Today we spent the morning taking it easy in our hotel room - reading, showering and not worrying about having to be anywhere. We headed over to the Far View Terrace, checked in for our afternoon tour and had lunch. We boarded our tour bus and met our tour guide, a woman with a PhD from the University of Arizona in Medical Anthropology. I thought the guide was excellent and she really had a deep knowledge of local history. We spent the next 4 hours driving around the park and stopping to visit sites that represented over 700 years of human life in Mesa Verde. First to pit houses and eventually to more sophisticated buildings that were still on the flat land of the mesas, before the Cliff Dwelling were built.
We finished our tour with a ranger-led tour of the Cliff Palace. Oh no, more rock cut stairs and ladders! But they were more navigable and I came out tired but alive. The ladders were shorter and in more enclosed areas of the cliff wall - so I took my time and was able to go up each one without panicking. yay for me! And thanks to Jerry who lended a lot of moral support.
I thought a lot today about how tour guides, rangers etc. have had to change the way they talk about and interpret history. I guess it is the influence of the “woke” culture and the need to be more inclusive to all ethnic groups. Unfortunately the Anglo/European side of the story seems to have been eliminated almost entirely. The cliff dwellings are no longer considered as being “discovered” by the Wetherill family and others, but as being encountered by settlers. I think this is part of the idea of using more of the perspectives of Native American cultures in official interpretation of the sites. That’s a very good idea but tends to forget about many people who came to the area as either settlers, scientists, tourists and adventurers and worked very hard to make sure the archaeology and history were preserved. At any rate, I'm glad the sites have been preserved and are here for us to visit today.