Quiet

The experience that many have while visiting Hovenweep National Monument is one of quiet. The other morning I was doing my routine check in the campground and had a wonderful visit with two people who had stayed for a couple of nights. They described how they had enjoyed the silence that was broken only by the sound of the wings of the male mountain bluebird that regularly visited their campsite. Perhaps it is more apt to say that they had visited his place for a short stay. As the sole campers, their experience of quiet was accompanied with a sense of human solitude. 

Unidentified Bird on Ruin at Cajon

Respondents to a 1999/2000 visitor study conducted here by researchers from Northern Arizona University claimed that the most enjoyable parts of the trip to Hovenweep were seeing the ruins, interacting with the knowledgeable and friendly staff and experiencing the solitude and tranquility of the surroundings. In their responses to an open-ended question regarding their suggestions for park managers, visitors noted time and again that they found the quiet and out-of-the-way nature of Hovenweep to be a real asset. The quiet and solitude tends to give visitors a sense of extreme remoteness. Collectively, these qualities provide for a high-quality experience in which people feel as though they are able to make their own discoveries regarding the lives of the ancestral Puebloans who built the Hovenweep Towers about 800 years ago. 

Ruins at Cajon

The notion of quiet is important enough that the following guiding principle has been included in the recently completed Long-Range Interpretive Plan: “Strive to preserve the natural soundscape, the dark night sky, and the viewsheds -all integral parts of the Hovenweep experience - whenever an interpretive medium or type of installation is selected.” Similarly, one of the park’s national significance statements documented in the interpretive plan is:

             “The park’s perceived remoteness and uninterrupted horizons lend

a sense of discovery to visitors’ experiences. The shallow canyons,

spring alcoves and structural remains of Hovenweep enable visitors

to more easily envision the life of ancestral Pueblo communities and

their relationship to the natural environment.”

Spring in Alcove at Hackberry

I was sitting on a bench for quite some time today, beneath a juniper tree, overlooking Little Ruin Canyon. I expected to encounter the pair of visitors who had begun hiking the two-mile loop trail about an hour earlier. I somehow missed them but had a fine time nonetheless. It was a beautiful high desert winter day with an air temperature in the sunshine in the mid-50s. In the shade of the canyon’s north-facing slope, a bit of the snow that had fallen a full two weeks before lingered and as soon as you are out of the sun a significant chill sets in. The sky was clear and there was visibility of a good hundred or more miles. There was much to see but I was overwhelmed and calmed by the quiet. The only sounds I could hear were the occasional riffle of the wind, the raspy voice of a raven flying overhead,  and the frequent clicking calls of the many juncos feeding beneath the junipers, sage, and rabbitbrush. I could also hear the whisper of their wings from time to time.

Raven Flying Over Little Ruin Canyon

From my perch I had a view of Stronghold House and Unit Type House across from me on the canyon’s north rim.

Stronghold House

Unit Type House

To the west I could see the Twin Towers, Hovenweep House, and Hovenweep Castle as well as Tower Point.  Beneath Unit Type House and Stronghold Tower I could easily see the rubble piles, all that remains of the structures that were built on the talus slopes descending into the canyon.

Twin Towers

Hovenweep House, Square Tower, and Hovenweep Castle

Tower Point

I was really struck that the quiet at the heart of my experience, that same quiet that is so important to our visitors, belies the experience of the ancestral Puebloans who built these marvelous structures and lived here centuries ago. Population estimates vary widely, from approximately 100 to nearly 600 residents of Little Ruin Canyon. Nonetheless, had I been here 750 years ago, before the 23-year drought began in 1276 that eventually contributed to the people’s departure from this area, the canyon would not likely be a quiet place, nor one where solitude would be experienced.


Visiting Little Ruin Canyon in the days of ancestral Puebloan residence, one would observe an amazing bustle of activity. Winter might be somewhat quieter than other times of the year. Farming seasons would be much busier. Much of the activity would center around producing the crops that sustained the people. It is estimated that it took four to six acres of land per person to produce enough corn and other crops needed for survival. Men would be working the fields on the mesa top or on terraces in the canyon. They might be planting corn or squash, perhaps beans. They might be carrying water from the seeps at the canyon head or from reservoirs behind dams above the canyon head. Of course, they would be involved in harvest. Women would be engaged in the near constant chore of grinding corn and other seeds for storage and immediate consumption. Rather than quiet, one would likely hear the grinding sound of stone on stone as manos are dragged across corn set in the metates.

Metates at Cajon

There would also be a great deal of gathering activity. The ancestral Puebloans utilized many native wild plants to augment their harvest for food as well as for flavorings, dyes and paints. Some community residents would be gathering clay from the canyon bottoms while others might be making that clay into pots for cooking, storing grain, and other utilitarian, decorative, or ceremonial uses.  The sound and smell of the fires used to cook or to fire the ceramics would always be present. Similarly, we would be hearing the chopping of juniper with stone tools, wood that would be used for fuel or as a building material. Masons would be building new structures or repairing the existing ones. Another sound of stone on stone would come from those shaping sandstone pieces for the intricate structures, perhaps chipping hand and foot holds into the canyon wall, or grinding various rocks and minerals, such as iron, to make paints for decorating pottery, plaster for covering walls and floors, as well as for rock paintings.

Detail of Masonry at Horseshoe

Iron Concretion at Cajon

The sounds of footsteps, perhaps even the echo of small rocks or pebbles falling to the canyon floor might indicate a member of the community carrying pots of corn to granaries built into alcoves in the canyon walls. Another sound would be created by the sliding away of a stone door panel that was used to tightly seal the granary, protecting that the valuable food supply from destruction by rodents. 

Granaries near Tower Point

If visiting the Square Tower Community in the year 1260, we would, no doubt, hear the sounds of turkeys, an animal the people had domesticated, primarily to make warm clothing from the feathers. There would also be dogs. We might hear the sound of a ceremonial foot drum emanating from a kiva, sounding as it it were the heartbeat of the Earth itself. Archeological evidence suggests there are more than two dozen kiva depressions in Little Ruin Canyon. Add to that number the dozen towers and some 200 rooms in Little Ruin Canyon and it is clear what a busy place this was. It was a place filled with life, the challenges presented by the high desert, as well as the joys and successes of successful dryland farming. The sounds became still around the year 1300, but the echoes of the people remain.

Ladder Emerging from Reconstructed Kiva at Edge of the Cedars State Park

Alas, it is 2010 and Hovenweep is quiet. My imagination, however, is filled with new observations, experience, and knowledge. In my mind's eye, Hovenweep continues to be a vibrant, peopled landscape, filled with marvelous stories to tell.

The Bench Beneath the Juniper