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Thursday, October 09, 2025

CHACO CANYON / SCULPTURE OF SILENCE

by Dick Altman


More than 300,000 acres surrounding Chaco Canyon that are currently off-limits to drilling could be opened up. Environment New Mexico received a letter from the Bureau of Land Management confirming that the Public Lands Order protecting the area is “under review.” Nearly 90% of the surrounding area is already open to drilling. Chaco Canyon should be protected. —Environment New Mexico, September 25, 2025


Northern New Mexico


The name 

Chaco Canyon

may mean nothing

to you.

It means nothing

to me,

until I escape

New York’s

clamor and scream,

to live

in the calmer 

precincts 

of Old West’s

Indian Country.

 

We’re taught

to think

ancients

of Indigenous

culture

were mainly

hunters

and gatherers.

Chaco proves

they were

builders,

sculptors,

on a monumental

scale—

imagine

so-called “great

houses”

with eight-

hundred rooms—

unparalleled,

before,

and long after,

Columbus.

 

I’ve explored,

many Indian

remnants.

The walls 

mostly adobe,

or coarse

stone block.

Chaco’s edifices, 

stories high,

overwhelm me.

Many erected

with slivers

of sandstone,

some thin

as knife blades,

I see in them,

not architecture,

as such,

but fine weaving

or embroidery,

of the most

commanding,

exquisite

artistry.

 

I lose myself

in Chaco’s

deep valley

of silence,

its serenity,

so void of sound,

wandering

its remains,

transmutes

into moments

of transcendence,

unlike few

I’ve ever

known.

 

Every now

and then,

an oil derrick,

its mechanistic,

prayer,

endless,

to venality,

as I see it,

shatters

Chaco’s

centuries

of unyielding

spirituality.

 

The stench,

toxicity 

to soil

and water,

signals

an irreverence

for a Native

American site,

that deserves

the rare awe 

and esteem

we reserve,

in my heart,

at least,

for Egypt’s

Pyramids,

reflecting

the grandeur

of human

dream,

and reach.

 

 

Dick Altman writes in the thin, magical air of Old West’s high desert plains, where, at 7,000 feet, reality and imagination often blur. He is published in the American Journal of Poetry, Santa Fe Literary Review, Fredericksburg Literary Review, Foliate Oak, Landing Zone, Cathexis Northwest Press, Humana Obscura, Haunted Waters Press, Split Rock Review, The Ravens Perch, and others here and abroad.  His work also appears in the first edition of The New Mexico Anthology of Poetry, published by the New Mexico Museum Press. Pushcart Prize nominee and poetry winner of Santa Fe New Mexican’s annual literary competition, he has authored some 280 poems, published on four continents.