Outside Flagstaff, Arizona, stands the stunning Wupatki National Monument. Here, more than 800 years ago, the Ancestral Puebloans (also known as the Anasazi) built massive structures out of the red sandstone. Many pueblos exist inside the national monument in scattered areas.


The Wupatki ruin encompasses more than 100 rooms, a circular community room, and even has a ball court, similar to those used by the Mayans. Living and farming in this place was a mixture of people, including the Kayenta Anasazi, the Sinagua, and the Cohonina. The Sinagua could live with very little water in this dry region.
They incorporated the existing sandstone formations into the design of the buildings.

Many buildings were multistoried, using wooden beams to support the upper floors. Windows gazed out at the blue sky and redrock desert beyond.
We hiked around several of the ruins, including Wukoki and Wupatki itself. I imagined hearing the sounds of the builders, their laughter and storytelling, the grinding of maize on mortar stones.

One really cool part of this area is the "blowhole," a narrow fissure in the earth with an opening not far from the ball court. When the air is cooler outside, air rushes out of the Earth, and when it's hot outside, it surges back inward. The Earth breathes here. You can hear it whistling and surging down in the dark depths of that fissure. The Hopi call the blowhole the breath of Yaapontsa, the wind spirit.
Before the main pueblo at Wupatki was built, an amazing thing happened. The ground trembled, and debris blasted out of the earth, raining down over the existing pithouses. The people left the area as lava flows oozed out and cinders rained over the Earth. Sunset Crater Volcano sprang into being, growing some 1000 feet tall before its eruptions ceased. Afterward, the people returned to the Wupatki site and continued planting and living in the shadow of that volcano, eventually building the truly huge Wupatki Pueblo.

Our next stop -- the volcano!