Photo of the Day: Wildlife at Chaco Canyon

Camera: Canon 5D | Lens: EF24-105mm | Setting: f/4, 1/200th sec, ISO 100

Wild times at Chaco Canyon for me.

At Pueblo Bonito, the largest ruin area at Chaco Culture National Historical Park, Brooke and I took turns carrying Chloe on our backs in the Kelty Kid Carrier.  Brooke had taken a stroll through a maze of rooms dug into the ground for about 15 minutes.  She emerged and came back to where Chloe and I explored the large kivas and toppled walls.  That kid only had 11 months of living on planet Earth under her belt, and here she was happy as apple pie riding in a backpack as her parents hiked around.  The bag of raisins helped.  You can fool that kid with food any time.

Then it was my turn to try out the maze.  I turned around once to see this rabbit hopping around the edge of the kiva; he didn't seem to mind me much as long as I stayed on the other side of the hole.

I took my tour through some two-dozen square rooms crafted of hand chiseled sandstone blocks; walls often 30 feet tall; doorways just 4 feet high; dirt floors; missing ceilings; room after room after room.  Every stone shaped and set in place just 1,100 short years ago by some culture that's since disappeared from the planet.  They lived here: cooked, traded, passed oral stories, birthed children.

I spent more time than I should have in there.  I once lay on the floor to look up and wonder at the sky. I took photos of the details in the doorways and crafted stone blocks.  I tried to put together why they'd have built a window into the wall of some rooms that was well over three body lengths high.  The silence creeped me out until a quick and soft desert wind whipped through just once.

Then I found another doorway. Can you possibly understand how my heart leaped when I turned to see such wildlife waiting for me at the end?

Camera: Canon 5D | Lens: EF24-105mm | Setting: f/4, 1/200th sec, ISO 800