In Quest of the Sun Dagger

By John Reed

Eliot and I were travel weary in the extreme as we bounced along the dirt road to Chaco Canyon in northern New Mexico.  We had covered over 3000 miles in the last two weeks, Chaco Canyon being our last astronomical stop on a long odyssey.

In some respects this was to be the climax of our trip.  The Sun Dagger and Pueblo Bonito are both on the order of a thousand years old.  Pueblo Bonito is one of the most complete and undisturbed ruins of the mysterious Anaszi Indians.  The Sun Dagger is surely one of the greatest enigmas of our time.  We were going to see them both with our own eyes!

As we neared the canyon we recognized Fajada Butte on which the Dagger resides.  (See the November 1982 issue of National Geographic).  After some discussion we reached the conclusion that the Dagger was on the back side of the butte and we could not photograph it from the road, even with the Questar.  This was a bad turn of events as the sun was dropping fast and we had a lot to see -- no time, we thought, to hike way to the back side of the 400 foot island of rock.  Despondently we photographed the side we could see and proceeded to the actual ruins further in the canyon.

Pueblo Bonito is a fantastic labyrinth of circular Kivas -- two foot thick stone walls and high narrow roofless rooms that once were multistory buildings.  The ancient city is excellently preserved, with some structures still containing the wood beams used as flooring for the upper stories.  One had the feeling that time had rolled back centuries.  I could almost see brown, dark haired children running through the stone aisles shouting at each other as tired women ground corn into meal while the men gazed at the harsh dusty landscape wishing for even a little water to nurture their dying crops.

Even with all this we still had not seen our main objective: the Sun Dagger.  It remained elusive behind the impassive butte.  There was still a half hour of daylight left so we stopped the car as close to the butte as possible and began walking toward the far side.  The craggy face of the bluff encircling the top of the butte reminded me of a castle wall complete with facades, turrets, and buttresses.  It also looked as unclimbable as a castle.  There was no hope of our ever seeing the Dagger up close.  As we walked the butte slowly presented its back face to my eyes.  I searched intensely for the telltale stone slabs leaning against the vertical rock face high on a ledge.  I knew it had to be there but I just couldn't see it.  Had we miscalculated?  Was this the correct side after all?  Was this the correct butte?

We finally stopped walking, panting in the high altitude air, to examine the east face.  I told Eliot I couldn't see it.  He replied that he did: at the very top.  I looked through the telephoto lens of my camera and saw it almost at the top of the butte, much higher than I had thought.  There were tiny vertical cracks between what must have been massive stone slabs.  We were seeing it from edge on, looking straight down the cracks.  It is a morning thing, as the cracks point southeast.  We realized we would never see the dagger of light strike the famous carved spiral, foretelling the solstices, equinoxes and even lunar cycles, but we had seen it resting high on the top of that bluff looking perpetually southeast as it has done for centuries.

We left feeling that our trip was now somehow complete.  It was a very good climax to an extraordinary vacation.