Xochicalco

There's something about ruins that draw us in. An epic civilization reduced to grey stone pyramids with mysterious carvings along the edges, caves filled with one small shaft of light, it makes me think a bit more about our own world. Our world full of modernity. What will become of us? The same fate? A civilization conquered or otherwise simply disappered, vanished from the map, leaving behind traces of our distructive existence: plastic bottles, cement streets, styrofoam cups, and perhaps the base of a tall skyscraper, that future civilizations can pick their way through the rubble, taking pictures and trying to imagine what life was like in a time so different.

Xochicalco means "House of the Flowers". A rich pre-columbian civilzation inhabited the small space atop a steep hill climb. It amazes me that the steps still stand, that trees still live, that rooms and bases of fountains are still visible and discernable. It amazes me that people not only lived there, but thrived there, in a culture as advanced, if not more advanced, than our own. It amazes me. But it shouldn't.

There's a humbling feeling one gets while milling about ruins. Especially on a day as dry, hot and abandoned as today. Like being transported into a room where a fight has just been, you can still feel the tension in the air. Or in a field where a battle took place long ago, and you can still see bullet holes in the trees. What happened here? I sat on the top of a series of steps and looked out to the valley below, seeing a lake in the distance, and trees and mountains. What happened here? The silence in the wind is the only response I get.