Moon House, Wildflowers, and A Moment to Consider

HIke to Moon House

Loop Hole at Moon House

Moon House Ruin

Moon House Ruin

Globemallow plant by Moon House ruin

We break camp to a see-your-own-breath morning. I stuff sleeping bags while Kevin heats water for coffee for the guys and hot cocoa for me. He knows I have a thing for hot cocoa and cold weather, a habit that stretches back to when we were dating three decades ago.

At that time, when we lived in the Boundary Waters of Minnesota, we drove weekly to town to do laundry. While waiting for our jeans, long johns, and flannel shirts to dry, we walked a couple blocks to Leng's Cafe for what was the world's best cocoa. We used to pester the owner for the recipe. Mr. Leng simply smiled and handed us the steaming cups with marshmallows bobbing like life preservers in a chocolate sea.

This morning I settle for Swiss Miss with dehydrated mallow blobs. The metal cup warms my hands as I take cautious sips. The guys are packing the truck, although in reality Pete is packing his truck while the other two stand guard or something. It's a guy thing.

Even though it is now sprinkling, all remain ready and helpful until the last camp chair is packed. I feel no such obligation and climb into the dry, warm vehicle.

Ben grabs a bag of Doritos for breakfast. "Living the twelve-year-old boy's dream," he says, although he is twenty-three. But I get it. I have Snickers packed for later. And Triscuits -- my salty hiking snack of choice.

After a morning jaunt to Target House Ruin, we stop at the Kane Gulch Ranger Station for a permit to Moon House, one of the best archaeological ruins in Cedar Mesa, Utah with a total of forty-nine rooms. After a drive on a challenging 4WD road, we arrive at the trailhead, although like our other days, no sign, bathroom or other amenities await our descent from the vehicle.

The trail through pinyon pine and junipers takes us to the rim of McCloyd Canyon where we follow cairns down several steep switchbacks and a winding path over slickrock. The ruins are visible as we meander our way to the canyon floor and take the final footpath to Moon House. We arrive to the sound of our own breathing. Although 20 people are allowed to visit each day, we have the ruins to ourselves.

Two types of construction techniques are used at the ruins. Some structures are constructed with horizontal and vertical wood poles, lashed together with willow or yucca strips, a process known as jacal (pronouced ha-kal). The lattice of this wood design was then slathered in mud. The second method used sandstone blocks with smaller stones sometimes placed in the mortar. Dating of the tree rings of the juniper, willow, cottonwood, and pinyon logs used at the site dates the ruin at 1226 to 1268 AD. Approximately 25-35 people lived at the site at one time. I learn all this from a booklet jammed in a metal army storage container to protect the pages from the elements.

We take photos and explore, careful to obey all signs and instructions by the rangers, which includes not exploring any of the inner rooms. Entering the courtyard of the main structure is still permitted, a long wall with 27 loop holes with line of sight to all angles of the canyon. I don't peer out of every loop hole, but I peek out of several, wondering what it must have been like to keep a watchful eye centuries ago.

Behind me, smaller rooms stretch back into the cliff from the inner courtyard, soot still visible on the ceilings.  The ruin is named from the images of the moon's phases in negative relief. Above a whitewashed border, circles of the moon encompass the entire room.

Again, I am amazed at the artistry of this ancient people with eyes to see through focused viewpoints, yet eyes also drawn upward to the night skies. Perhaps we all need eyes to see both perspectives.

As a child, I remember being allowed to stay up past bedtime to watch the first man walk on the moon in 1968. I would have been 7. Slowly Neil Armstrong descended the ladder, his bulky spacesuit limiting his movement. My parents, three siblings, and I could hear his breathing as he communicated back to mission control of this history-making event.

I remember the ladder. The space suit. The domed helmet. The static communication.

Armstrong arrived on the moon's surface to utter the now immortal line, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."

History documents the truth of the event, but I wouldn't personally know.

I fell asleep.

Moon adventures weren't enough to keep my eyelids open.

Alas.

But now, my eyes are wide open to the history surrounding me of an ancient people who documented the moon's travels and painted it on a sandstone wall in an inner room.

While I jot notes and Ben explores, Kevin and Pete both get low to the ground in order to document a spray of orange globemallows. I wonder at this dichotomy of time, the fragile wildflowers growing by an ancient ruin.

"Consider how the wildflowers grow," an old text reads. "They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these."

Consider the wildflowers.

It is an apt bit of wisdom for pondering here in the shadow of a ruin decorated with the paintings of a moon.

24-hour flowers. An 800-year-old ruin. An ancient moon.

Next to the wildflowers, the ruin seems very old, yet under the light of the moon, the ruin is but a baby, and here I stand with my five-decade life.

Consider the wildflowers.

What do they tell you?