Foreword: Writer to Reader
Among the many and excellent books on those ancient Pueblo peoples called the Anasazi, few or none explore our feelings toward them. Maybe that's reason enough for this book to rest comfortably, if humbly, in your hands.
You may already know a lot about the Anasazi, their canyons and mesas; or may only have heard of them. Either way, you do know that archaeological and anthropological treatments of the subject abound. And that these carry their own indispensable fascination. But you may also be open to a more personal voice on the subject.
Personal needn't mean uninformed, of course, and in the present case I hope it doesn't. Nonetheless, I've deliberately left most of the archaeological data implied, not spelled out. Between the lines, as it were. By setting down what it has felt like to ponder sites evocative of the Anasazi presence, this book explores our living relation yours and mine to the most impressive prehistoric culture in North America, and one which is still very much alive among modern Pueblos. In reading time's textures, the Anasazi past made sensually present, we can't help feeling the story of civilization retold minus writing.
Then too, there's the influence of terrain. We become what surrounds us. And that is especially true of the peoples we group together under the name "Anasazi." So, because Anasazi culture grew out of an intimate kinship with the high Southwest long before we Euro Americans began our own incursions there, this book is about both such a people and their places: the one unimaginable apart from the other.
The essay titled “Up-and-Down Sun: Notes on the Sacred” begins with the incident that led me to wander in a highly personal way toward a sort of “center place” in ancient Pueblo culture, with “Spirit Root” providing a natural conclusion. In between those two main stages, shorter essays describe points along the way--but in nothing like a straight line. Over well more than a dozen summers--with an occasional autumn thrown in--I have fed my pleasure in the ruins, the canyons and mesas of this book, as other work permitted. “Points along the way” were both places and steps toward answering two deceptively simple questions: “Why do I find these things so strangely moving? What are they trying to tell me?”
My last, best wish for these pages is that they may partly evoke, as well, that spellbinding land, so harsh and sincere, with its almost narcotic allure--but minus the sunburn, the odd rattler or scorpion, the foot weariness, the juniper midges and gnat clouds. Elsewhere by armchair has its advantages. 
