11 A.M., JUNE 29, 1977 CHACO CANYON.
You are Anna Sofaer, a young artist in the company of some amateur archaeologists. You are climbing Fajada, a 430-foot sandstone butte, that stands like sentinel at the entrance of the Canyon. You recognize the vertical stack of sandstone slabs leaning against a cliff face. You have seen them before and knew that petrographs lay emblazoned on the cliff wall behind the slabs. You notice a shaded recess between the two petrographs. One is a large nine-ring spiral, the other a smaller, three-ring spiral with a tail.
Then you see it: A bright vertical dagger-shaped shaft of sunlight moving down the large petrograph. It moves as though alive! You watch the dagger pass a short distance, to the right of the spiral’s center. In 12 minutes, the dagger traverses completely down the spiral and disappears.
The astronomical system you stumbled across that June morning was at least equal in precision to any other device yet found in the New World or Old.
45 YEARS LATER
You have never lost your sense of awe. You’ve let it guide you, and it has carried you, over the years, to the founding of the Solstice Project. In creating that, you chronicled the growth of a new perspective on the fundamental mystery of the Chaco.
You have become something of a star in archaeological circles, a kind of Jane Goodall of the Chaco. With surveyor Phillip Tuwaletstiwa and your partner Rob – a young Indiana Jones PhD student – you’ve made a documentary The Mystery of Chaco Canyon, narrated by Robert Redford. You are a bit uncomfortable with semi-celebrity that comes with your groundbreaking work, but you accept it because it helps you finish things that need to be done. Now you’re working on your next film, which will show how vast the Chaco region is, reaching into four states.
You are still the young woman in search of the secrets of Chaco. It remains beautiful, strange, and terrifying. At once unfamiliar and yet personal, sometimes welcoming, sometimes overwhelming. Let’s hear the story.
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Photo Andy Johnson
