Taken from the high desert Chaco Canyon ancestral pueblo people site in northwest New Mexico. May, 2019.
I don’t take a lot of selfies in my work, but I bucked the norm with this piece. I wanted to capture something inspirational. To incorporate a story into some of my compositions. Here I stood inside a Kiva, a family gathering space for the Chaco pueblo builders who once farmed and hunted the northwest corner region of the United States. That wall I’m standing next was built between 850 – 1250 AD and has probably stood for a thousand years.
People lived and breathed in this space built with stone age technology but still surviving today in one of the harshest environments in the country. While the space originally had a roof, Pueblo farmers looked up at the sky and used it to plan for their narrow growing season.
Like those ancient peoples, blessed with some of the clearest and darkest skies in the country, I look up and watch the stars. I look up and dream. I dream of the greater majesty of the universe. I dream of worlds beyond the void, of tasting alien air. Of looking up on another world and back to see our blue marble spinning on its orrery path.
Most of all, I dream of a nebulous idea – one that guides my life – I dream of hope. Here I light the way for those that follow. May our futures be bright.