![]() I know that there is sand softer than anything I’ve ever touched. Resilience thinking allows us to see this and study these people with open minds and open spirits. The way they lived may have been different, but essentially the things that come to matter to us, like the people we love and the places we live, are the same. ![]() Their thoughts were just as meaningful as ours, as were their beliefs. This landscape affected them in many of the same ways it affects us. This kind of thinking is necessary when exploring and imagining the lives of ancient peoples. Not focusing on attention on a single thing, but rather trying to understand that the world is more complex than we give it credit for. This type of thinking means exploring all parts of a system, not optimizing one and discounting the rest. We have been reading chapters out of a book called Resilience Thinking. They shape these people, not into the mythical beings they are sometimes imagined as, but as humans just like all of us. These things are important because they connect us. Simply a people of a different time, but still humans who felt the spirit of this landscape, just as we have walking through it. It is important to imagine these ancient people in such a way that they actually become people. We have imagined their lives, though attempting to comprehend their complexity has proved difficult.īut I think it’s important to ponder these complexities. We read about their lifestyles of hunting and gathering transitioning to agriculture. We have found a place where they carved and shaped these. We’ve found their tools-cutting rocks and arrowheads made out of colorful chert. We have also seen granaries and even more artwork by these people while hiking down the Dirty Devil River. This means that your guess is as good as mine. Without any of these ancient people alive to tell us, there is no way for us to know what exactly that great panel is there for. Something I find incredible is that they are all right at once. Scholars and children alike have speculated the significance of this place. This thought has been in my brain since we first saw evidence of their lives here at the Great Gallery in Horseshoe Canyon. They were here being born and living and loving and dying before my ancestors were even intelligent enough to correctly measure the circumference of the Earth. The Ancient Pueblos, inhabited these lands long before Europeans even realized this continent existed. ![]() Just do it.), fossil fuels buried deep in the older layers of the canyon that are hundreds of millions of years old, 22 archeological sites per square mile in the Dirty Devil River Canyon, and (getting to the point) evidence of the complex lives of the people who lived here thousands of years ago. In addition to quicksand, some other things that exist out here include: a cave with the softest and finest sand I’ve ever touched (think-a mountain of powdered sugar), more snow and rain than anyone anticipated in the desert, pack rat middens (Google these. The best way I can explain it is that it’s like walking on jello, but if you stand still it’ll try to eat your feet. If you position your weight right, it ripples under your feet. It exists in or next to streambeds, and doesn’t get very deep. It happens to be very different from any cinematic portrayals of it, as things tend to be. Turns out, though, quicksand does exist in real life! It exists here on the Colorado Plateau! It’s not in random places, it doesn’t slowly swallow you or get worse if you struggle. Before coming here, I did not employ any knowledge I’d acquired about how to deal with sinking in quicksand. After watching The Princess Bride, I assumed it would be an inevitable problem I would have to address in adulthood. As a kid, I thought a lot about quicksand.
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