Ruin in Canyons of the Ancients - A Pleasant Surprise

Cropped picture of the ruin, from across the valley. It is hard to see. If you zoom in on the little eye-shaped alcove that is just to the right of the center of the photo, look for a black square…that’s the door.

I was driving a back road through a valley in the Canyons of the Ancients last weekend. I was mostly looking for the mustang band that lives in the valley, just to see how they were doing.

I stopped to look at a ruin that I’d seen on a previous trip, a ruin that was close to the jeep trail. At the time, I’d thought it was a granary. Hmm. What if this ruin wasn’t a granary? What if it was a lookout?

Well. This is a wide valley. I’d put another outpost over there, in the cliffs on the other side of the valley.

I got out my binos and glassed the far cliffs. Holy cats. That black square, just under the cap-rock…was that a door?

So off I went, hiking across the valley and up the cliffs on the other side.

As I got closer, I could see that the there was indeed a ruin. It was in an alcove that was shaped like an eye. Appropriate, if this had indeed been a lookout.

View of the ruin. I’m most of the way to the cap-rock at this point.

I wheezed, staggered and sweated my way further up the broken cliffs. The closer I got, the more interesting the ruin looked. It looked like it was mostly intact, unlike the ruin on the far side of the valley.

Ruin nestled in its eye-shaped alcove

I finally got to the ruin and paused for breath at the entrance. I did not think I could crawl through the door without risking damage to it, so I decided to stay outside.

Dry and empty view of the valley from the ruin’s ledge.

I peered in through the doorway, playing my flashlight over the interior. It was a single room, perhaps 20 feet by 20 feet. There was a what looked like bat guano on the dusty floor. The ceiling was probably four feet high, too low to stand. As I looked at the room in the light of the flashlight, it reminded me of a previous unfortunate incident I had had with caves, and I was glad that I had decided not to go in.

View inside the ruin. I think the stains on the back wall are desert varnish, from before the ruin was first built.

I sat on the ledge for a while and admired the view. Thought about what it must have been like to try to live out here, to support yourself.

Ruins in the eye-shaped alcove

I walked down the cliffs a ways, stopped and had some water. I ate a granola bar, and sketched the ruin.

Thought about what a lovely trip this was, how lucky I was to live here.

And how grateful I was that I would not be sleeping in a stone shelter on a cliff tonight.