Summary of Craig Childs's House of Rain

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.

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#1 The Colorado Plateau is a 150,000-square-mile blister of land that rises across the dry confluence of Arizona, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico. Its surface is incised with countless canyons and wrinkled into isolated mesas and mountain ranges that stand suddenly from the desert floor up to 13,000 feet in elevation.

#2 The Anasazi, a tribe that lived in the Colorado Plateau, were a wayfaring people who settled in places for only brief periods of time. They were suddenly gone around 1000 A. D. The flood that brought us to their site was traveling in the same direction as the Anasazi had been.

#3 The area around Chaco Canyon is a desert of oblivion. It is the most desolate place in northwest New Mexico, and it has only sparse ruins of ancient cultures.

#4 The great houses were not residences, but rather monuments, temples, or palaces. They had as few as ten residents for every fifty rooms, and most of the rooms were used for religious or ceremonial purposes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Mar 11, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669358435

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Insights on Craig Childs's House of Rain

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 6

Insights from Chapter 7

Insights from Chapter 8

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The Colorado Plateau is a 150,000-square-mile blister of land that rises across the dry confluence of Arizona, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico. Its surface is incised with countless canyons and wrinkled into isolated mesas and mountain ranges that stand suddenly from the desert floor up to 13,000 feet in elevation.

#2

The Anasazi, a tribe that lived in the Colorado Plateau, were a wayfaring people who settled in places for only brief periods of time. They were suddenly gone around 1000 A. D. The flood that brought us to their site was traveling in the same direction as the Anasazi had been.

#3

The area around Chaco Canyon is a desert of oblivion. It is the most desolate place in northwest New Mexico, and it has only sparse ruins of ancient cultures.

#4

The great houses were not residences, but rather monuments, temples, or palaces. They had as few as ten residents for every fifty rooms, and most of the rooms were used for religious or ceremonial purposes.

#5

The Anasazi were the first people to live in Chaco Canyon, and they were heavily affected by the travelers who came from the hinterlands to visit the great houses. The Anasazi became the cultural center of the Colorado Plateau.

#6

The flood that swept us away was the result of millions of gallons of mud being released into the desert every day. The entire landscape is falling apart, too dry to hold on to its soil, too weathered to remain solid.

#7

When archaeologists began excavating Chaco Canyon in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, they discovered that very few items had originated in the canyon itself. Everything seemed to be imported.

#8

We swam to a shallow overflow, where we paddled over cacti and woody spikes of saltbush that bit at our chilled, pink skin. We repeated this process every five or ten minutes, crawling out to bathe in the sand.

#9

We reached the site of Chaco Canyon, one of the first great houses built at Chaco. The place was bombed-looking, with many rooms destroyed by wind and erosion.

#10

There are many theories about the purpose of Chaco Canyon, from a religious center to a commercial center. The evidence gathered from a century of digging and mapping can support nearly any speculation.

#11

The ruins of Chaco Canyon are a testament to the immense culture that existed there. archaeologists still haven’t figured out who the Anasazi people were, but they were dispersed bands of primitive farmers and hunters who lived without the wheel or any appreciable amount of forged metal.

#12

The Anasazi were a civilization that lived in the Chaco Canyon region of what is now New Mexico. They were a culture that was constantly changing, and their architecture reflected this. Their great houses were used for many different purposes, and were not just doorways or walls.

#13

The first kiva was built in the sixth century A. D. In the eighth century, Chaco Canyon was already home to many kivas. The high kiva was eventually destroyed, but was rebuilt several times over the next century or so.

#14

I woke to sand in my sleeping bag, gritty as I turned over from my