What a Writer Learned by Visiting

the Cliff Dwellings of Mesa Verde

As a writer, it's important to experience life. Sure, an author can go to the library and study ancient tomes about the past, but by actually visiting places of interest, the author can give more detail about a space. He can talk about what he sees, hears, or smells. A single photo may not give a blogger or writer the rich personal record he may need to write an article or include the background into a novel's scene.

My wife and I visited Mesa Verde in June 2024. We spent three nights within the National Park and were fortunate to get up close and personal with three of the restored historical structures within the park. The park district uses a ticketing system to limit the number of people that visit the cliff dwellings each day. They do this to protect the integrity of their restoration and to honor the rich historical and spiritual dimensions of the dwellings.

The dwellings were built and inhabited from 1190 CE through 1280 CE by the Ancestral Pueblo people. Even though the major structures that they run their tours through were built during that time frame, they had found others dwellings built before then and some even built after. It's just there was great interest and building occurring for almost a hundred years.

Then something happened. Though they seemed pretty fuzzy on the actual reasons the Pueblo people left their cliff homes, the experts seem to agree that a long-term drought affected the area and the lack of a good water supply caused conflict between the inhabitants of the surrounding countryside.

Though we get all excited by the dwellings built within the watershed cliffs, the Pueblo people had lived in that area for hundreds of years on the plains above the cliffs. Those homes have also been restored to allow visitors to learn how these people lived so many years before.

What's the takeaway for a writer? As a blogger, I can talk about climbing down the rocks to enter one of the cliff dwellings. As a writer, I can picture a world where a teenage boy might live in one dwelling and meet a teenage girl from a dwelling a mile a way. Maybe the story will talk about how they live or be a short story of a possible meeting between the two. A mountain lion might play large in a story like that.

A novel could use some aspects of the people who lived in these structures. How they had to climb out of their home each morning with a spear, arrows, or a basket on their back as they took the steps carved into the rock face to go on their morning hunt or to bring back nuts or water.

Imagine our protagonist returning with a basket of water. The trip up the cliff face might have been difficult with the basket on their back, but what was it like after she had filled the basket with water and had to traverse the steps on the steep cliffs of the canyon walls?

What happened if a young person called out to a friend across the canyon? Would they be heard? Was there a symbol or a shout out if danger approached? How did they protect themselves from intruders? What did the space smell like when meals were being cooked? Can you picture in your mind's eye the kids playing on a small platform, that if they were to fall, might result in a broken arm, leg, or even potentially death?

I've seen photographs of the cliff dwellings, and I have to tell you they were larger when you saw them in person. But in some respects, the dwellings were smaller when you realized that thirty to sixty people may have lived in each large dwelling space.

Who were they? Cliff Palace is the name of one dwelling. So, the king and queen lived in that building, right? No, the people didn't have a hierarchal structure in their communities. Cliff Palace just looked like a magnificent place and the people who wanted visitors to spend their money seeing the place thought the title Cliff Palace would draw the crowds.

Maybe my story has nothing to do with the cliff dwellings, but follows a couple of retirees that want to visit the dwellings, but they're having a hard time getting tickets. They're camping north of Mesa Verde near Arches National Park, but their wi-fi signal is horrible. The park service only sells ten tickets each day for tours of Square Tower House. Scoring ten tickets with a bad wi-fi signal is near impossible.

What might these retirees do in an attempt to see a National Park treasure up close and personal? We found out, by talking to a couple from the east coast who found themselves in that position. Did they bribe a park official? Break into the dwelling illegally? Nope, each day they would drive to the town closest to their campground and rent time at an internet cafe to try to score tickets.

It took the couple six days to gain their tickets. It was time well-spent for the dwellings were magnificent.

See, a writer might use any of these ideas and experiences to create a story, flesh out specific details of a story, or add that real experience memory to place the reader in the same spot as the story's protagonist as she climbs up the cliff face as she is five-months pregnant, because it's her job to harvest the corn for the night's meal.

I suggest if you're a writer that you don't hide from opportunities to experience these real life trips to add texture to any story you write. As I think about ending this blog post, my mind is drawn to the movie, Romancing the Stone, with Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner, and Danny DeVito. Turner is a well known Western Romance author who had never stepped out of her apartment and was scared to death to leave New York. Then a real adventure happened to her which opened up her writer's block.