More consumerism and excess today, but only after a little bonding time. After breakfast Dad and I went on a bike ride to literally every corner of both sides of the development. The scope of this goddamn thing keeps surprising me. They put up dozens of homes in a couple of weeks, just an astounding building pace. And it's happening in the middle of nowhere. Retail prices and groceries are at rock-bottm but someone is prepping to make a mint of Sun City Anthem. The community center/gyms/gathering places and parks alone are very daunting and no doubt pricey. The kind of things public money could never even envision, let alone execute.
We stopped at the historical monument at "Casa Grande," both an incredible site and an incredible sight. It's basically the remains of a community, an ancient town built and lived in by the Hohokam, a whole people that seem to have vanished into thin air. Historians suspect some other Native American tribes are descendants but there is no definitive physical evidence to confirm those suspicions.
The ruins at Casa Grande are incredible for so many reasons, the least of which is that some aspect of it has survived this long. It was discovered in the early 1900's, about 500 years after it was likely abandoned by the Hohokam. The centerpiece of the community is the "great house" the name hints at. Lying in the center of the community it stands at least 80 feet tall, constructed more or less out of materials gathered from the desert floor, the rudimentary building products forming a base wall that stands four feet thick and is more or less solid concrete. The building itself is just four degrees from lining up with true north. The building has windows that line up perfectly with the sun and moon during the winter and summer solstices. Another skylight lines up with the moon on some obscure 18 year cycle, a very rare and uncommon part of its rotation apparently. The Hohokam were apparently some kind of astronomers but no one can figure out where that knowledge came from or what the true significance of those events was to them.
The "great house" is the centerpiece of the ruins and the community that once existed around it but a lot of outlying infrastructure also remains and shows the ingenuity they had in planning and forming their home. They even built large "ball courts" as a space for social games and gatherings, shaped like an early version of a hockey rink. There were four or five different designs for outlying buildings, each with its own drainage system for the rainy season. The pots and bowls they constructed were fired by burning mesquite trees and, over time, they grew more and more intricately patterned and decorated.
I dropped $30 on a book about the tribe and the ruins, a collection of essays by archaeologists that worked on the site or studied the Hohokam. Its quite fascinating because this site is really the last vestige of the tribe, the last evidence they even existed. Scientists are really clueless as to what might have happened to them; an entire people just up and disappeared. We know that they abandoned most of their settlements along the Salt River and relocated to the Gila River area and it has been postulated that as their canals dried up they were simply unable to survive the conditions of the desert. But the lack of any kind of concrete history is both troubling and fascinating. They have these sites that people can visit and learn about their history, how they lived and what their lives were like, but the ultimate ending remains a mystery. Even something as simple as their pots and bowls raises more questions than can be answered. There are enough pristine examples preserved by the desert that we know they went through several different styles and practices during different periods, but we don't know what lead them to discover how to create such smoothly finished surfaces and create a functional glaze. When did functionality cease to be their primary concern, giving way to the constantly-evolving and complex decoration and painting? Is there a correlation between the increase in contact with other tribes, the subsequent increase in trading, and the importance of what we would today consider pleasing aesthetics?
Their agricultural prowess is also worth noting. They harvested rivers and tributaries that have since long gone dry for their survival, carving out an incredible series of canals to draw water to their communities for irrigation and a sustainable drinking water supply. This is, of course, done with tools made from stone and bone long before white settlers arrived in the area. The scope of the work is beyond comprehension in a lot of ways.
So it is very compelling stuff, but I have to admit to feeling a bit of guilt about it considering its been years since I did this kind of reading about Canadian First Nations. Probably since University. Whoops. Might have to correct that.
In the interest of keeping a consistent theme we spent most of the rest of the day shopping. Shoes, pants, sweaters, all half or sometimes a third of what I would normally expect them to cost. Apparently people are so desperate to make any sale at all they'll give you a drastically-reduced price on an item that isn't even on sale as long as you tell them you thought it was. So Sarah Mills will get her wish; I will come home with three new pairs of shoes, new work slacks, and hopefully a fresh and healthy new outlook on life to go along with them.
To that end: I don't think I thought about my relationships back home for more than two minutes today. I'm calling that a victory.
Take me to sleep, Legs McNeil and Polar Bear Club.
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