Image… Your picture window is 100 feet (30 m) hight and 200 feet (60 m) wide. It looks out over a wash filled with cottonwood trees, small brush, wildflowers, and intermittenty a small stream. In the distance are ridges and hills, and beyond that is a broad plain or wash where you may grow crops in wetter times. The trail winds up the side of the ridge. The glow of cooking fires illuminates the alcove or cave with a golden glow. Above the plains you look out on a star filled sky and seasonally on the Milky Way. The night sky is woven into your life as naturally as the day. The stars and seasons flow past endlessly.
We may have electric lights, TV, movies, You Tube, and 500px 🙂 but the Anasazi or Ancient Puebloans had a view to die for. Since some of the structures are defensive, they may well have died defending their home.
This is a panorama of the Monarch Cave Anasazi Ruins in the Comb Ridge region of SE Utah. There are 11 vertical images combined in Lightroom.. Taken with a Nikon 810A camera and a Nikon 14-24 mm lens at 14 mm, f 2.8, 30 sec., and ISO 6400.
There is one very large alcove but separated into two sections. I am sitting on a 30 – 45 degree stone wall that separated the two sections. To the left is the larger section and the easiest to reach. Most of the structures there are destroyed, but there are a few low walls and many pits for grinding grain, as well as some petroglyphs and pictographs.
The section to the right is harder to reach and in better condition, with several rooms and rounded walls. A wide overhang unites the two sides.
The Milky Way hugs the far left edge of the sky, only partially seen. As a consolation prize, we have the Andromeda Galaxy in the left center sky, the double cluster, and several additional faint galaxies.
Disclaimer: No ruins were harmed or touched in the making of this photo!
Thanks for taking the time to look. Hope you enjoy! Your time, faves, and comments are much appreciated!
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