Shadowing celestial events
Adriel's invitations are never predictable but always rewarding. Last year he recruited Jean and me for archaeological fieldwork in remote northwestern New Mexico (see "Flying Carpet: Realm of the Ancients, August 2005 AOPA Flight Training). More recently we explored geoglyphs (large human-made stone arrays) that Adriel had discovered from his ultralight aircraft. Although large enough to see from an airplane, these constructions were undocumented in modern times. Being the first to visit them on the ground was mind-boggling.
As for this latest invitation, I knew that Adriel had recently photographed the full moon at its 18-year southern standstill alignment with the ancestral Pueblo Indian ruins of Chaco Canyon, New Mexico. It was Adriel's friend Anna Sofaer who first identified the extensive celestial alignments of these ruins with cycles of the sun and moon. I knew nothing of the Sun Dagger, but past adventures with Adriel suggested that despite my ignorance I should drop everything and go.
So here I was, soaring over golden canyons and crinkly black lava fields en route from Phoenix to Santa Fe. Along the way I shot photos and conjured visual poetry until the Sangre de Cristo Mountains filled my windshield and the green ribbon of the Rio Grande heralded my destination. I landed in afternoon crosswinds at Santa Fe and phoned Adriel. To my surprise he was still at his studio in Fort Defiance, Arizona. Considering that the reception was scheduled for 5:30 p.m. and Fort Defiance is a four-hour drive, it was clear that my friend wouldn't arrive on time. "What happened?" I asked.
"The lab that was to deliver my photos called on Friday to say their printer was down," Adriel explained. "A place in Albuquerque can do it, but even after two all-nighters my Internet connection has proven too slow to transfer all the files. So I'll drop a disk in Albuquerque and see you sometime tonight. If I'm lucky the prints will show up during tomorrow's follow-up meeting."
Resolving to make the most of my visit whatever might happen, I took a taxi to Santa Fe's historic plaza. How intriguing that the nation's second-oldest city should be located so far from the nearest ocean or navigable waterway. A decade before the pilgrims landed, Santa Fe was founded as the northern capital of New Spain by conquistadores marching from Mexico City. By the mid-1800s the community bustled as the terminus of the Santa Fe Trail. Now it prospers as an art, culinary, and style center. With the original 1610 adobe Palace of the Governors and other historic buildings still standing in the town plaza, Santa Fe's adobe-and-chiles ambience has survived intact. It's one of the few remaining places in America where you could wake up like Rip van Winkle and know immediately where you are.
Unfettered by time or obligations, I wandered Santa Fe's renowned art district. Only here would you encounter in successive galleries modern sculpture, antique Native American beadwork, and Alfred Eisenstad's 1930s photograph of Graf Zeppelin crewmen making mid-ocean airship repairs.
Sure enough, Adriel hadn't arrived when I reached the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, so I joined other attendees for Anna Sofaer's Sun Dagger presentation.
Anna had discovered the Chaco Canyon Sun Dagger site in 1977, when atop 500-foot Fajada Butte she found huge stone slabs leaning innocuously against a cliff wall. It might have passed as natural except for the existence of underlying rock carvings. Over time Anna and her team documented the amazing purpose of this construction. "At the Sun Dagger site," explained Anna, "the Chacoan people brilliantly commemorated the cycles of the sun and the moon in light patterns cast by three rock slabs onto spiral petroglyphs."
How the prehistoric Chacoans precisely aligned these slabs and carvings so "daggers of light" would mark the solstices, the equinoxes, and the moon's migrations in a single display, no one knows, but even with modern know-how it would be no easy feat.
To analyze and preserve the remarkable site, Anna's team meticulously developed an interactive computer simulation where researchers can input slab adjustments along with historical solar and lunar positions to explore the resulting light patterns on the underlying spirals. Thanks to this painstaking work, we were treated to the evening's premiere of a live photorealistic sun dagger demonstration right there in the auditorium.
Afterward, Adriel and I talked archaeology with Anna's team over quintessential Santa Fe fare--Dos Equis beer and blue corn enchiladas con camarones. "Too bad Adriel's photographs haven't arrived," observed Anna between bites. "His aerial perspective allows us to see the landscape as ancient minds probably conceptualized it when developing their celestial alignments."
The following morning Adriel and I attended presentations relating the archaeo-astronomy of Chaco Canyon to other sites. One seminar featured translation of Mayan pictographs to illuminate their astronomy and calendars. How bizarre to find myself in such an alien world, and how fascinating!
My host was still awaiting his photographs when I excused myself to lunch with another friend in town. I was preflighting the Flying Carpet for my flight home when Adriel called. "The prints arrived just minutes before the meeting ended," he said. "Everyone loved them!" I was thrilled at the news but envious--after all, I'd like to see those mysterious images myself someday.
Greg Brown was the 2000 National Flight Instructor of the Year. His books include Flying Carpet, The Savvy Flight Instructor, The Turbine Pilot's Flight Manual, Job Hunting for Pilots, and You Can Fly! Visit his Web site. Visit Anna Sofaer's Sun Dagger Web site.
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