BACK ROAD ADVENTURE

Cataclysm to Comeback Road Runs From Volcanic Sunset Crater to Ruins Built by People Who Thrived on Disaster

SUNSET CRATER and the nearby string of volcanoes in northern Arizona look placid, but they've spewed black ash and rivers of molten rock for millions of years. Sunset Crater a thousand years ago offered the most recent performance of a deadly pyrotechnics display, shooting orange fire up to 2,000 feet high. road that links Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument to Wupatki National Monument, time stood still. I witnessed nature's dramatic rebirth in an arid land that takes centuries to heal.

As I drove north of Flagstaff along the 35-mile stretch of Forest Service Road 545, known as the loop My mind turned to the vulnerable people in the volcano's deadly wake, the Sinagua Indians. They lived in pit houses and depended on this land, described by archaeologist Mark Elson as “on the very fringes of survivability.” I wondered what exactly happened when the volcano erupted from A.D. 1040 to 1100 to these people whose fate was inextricably tied to the earth.

The dramatic tale unfolded with each mile of the scenic highway.

In the first mile off U.S. Route 89, the paved road dropped down through an open ponderosa pine forest into Bonito Park, a wide sagebrush and grass-covered clearing where Maj. Lionel F. Brady, a geologist with the Museum of Northern Arizona, made a startling discovery in 1930. He found scattered potsherds on the ground that predated the ashfall.

That discovery led museum director Harold S. Colton and a team of archaeologists to another groundbreaking find: Earth-and-wood belowground dwellings called pithouses buried deep under volcanic ash, demonstrating that Indians lived at Sunset Crater at the time of the eruption. Colton called the

Vehicle Requirements: Accessible by regular two-wheel-drive passenger cars.

Fees: Entrance to both monuments: $5, adults; free, children 16 and under.

Hours, Dates: Both Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument and Wupatki National Monument are open daily except Christmas.

Warning: Back-road travel can be hazardous. Be aware of weather and road conditions. Carry plenty of water. Don't travel alone, and let someone know where you're going and when you plan to return.

Additional Information: Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument: (928) 526-0502; www.nps.gov/sucr/pphtml/ contact.html. Wupatki National Monument: (928) 679-2365; www.nps.gov/wupa/pphtml/ contact.

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The three-story Wukoki Pueblo perched on a sandstone outcropping adjacent to a walled plaza was used by ancestral puebloans during the 12th and 13th centuries.

people Sinagua (Spanish for "without water").

My first glimpse of the devastation the Sinagua faced, the eerie Bonito Lava Flow, loomed 1 mile past the Sunset Crater Volcano Visitors Center. Initially, I felt grim at the sight of this black lunar landscape of hardened lava, which looked like it cooled only yesterday. But then I spotted delicate red penstemon wildflowers rising defiantly from the black ground, proving that somehow life renews even in the face of devastation.

Two miles later, the Cinder Hills Overlook provided a dramatic view of the rosetinted Sunset Crater volcano and a series of red cindercovered vents. Sunset Crater's distinctive red comes from the iron in the cinders. A closer look revealed purples, yellows and greens from gypsum, sulfur and clay, called limonite.

John Wesley Powell, famed explorer and U.S. Geological Survey director, described this colorful volcano in 1892: "On viewing the mountain from a distance, the red cinders seem to be on fire the peak seems to glow with a light of its own." Powell called it Sunset Peak, a more apt description since most people think of a crater as a hole in the ground, not a hollow mountain.

The volcano's palette of colors added drama to the black cinder that coats the hillsides like snow. But this color play pales in comparison to what lay ahead at 9 miles: a panoramic view of the Painted Desert-in iridescent shades of red, blue and purple. Suddenly I was filled with a sense of awe and wonder, like a child seeing the ocean for the first time.

With a steady view of the Painted Desert, the road dropped northward and the land became drier. A ponderosa pine forest gave way to a piñon pine and juniper woodland. Driving about 14 miles past the volcano, I entered Wupatki National Monument, a 35,422acre parkland that protects about 2,500 archaeological sites left by at least four ancient Indian cultures: the Sinagua, Kayenta Puebloan, Cohonina and Hohokam. Here, a Great Basin desert scrub habitat emerges, characterized by the gray sheen of sagebrush. Yucca, Mormon tea, snakeweed, globemallow and Peeble's bluestar, a rare flower found elsewhere only in the Little Colorado Valley, dot the landscape underneath wideopen skies.

At almost 16 miles past the Sunset Crater volcano, I turned right on the 2.5-mile road leading to the Wukoki Covering about 2 square miles at the base of Sunset Crater Volcano, the Bonito Lava Flow demonstrates the slow revitalization of the devastated land, which now harbors 166 documented plant species in its arid cinders.

LIFE FROM CINDERS back road adventure

A DASH OF RAIN Dropping from a cloud over Bonito Park southeast of Sunset Crater, some light precipitation may contribute to the area's average of 16 inches of rainfall per year.

Pueblo, a three-story masonry structure perched atop an island of red Moenkopi sandstone. I imagined Lt. Lorenzo Sitgreaves' surprise in 1851, when his party searching for a practical route across northern Arizona stumbled upon this landscape of deserted pueblos. Later, archaeologist Jesse W. Fewkes estimated that one or two families had inhabited Wukoki for several generations. At this pueblo, I decided the inhabitants must have been artists to have fashioned sandstone walls so perfectly fitted that it's difficult to distinguish where wall ends and bedrock begins.

I couldn't imagine a site more enchanting than Wukoki until 5 miles later I came upon the haunting red sandstone pueblo of Wupatki, where the population peaked between A.D. 1100 and 1225. I spent nearly an hour exploring this ancient, four-story, 100-room pueblo, although many rooms haven't been excavated. By 1182, perhaps 85 to 100 people lived in the Wupatki Pueblo, the largest building for at least 50 miles. The pueblo had one ancient amenity: a ball court enclosed by a banked stone wall. No one knows for sure what game the Sinagua played here, but archaeologists guess it resembled a highly ritualized sport played by Aztecs and Mayans in similar courts. Players tried to keep the ball in the air without using their hands or feet, while they vied to knock the ball through a stone ring. Along with recreational facilities, this ancient subdivision came with a whale of a geological feature: a blowhole. Blowholes act as natural barometers, with air blowing out when atmospheric pressure is low and streaming back in when pressure is high. On this particular day, air blew out like a cooling fan. At the blowhole, I looked out over the blanket of cinders that still covers the stark sagebrush-studded desert. Ironically, the volcanic cataclysm may have actually led to a population boom Wupatki and elsewhere on this plateau. Archaeologists believe the Sinagua left Wupatki after being alerted by Sunset Crater's pre-eruption earthquakes. The layer of volcanic ash settled all across the plateau and acted as mulch, capturing rainfall and slowing evaporation. This extended the growing season by several weeks and proved a boon for their crops. Years later, archaeologists say, the Sinagua people drifted back to the area around Wupatki and newcomers may have arrived, introducing new ceramic styles and large, multistoried pueblos. With a renewed respect for a civilization that not only survived-but thrived-in the face of catastrophe, I drove away from the ruins and connected with U.S. 89 14 miles beyond Wupatki Pueblo. I headed home to Phoenix with renewed faith in the inimitable human spirit and our remarkable ability to adapt, even in times of unthinkable adversity. AlH

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