meditations for historians

meditations for historians

fiction
edward w pritchard


Holidays over one way to reorient oneself is to practice meditations for historians.

I like to travel in my mind's eye to seeing myself as a member of the Mongollon Indian's living in the Gila Cliff dwellings near present day Silver City New Mexico. Picture yourself in your subconscious living as an ancient one, one of the few hundreds of Mongollon residents living and working in the stark environment of a New Mexican landscape living a simple honest existence. Today we are part of a group piling rocks to extend a wall near the edge of one of the rooms used as shelter in the cliff dwellings. A light steady rain is falling and the floors of the rooms are slick. The work is repetitious.

Nearby the noises of banging utensils alerts the workers to dinner. However first so many courses of height of the wall must be completed before a break from work may be taken. Feel the strain on your back and shoulders of lifting and piling the flat rocks over and over. Your arms are wet and you are hot and cold at the same time from the work and the rain.

A beautiful intricately designed clay pot is passed  around containing a warm flat bread. Courtesy suggests choosing the smallest slice of bread and passing on the container.

Strain to listen and remember the voices of your fellow workers as you eat. Safe and secure several hundred feet above the trail the clan is safe in the cliff dwelling. The new room will shelter children born in the past year. Prosperity exists this year in the lodgings. 

Today group enterprise has accomplished something significant. A stone wall taller than a man has been completed to shelter the young and keep the cold driving rain off the clan. The space above the piling of rocks serves as an open window to observe the sky, valleys below and let in the distant sound of the churning river. The network of piled stones are intricate in themselves and a thing of beauty and will last for a very long time.