Tag Archives: ruins

Sister sites

On our way up to the Grand Canyon for our second day at the park, the Tailor and I decided to swing through a trio of national monuments located a short detour away, just outside of Flagstaff, AZ. Since what is arguably the most famous national park lies just down the road, these sites tend to get overshadowed a bit. Yet all are worth a stop, and all are closely linked to one another.

First up is Sunset Crater National Monument, a volcanic cinder cone and a landscape painter’s dream. The name, coined by John Wesley Powell, comes from the subtle gradation of reds and purples within the volcanic rock. Combined with the surrounding meadows that bloomed with wildflowers while we were there, the effect was stunning.

On the other side of Flagstaff lies Walnut Canyon National Monument. At first glance, this place appears to have little in common with Sunset Crater, but in fact the two are intrinsically connected. The people of the Sinagua culture had been living above the canyon rim since about the year 600, but after Sunset Crater erupted in about the year 1100, the population near the canyon grew rapidly as people fled the volcano. After that, the Sinagua began to settle inside the canyon itself, constructing cleverly-hidden cliff dwellings up and down the canyon’s walls (there are three sketched out in the drawing above—can you spot them?).

I’ve saved the best for last: Wupatki National Monument. This site is located just a few miles north of Sunset Crater, and preserves entire pueblos built by the Sinagua. This sandstone city was built following the eruption of the cinder cone, after the deposit of volcanic ash made the area’s soil much more fertile. The Wupatki pueblo, pictured here, is the largest settlement within the national monument—this one apartment-building-like structure had 100 rooms and housed up to a hundred people (the entire settled region had several thousand Sinagua inhabitants).

I’ve visited a lot of the ancient pueblo ruins of the Southwest, and I’m always drawn to the sophisticated architecture of each one. But so far I haven’t seen anything that provides as clear a picture of what life must have been like then as this place does. Walking through Wupatki really feels like one is trespassing through someone’s house—someone who might just return at any moment.

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Living rubble

Visiting the ruins at Mission San Juan Capistrano reminded me that at least in this country, it’s not the sort of thing one can see every day. Living in Europe for a time gave me a taste for ruined architecture, but it’s not something you often find in the States.

One could argue our civilization isn’t old enough to have archeological sites around every corner, but I don’t think that’s it. For one thing, there has been human culture here for thousands of years, and in some places, like the Southwest, there is plenty of archeological evidence to tour and visit. For another, the Civil War, natural disasters, isolated acts of violence, and countless ordinary accidents have given us plenty of rubble of our own. No, here it’s more of a cultural mindset: when buildings are destroyed, we Americans have an instinct to rebuild, restore or replace them. It really goes against the grain to let architectural remains stay in their ruined state, and learn to appreciate them as they are.

That’s why I love the mill ruins of Minneapolis. Beyond being simply beautiful in their own right, the shells of destroyed buildings are also steeped in stories. Rather than putting up some plaque to commemorate the city’s past as a flour milling town, you can actually stand in a remnant of that past. Instead of repurposing every scrap of real estate for modern, practical use, this parcel of land has been preserved as a museum, just the way it is. And best of all, the ruins sit among specimens of both restored historic buildings and brand new ultra-modern architecture—and they fit in just fine, part of the fabric and story of the city as a whole.

American ruins

This is the third installment of my Mission Mondays series, exploring all 21 Spanish Missions along the California coast. You can read more about this series, and see a sketch map of all the missions, at this post.

San Juan Capistrano is the jewel of the missions—seriously, it’s hard to think of a more beautiful place in all of California. I ended up finishing off the whole rest of my sketchbook there, because every time I blocked out a rough composition, I’d look in another direction and see something else I just had to draw.

Founded in 1776, Mission San Juan Capistrano contains the oldest building in California still in use. But the thing everyone comes to see is the large portion of the complex that lies in ruin.

If you come to the mission from the north, the first thing you’ll see is the relatively brand-new mission basilica. The building is gorgeous, but was only built in 1986. Still, it follows the design of the original mission church—

—which is on the the other end of the property, and looks like this. The church was built in 1806, and flattened six years later by an earthquake. The ruins are where the famous swallows nest and return each year—though these days, that’s not so true anymore. I was there a month too soon anyway, so I saw a grand total of one swallow. But thanks to recent factors like increased development in the town and possibly climate change, the huge flocks just aren’t coming anymore. In the past 20 years or so, only a few birds have been coming home to roost each spring.

Hearing about the swallows was certainly a disappointment, but I was too enamored of the buildings themselves to be sad for long. What they most reminded me of was my time living in Italy. The cloister archways were one thing, but seeing the ruined stone church transported me right back to the Roman Forum.

The other thing that reminded me of Rome was the light—it was the kind of place where the “magic hour” seemed to last all afternoon.

I picked a good day to visit, too—despite the perfect weather, I was there in the off-season.

So even though I’m sure the place is packed to the gills during swallow season, there were only a handful of visitors there with me that day.

So that allowed me to choose whatever vantage point I wanted, and spent plenty of uninterrupted time sketching—just me, the mission, and all that Mediterranean light.