting samples on BLM land. Yesterday I went to Montezuma's Castle (which has nothing to do with Montezuma.) This group of Sinagua cliff dwellings was located on a permanent creek. The creek allowed them to irrigate their fields for several hundred years. I had taken the name the Spanish gave to them at face value! No one knows why they left, though Hopi legends suggest that they moved to their pueblos. Time now to go prepare for more rockdigging tomorrow.

This twenty-room building is 900 years old!

Sky City

For me, the overwhelming theme of this trip has been gratitude. The kindnesses of so many people have made this trip possible in the first place, and daily my life is deeply enhanced. Yesterday Ancona grandparents Miriam and Robert welcomed my family into their lives. I am not going to be able to put into words right now the significance of the time spent with them. For now I'll just say that we were all deeply affected. I can say that they helped me to understand experientially, rather than intellectually, the importance of place. Walking on top of the Mesa at noon was hot until the first real rain of summer started to move in. We watched the storm clouds move across the open sky as we walked down the stone steps, pointing out lightning to one another. As we descended the steeper section, I put my hands in the holds carved in stone by someone who thought to make the way easier for those who would come after. The narrow path widened suddenly to show huge rosecolored boulders, and my heart opened like a flower. Comfortably quiet in Miriam's truck later, we saw a snake sliding across the wet road. A little later we were sliding down the road ourselves.

Albuquerque

I hope to eventually get to a computer and catch up, but for now I'll plunge in and attempt to text, which is a skill I'll have to acquire as I go along. Tonight old Chicago friends took me to dinner in Old Town. We ate in a building that was over three hundred years old. It was fantastic to see Wendy and Lawrence, and they showed me so many things that I wouldn't have seen, even in subsequent visits. I spent the afternoon at Petroglyph National Monument, where there are hundreds of petroglyphs visible from the trails. Petroglyphs are pictures carved into rocks. These are carved into the basalt boulders around which the trail winds. There are animals, people and geometric designs. The spiral designs reminded me very much of the petroglyphs I saw on the Big Island of Hawaii. There they marked the birth of a child and the place the umbilical cord was left. I do not know the meaning of the symbol for the people here. It is a haunting place, and amazing to drive minutes from there and find myself again in a city. Tomorrow I travel to Sky City, and then to Sedona.

Mothballing Room 210

Every June it's time to move again. We collect boxes from 57th St. Books and fill them with the contents of our classroom. We find sitters and move pets and plants to their summer quarters.  We are appalled at the amount of items on our desktops, virtual and actual, and restore both to pristine condition. After the checklist is completed, it's time to look around the ghostly room one last time. It's time to close the door on all that was, all that might have been, and head out to see what's next.