The Sunflower Theatre in downtown Cortez was packed Saturday night to hear author Craig Childs speak about the history of the Southwest.
Childs is best known locally for his books on archaeology. “House of Rain” explores the disappearance of the Anasazi, and “Finders Keepers” is about archaeological plunder and obsession.
Childs has written more than a dozen critically acclaimed books, and is a commentator for National Public Radio’s Morning Edition. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Men’s Journal, Outside and Orion. At High Country News, he’s a contributing editor, and he teaches writing for both University of Alaska in Anchorage and Southern New Hampshire University.
People lined up outside the theatre hoping to get a spot inside the sold-out presentation.
Childs lives off the grid with his wife and two young sons at the foot of the West Elk Mountains near Norwood, Colo.
“I’m in the wilderness all the time,” Childs told the crowd. “I’ve been seeing things... the ghosts of history; the land around us is always talking.”
Childs said respects historic places and tries to capture those stories in his books.
“You can feel the memory of places,” he said.
He admitted to being a “groupie to archaeologists,” following them around so he can write books. He is currently working on a book about mammoth hunters. A lot of those in attendance Saturday night, March 28, were archeologists.
The event raised funds for the Sunflower Theater and Friends of Cedar Mesa. Childs talked about Cedar Mesa, an area rich in archeology.
“It means one thing to see (an artifact) in a museum, but to see it on the ground in a place means so much more, because place matters,” he said.
While doing research for his current book, Childs said he has been walking in the footsteps of mammoth hunters.
“For me, this is a time machine,” he said.
He talked about entering a cave which still had mammoth dung inside.
“How do we live with these ghosts because they are always around us,” he said.
Traveling on Cedar Mesa and seeing ruins 1,000 years old, is as close to a time machine as Childs has ever got, he said.
“We keep coming back to these places, and you see these walls with paint on them and you travel through them.”
During his research, Childs has found himself amid thousands and thousand of vessels. When he sees them archived and catalogued and filed away in a store room, Childs says he has mixed emotions.
“I often thing, history ends here,” he said. “I don’t have a simple answer for this,” he said.
For example, in research when Childs came across an artifact from Chaco inside a museum, placed inside a container, he was overwhelmed to place it the way it was found.
“You see these things out of context,” he said. “I feel torn between here and there. How long can you hold on to history?”
Childs then told the story a seed jar he found while hiking in southeastern Utah 12 years ago.
He and his friend argued and argued about what to do with it. Take it? Leave it? Hide it?
In the end, they left the jar, tucked in a small alcove along a steep canyon.
“It could keep telling its story in its place,” Childs said.
Eleven years later, Childs returned with Radiolab and his wife and friend to see if the jar was still there.
In the end, it turned out that Mother Nature had a different plan for the seed jar – the jar was gone, but it hadn’t fallen into the hands of looters, it instead was likely the victim of a landslide of rocks, its final resting place and the jar, gone forever.
And it is Mother Nature that tells stories the best.
“I feel the landscape itself is the map,” he said. “As you move through it, you find these stories.”