Listening to Chaco Canyon
- Jul 21
- 3 min read
As I began researching this post on Chaco Canyon, I quickly realized how difficult it was going to be to write. The challenge was not a lack of information, but the weight of the place itself and the responsibility that comes with speaking about it.
Chaco Canyon, located in central New Mexico, is a monumental ancestral site containing structures, artifacts, and human remains tied to Pueblo and Hopi peoples. The canyon was most active between 900 and 1150 CE before being abandoned by the Chacoan peoples. Many Pueblo communities in New Mexico continue to hold deep cultural and spiritual connections to Chaco through oral histories and ancestral memory.
I was born and raised in New Mexico, though my ancestry is Puerto Rican and Irish. Writing about Chaco feels fraught because it is a place that remains sacred to Pueblo peoples and has been repeatedly misunderstood, studied, and exploited by conquerors, colonists, politicians, and even scientists. Its land and fragile ruins continue to be threatened today, as nearby areas face ongoing pressure from oil extraction and fracking by the current administration.
While I would never claim the ancestral ties or lived relationship to Chaco that Pueblo peoples hold, I still find the continued misunderstanding and endangerment of this place deeply heartbreaking and shortsighted. Chaco is not only a historical site, but a living one, and it deserves care, respect, and protection.
What I understand about Chaco comes not from theory alone, but from returning to it over the years. There are many interpretations of how life functioned there, but the understanding I grew up with centered on its relationship to seasons and astronomy. Its placement in such an arid, exposed landscape, with limited access to water, raises questions about whether it was ever meant to function as a traditional settlement.
Many of the rooms lack windows. The artifacts discovered there lean toward ceremonial use rather than daily life. Objects such as macaw feathers and cacao point to long-distance trade with Mesoamerica. The buildings align with solar and lunar events, and nearby a carved spiral petroglyph acts as a seasonal marker, tracking the movement of light throughout the year.
Yet when I visit, I find myself thinking less about these facts. What stays with me is how the place feels.
Chaco is stark and exposed. There are few trees, and the wind and sun meet you without resistance. Dust settles on your skin and follows you as you walk.
Even in broad daylight, the ruins feel loud to me. Before I allowed myself to trust intuition or explore spirituality, I might have called that sensation spooky, a word that reflects misunderstanding more than truth. After sitting with grief, returning home, and reconnecting deeply with the land of my childhood, I understand that feeling differently.
Chaco is a spiritual place. The presence there does not feel empty or abandoned. It feels inhabited, held, and watched over. For me, that presence speaks not of ghosts, but of continuity. The ancestors of the Pueblo and Hopi peoples are still there.
I have returned to Chaco Canyon many times as a source of inspiration in my work. The designs often arrive as a kind of pull, as if a deeper understanding is asking to move through my hands and into form. Sometimes I am responding to a specific detail or memory, and other times I am trying to hold onto a feeling, using the work as a way to stay in relationship with the place. For me, Chaco feels like a root system for New Mexico, a point of origin that carries the weight of a creation story, as if so much of the land and its spirit radiates outward from there.
What made this place difficult to write about is the same thing that draws me to it in my work. Chaco does not ask to be defined or explained, only acknowledged. As a maker, I have learned that sometimes the most honest response is not explanation, but creation. Through form, material, and intention, I can hold space for what resists language and allow the work itself to carry reverence forward.
Thanks so much for reading.
Take care for now,
Caitlin
Here are several fascinating reads about Chaco Canyon:
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