Bandelier National Monument

One of the neat things about Los Alamos is that Bandelier National Monument is only a few minutes away. The volcanic tuff at Bandelier erupted from the Valles caldera about 1.25 million years ago, but it's not just a site of geologic interest; it's also an archaeological site. Bandelier refers to Adolph Francis Alphonse Bandelier, a Swiss-American archaeologist who conducted research into the history of the Pueblo people in the American southwest.

On the drive to the park visitor center, there's some fantastic columnar jointing in the tuff. (Columnar jointing occurs when hot volcanic material, either a lava flow or pyroclastic deposit, cools from the outside in and shrinks, forming cracks. These cracks often create geometric shapes that extend down into a deposit, creating columns.)

In the Frijoles Canyon, there are scads of cliff dwellings and the ruins of villages of the Ancestral Pueblo people, who moved into the region around 10,000 years ago. (They were formerly called "Anasazi" by archaeologists, but today's Pueblo people consider the Navajo term disrespectful). The village below was most highly developed in the late 1400s, and contained multistory dwellings and storage buildings. 

The cliff dwellings at Bandelier are located mostly on the south side of the canyon, which means that they stay cool in the summer and warmer in the winter. It was a very hot day when I visited, and there was a significant temperature drop once you were sheltered by the cliffs. 

Many of the cliff dwellings used to have structures built in front of them, leaving the caves as back rooms. Holes for the ceiling poles are still visible in the tuff, which is relatively soft and quite easy to hollow out.

One of the most interesting sites in this area of the park is known as the Alcove House, a huge shallow cave in the canyon wall. It holds a reconstructed kiva and the remnants of dwellings, but it's quite a challenge to reach  - and not at all fun for anyone who's afraid of heights! Like many of the other cliff dwellings in the park, the Alcove House is only accessibly by ladder; unlike the dwellings in the earlier photos, the ladders are very long (140 feet altogether). The photo below shows one of three that you have to climb to get up there!

It's a little hard to take photos of the whole alcove when you're in it, but the view down Frijoles Canyon is excellent. It also highlights how the natural propensity of the Bandelier tuff to erode into caves - something that the first visitors to the canyon certainly noticed and took advantage of!

I only had one day to explore Bandelier, which is unfortunate (it has more than 70 miles of trails), but I'm glad I had the chance to visit on this trip. This area offers a fascinating blend of volcanology and archaeology, something that I (with my sadly unused archaeology minor) really appreciate. 

Disturbing developments

Well, I've just seen something in the news that reinforces my opinion of how far some of our government representatives have moved on from sanity (or at least from representing the interests of some of their constituents). I'm sure this is a rather polarized issue, but I'll risk dissenting commentary, because I think it needs to be brought to peoples' attention. (Gun owners: I personally do not own a gun and do not want to, but I am not saying that I don't think you should, either. This isn't about that; it's my opinion on why we don't need to have weapons accessible in National Parks.)

"Senators Push for Guns in National Parks" showed up in my morning paper, and I didn't even have to go beyond the first sentence before I was sufficiently steamed to start drafting letters to my senators. Apparently, the gun lobby is making a big push to get their in-pocket senators to change National Park Service rules to allow gun owners to carry loaded, accessible firearms onto National Park lands.

The senators write that current policies "infringe on the rights of law-abiding gun owners who wish to transport and carry firearms on or across these lands." Oh really? I just checked the Code of Federal Regulations, Title 36, Parts 1 to 199, and came across Title 36, Chapter 1, Part 2, part of which states:

(3) Traps, nets and unloaded weapons may be possessed within a temporary lodging or mechanical mode of conveyance when such implements are rendered temporarily inoperable or are packed, cased or stored in a manner that will prevent their ready use.

I don't see anything in that sentence that says people aren't allowed to have weapons in a National Park - only that they aren't allowed to have loaded, readily accessible weapons.

Which is how it should be. There is absolutely no reason that the average citizen, visiting a National Park, should need access to a firearm. They are not there to hunt animals because National Parks and Preserves are some of the only places left where animals can live without the threat of being shot (other than in allowed hunting seasons and special situations). There is no need for weapons for defense - the National Park Police 2006 Annual Report listed, among other things, 3 homicides and 138 aggrivated assaults for the entire park system in 2006, from a pool of 272 million visitors. A few hundred crimes that might have prevented with a gun out of 272 million visits? What an absolute hotbed of criminal activity.

I don't buy into the whole "I need a gun for self-defense" argument at the best of times, but I especially don't want people carrying them around me when I'm in a National Park. All right, if you're in a bear-infested area and you need a gun to fend them off, fine. The Park System grants permits and exceptions for that. But if you're not allowed to hunt or target shoot in the park, and the crime rate is lower than a whole lot of other places in the country, why the hell do you need to have access to a weapon? And I don't buy that crap about people needing the laws changed so they can drive through parks with their weapons on the way to hunting areas. They don't need to change the laws. Keep the gun unloaded and locked up in your cabin or your car, or don't drive through the park.

I am seriously disappointed in the whole mentality that's driving this issue, particularly that it's our national heritage to be armed to the teeth wherever we go. Maybe that was necessary two hundred years ago, when law enforcement was scarce or nonexistent, people needed to hunt for food and there actually were enough dangerous animals around to merit carrying a gun, but that certainly isn't the case today. Having spent a great deal of time learning about geology in National Parks, I can definitely say that the thought of allowing people to have access to their firearms in Parks is appalling. I certainly won't feel safer knowing that while I'm out mapping an outcrop, someone might decide to start firing a weapon near me (or at me, since it's apparently pretty easy to get mistaken for a deer, if the amount of neon orange hunting gear for sale is any indicator). National Parks are the only place in this country where I know that weapons are not permitted unless they're essentially useless. I'm perfectly happy that the Park Police have weapons to use if they need them, but the thought of my fellow average citizen having access to a weapon in a park - where, most likely, there would never be enough Park Police to enforce gun safety - scares me.

I'm going to be writing those letters this afternoon, and I hope I can inspire some other people out there to do the same.