Elusive Ruins

I don't even know how to get over there. Oh that seems so sketchy. I didn't sleep much last night. I think I'm anxious about trying to get down to that ruin. I have a feeling it could be dangerous. So this is the start of day two and today's main goal is to find access to that big ruin that we found yesterday. Before I do that I need to get some food in me and then I'll get moving. Some bad news to report this morning is Max is limping. So I'm hoping it's not from the fall that he took yesterday. Max are you all right? Oh good. Looks like he's okay. Oh is it swollen Max? Is your paw swollen? Oh it is swollen. Dang it. I thought it was just maybe a tender foot. That is not good. I can't really leave Max here all day in my truck. That's not the news I wanted this morning. Well uh sometimes the coffee just seems to make everything better. Max is off walking around. I was looking at his foot a little bit more and I don't know it doesn't look too swollen. He's favoring it a little bit but doing better. Do we still have a chance of going? Well we're off. Max is limping right now. We're gonna see if that gets better. If it doesn't we'll turn around. I'm walking off trail at a different approach so this is an area I haven't crossed before. There's all these opportunities in here to hide out to build something and no doubt they probably head out here while out hunting, out foraging. But there's so many rock features in this canyon that it's hard to believe they would make anything substantial under these little things. Just as I say that, check it out. Why do I whisper when I see something incredible like this? Just as I say, why would you build something here? I wonder what those patterns mean. How long was it here? You could think that they came up into the hills into these small cliff bands to hide their prized pieces when maybe they moved on. I've been checking these bands for about 15 minutes. I haven't seen anything else. When you find something like that it's a reminder of what other things are hiding just out of sight and it makes me want to check every nook and cranny out here. I was thinking more on that piece of pottery that I found. I doubt they're cooking in that piece. It was something special, something sacred and they hid it far away from their home. Probably somewhere where they thought it'd be safe. That's what I think about when we finally die. All the things that we collect in our modern age will most likely end up in the landfill. Out here it could last 700 to 1,000 years. I'm trying to get off this mesa here. I've been following, stepping down bench after bench after bench and I'm almost to the bottom following an old game trail right now. Seems that the animals know what they're doing. Imagine that. It's one thing I dread out here actually. It's pushing through all that thicket and as much as I hate it, what's the alternative? To be on the couch. Eventually there's going to be a time when my body has failed me so I remind myself that I'm pretty lucky. Standing here eating right where I decided to take a break. I'm actually almost stepped on it pot sure. Makes me wonder, well you know what? That ruin, yeah there it is. There's that ruin we found yesterday right here. So that pot could have spilled out of this and then over the years washed down. Come on. What amount of fear did it take to build the place up there? The amount of work effort it took so that you could sleep easy at night. There was survival of food, of water, of drought, of flooding, bitter cold, of heat and the biggest fear might have been other people. An enemy you either saw or only heard stories about. So you built your home in one of the most difficult places. I feel all that in one moment when I approach these places. How does it relate to my life? It's worlds apart from my life. I'm looking at this shelf, these shelves that come back here and the one I was looking at yesterday where I thought it may not go is hard to tell. The angle is right there and clearly from down here that's not going to be an option. Now just a major note that it is illegal to access any of these ruins with climbing equipment. So it would be easy to just hang off there with a harness and rope. Not only is it illegal I think ethically it's kind of cheating. As I guess there's really no access from down here and that's all got to be access from above. This one over here on the far left they have a ladder a 30 foot ladder and then to haul all of that up. All right so it's pretty clear there's no way to access it from below. This ruin here on the left seems like it was most likely accessed by ladders by very tall ladders and this one on the right may very well have been accessed by ladders as well. Kind of see where there's a possibility of getting down. Does look kind of sketchy so Wow getting up close Yeah And I'm right there. As I approached the spot I realized that I had seen this before. This was on Desert Drifters channel one of the early videos. We found this place and he stood right here. It's been two years since I've seen it so I can't exactly recall his route in. But more importantly I think what rings very loudly in my ears right now is our mortality. As beautiful as it is it could all be taken away in a simple accident. Man his life was cut so short but so much of him sticks with those who have never met him and there's something to be said about that. He's now gone just like the people who he was so fascinated by. These ancient people you never know what life is going to have ahead of you when it might get cut short. Mine almost was in an accident that was out of my control. Luckily I survived and so it's a reminder to me to not take life for granted as cliche as that is. I think that's why getting out here on the edge of these places and dangerous places they remind you of how fragile life is. How careful you need to be but also to try and live because you never know what might take it from you. Now as difficult as it was to get here the same rules apply. Don't want to touch anything. Don't want to damage or disturb anything but I'm here. Here's the first wall probably built out to some structures here that have since eroded. You could see the water that moves through here that runs through here and that's most likely why this didn't last. It probably ran off from the top here. Wow here's a twisted stick here. Just a branch. This water seems to have run from the back. I don't know if it was once a spring that went dry. A couple sticks. Flat flagstone. 800 year old wood. Fingerprints. Wow I wonder if this was just a series of granaries up here. The entryway doesn't seem like it's easily accessed and there's not connecting rooms so if I had to guess the reason why it's so hard to access is because they kept their food in here. It wasn't necessarily a great commute with a lot of dangerous entry points difficult to access day to day but if you wanted to store your food up here well it's a very safe place to keep it. They could have lived here because this one the difference between this square one and this say circular one here this oval shaped is it's clear that there's a lip there for this to be sealed up. This one no lip no door jam no way to hold the stone in place unless somehow they just centered it. I don't know. This one it's very clear. A stone could almost do two layers. You could do a stone inside here and then one sealed on the outside but look at the little rocks tucked in here to strengthen it. Even have these little sticks and right here one opposite. What was that for? This one you can see the soot as opposed to the other ones so maybe they did live here. That's the spot the first attempt did. I don't know why people would try for that. This is the ledge that I thought maybe would access the other ruin but it doesn't. I'm not gonna try. You could see the importance of knowing the seasons of having a calendar storing away so much rationing out. Time mattered. Seasons mattered. So you seal this up knowing how much food is in there and as you start to go hungry I'm sure your mind's running wild thinking about the food that you could access in there. Oh the fantasies we have about food and when it's withheld from us. Imagine they went through that all the time. It was probably a regular event for them fantasizing about food and ours is just for taste and pleasure and theirs was wrapped up in survival and it was just right there. When did they get to crack it open? Was there a celebration when they finally did? He's always so patient. How you doing buddy? Still got that limp. So he doesn't panic. I always leave my bag behind when I'm in those spaces. Let him know I'm coming back. Well there's still a couple hours left in the day and I think I'm going to try and check out those other ruins that I have marked on that old map. There's a few that I missed but I'm going to have to let them go and I think I'm going to move on to the two other spots that I have marked. There's a total of seven but this detour rightfully so took up most of my time.