moon house ruin

I have large hands. Strong, capable. They can reach a tenth on the piano: an octave plus two. I’ve at times been embarrassed to hold hands with a boy because mine often equals in size or—quel nightmare—outsizes his. Sometimes it’s a delightful coupling, fingers knit together, skin smooth, a bone match.

Lifelines, fingerprints, things we are born with, that die with us, unique, designs of our skin.

Long ago, perhaps 800 years before us, a gathering of Anasazi built a home in the cleft of a rock ledge. They built rooms, separating them with walls made of rock and mud. They created look-out holes, and places to store corn and seeds and nuts. They added decorative touches to some walls—small stones of varied colors—and painted others. Some walls were smoothed by the passage of time, moisture, wind. And others were smoothed by hands.

There are myriad ways to play with mud. A potter shapes clay, a toddler splashes dirty pools of water with hands or feet. Some squeeze it between their toes. Others pay hefty fees to sit in it, be coated with it; some of us have the same experience at the edges of riverbanks. Soft, moist earth is sensuous, decadent, pleasure inducing.

It can also be practical, necessary; we build tools, instruments that facilitate our daily tasks. As the Anasazi built pots and urns and walls.

I stand before a handmade wall at Moon House Ruin. The red brown mud, patted into place all those centuries ago, still holds fingerprints, lifelines, the unique designs of those hands that created this wall. I lift my hand and place it gently upon the indentation of someone else’s hand. Gratitude, honor flood me. I am somehow able, through solidified earth, to touch one facet of a human who created a home in this cleft of rock ledge an eon ago. Eight hundred years ago the human being who shaped this wall could never have imagined me, in my Scarpa shoes and Outdoor Research jacket, my Old Navy tights and Smartwool socks, my iPhone and Camelback and Kind bar in my Osprey backpack. Who else has placed their hand against these dips and swirls and indentations? And for how many more decades, centuries, will others continue to do so?

I have found a man whose fingers knit with mine, whose palm neatly presses against my own. He stands with me at this wall, places his hand into the same whorled depression, and shares with me the wonder of being a human upon this earth.

Moon House Ruin is on Cedar Mesa in Bears Ears National Monument.