The fire at Mesa Verde last year is evident in the burned foliage but tender new growth is starting and the wildflowers soften the bleak look of charred trees. I was relieved that the cliff dwellings are just as I remember…untouched by fire.
There was a Navaho ranger talking to a tour group about why they no longer call the ‘ancient ones’ Anasazi but Ancestral Puebloans…which reflects their modern descendents. It seems that the word Anasazi can mean ‘ancient enemy’ but also ‘anyone that was not a Navaho Indian’.
I have this image of a conversation in the long ago where someone asked this old Indian “Who lived up there in the cliffs?” and he shrugged his shoulders and said “Beats the heck out of me but it was sure not one of us!” And the name Anasazi was born. (grin)