Wishing Stones [Canon 5D]
Acoma, New Mexico August 5, 2007
(click in the image to see it larger)
On our final full day in New Mexico, we visited the Acoma Pueblo. This is an amazing place, located atop a rocky mesa in the midst of a stunning high desert landscape a little over an hour's drive west of Albuquerque. The Acoma pueblo, or "Sky City" is widely believed to be the oldest continuously inhabited community in North America. Scholars and archaeologists have dated the settlement back to about 950 A.D. My wife and I visited this place in 1989 and this was our first time back since then.
At the end of the guided tour you can take the mini bus back down to the visitor center or walk down a narrow and at times very steep rocky pathway that leads down through the cliff walls of the mesa to the desert floor. As we stopped to rest in the shade on the way down I noticed that most of the recessed areas in the cliff walls were filled with small rocks. A few minutes later, our excellent guide Alexander came along, climbing down a cleft in the rock wall (the original way to get down) instead of the more conventional stone and concrete steps that have been added in places to make the way easier for the average visitor to Acoma.
He told us that these recessed areas in the cliff were for "wishing stones". The object is to make a wish and throw a small rock and try to get it to stay in the hollowed out alcoves in the cliff wall. If the rock stays then your wish is granted (or, at least, has a much better chance of coming true). The higher and more inaccessible the recess is on the cliff wall, the bigger the wish. Both my wife and I managed to get a stone to land in the hole on the right in the photo above.
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