Chaco Prep and Departure day

Reminders

• Advisory group gear should go to your advisor's room
• Label it all during advisory and then load gear
• Check the email I sent out for driving groups

Starter
Let's scope out the map of our route to chaco and talk about our pitstop at near the northern-most point of the Great North Road. What is so cool about the blog I’m about to read you is the concept of living history-- there is this element of mystery involved here-- where did the Great North Road go? How did the Ancestral Puebloans get through this one spot on their way to down into Kutz Canyon to Salmon Ruins in Farmington today? How wild is it that now this place is a pit stop and an oil well is right smack dab at the bottom of the stairway??

• Read aloud starting at the paragraph “But hey…” to the end 
• Then let’s check out this guy’s work to try to find the stairway  (mostly let’s look at the photo at the bottom of this page)
• It is important to understand the scope of the “Greater Chaco Region” to understand the controversy over oil and gas. While we are just going to Chaco Canyon itself, the Chacoans’ territory extended far far far beyond that and what is considered “sacred lands” by many today thus extends far beyond the park.  I want us to stop at this modern-day pitstop so you all have a sense of that scale. But also know that many archaelogists theorize that the southern-most point of Chacoan domain was along the 108th meridian of longitude 400 miles due south in Mexico at Paquimé, a 14th-century ruin in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. Southern most point is 60 miles north of Chaco in Aztec. https://images.app.goo.gl/S4sqbUPhyeSsv8v66 
• More info on this 108th meridian theory can be found in this New York Times article

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