On the slope below a line of rubble that might–or, in that stony country, might not–have been a tiny ruin, was a cascade of the coarse grayware of the Late Archaic.
At first glance it seemed like a “pot drop”: the in situ remains of one vessel. But if you look closely you can see that the corrugation was done by a couple of different hands.
Not far away there was a little dance floor:
Red Mesa. The redness of the rock, and of the plants as well. Even the grass is red at the base. Perhaps that’s just the color it is—it might be Little Bluestem, such a contradictory name—or maybe it picks up the iron in the soil. Tracts of red sandstone are covered—covered—with knobby, black, marble-size concretions.
At the edge of the rugged canyon is a sheepherder’s monument, a two-legged stack of red sandstone reminiscent of an Inuit inuksuk. Old cairns mark the sheep trail down into the barranca.
Three big red potsherds lie where a pot was dropped, hundreds of years ago.
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WORLD-BUILDING and WILDERNESS: 