The Lost World of the Old Ones - Discoveries in the Ancient Southwest (David Roberts, 2015)

I enjoyed this - helps with bits and pieces of information on the "ancient southwest" - which we think of as a large area around Four Corners.  The author isn't a professional archaeologist - but is a heckuva rock climber and has written on many topics.  He had written a very popular/successful book on this topic a few years before - which I've not read - this one seemed like a sequel.  Picked up a variety of topics that don't fit together particularly closely - but all tied into this area.

One takeaway - still not much resolution on the depopulation that happened shortly before the Spanish showed up.  Also mysterious:  the populations in the pueblos at the time the Spanish showed up (down to now) - language and pottery patterns don't fit together cleanly - backgrounds?

The utter beauty of this stark area; the ingenuity of the ancient populations; great stuff here about the rock art in various forms.  Inaccessible granaries indicating protection of precious grains in starvation-times.  An interesting "meridian" theory about moving some of the population centers.

We have visited the general area quite a few times but haven't explored it nearly as much as we'd like.  A strange kind of beauty, captivating.

First chapter involves exploring Cedar Mesa - author spent lots of profitable time with an old-timer (Waldo) who was born and raised in the area - this quote made me think of my dad and his knowledge of the St. Joe area (other than the "vague sorrow" thing):  "The more time Greg and I spent in Waldo's company, the more we realized that he was a walking encyclopedia of local lore, or knowledge that had escaped the historians and archaeologists, of understandings that would evaporate with his passing.  Waldo knew it:  that sense of impending loss, I guessed, was at the core of the vague sorrow he seemed to carry with wherever he went, even as he told funny stories about the blatherings of self-styled "experts"."

They take a rafting trip into Desolation Canyon (named by John Wesley Powell) - author gets bummed because the trip is going too fast - just how it feels when we are hiking in Grand Canyon!  He writes:  "Twenty-nine of our eighty-five river miles were behind us.  I felt the adventure already slipping through my fingers - I wanted to make the journey last forever.  I thought of Edward Abbey [rafting through Glen Canyon] . . . "The time passes slowly," Abbey wrote, "but not slowly enough."  So true.