Sear-Kay Ruins

Sears-Kay Ruins, taken with Iphone, Lara Serbin #coloreffects.

 

 The soft dirt path sparkled as I looked for clues to why the Hohokam, ancestors of today's Pima Indians decided to build a village on top of this mountain.  I caught myself imagining them using this sparkling dirt to create body paint or add bling to mud plaster earthen walls.

 

Sears-Kay Ruins, taken with Iphone, park signage.

 

  As I came upon the first of 40 rectangular rooms made out of heavy rocks blackened with centuries of desert tarnish I began to imagine how one would live on a summit like this. I mean I could see for infinity up here.  Lily, Eva and Ben and Jeffrey were already up at the mountain top village of decay.  I wanted to savor the approach of the village. Lily was expecting actual houses and that the Hohokams would have dinner waiting.

 Sears-Kay Ruins, taken with Iphone, Lara Serbin #coloreffects.

 

Did I mention that this place was built 900 years ago?  It is amazing to know that Westminster Abbey was built 1000 years ago. Currently, I am reading Westminster: A Biography: From Earliest Times to Present, by Robert Shepherd and it is funny to see how relatively new the west is.

 

Westminster Abbey, London, England, Google Images

 

While Edward the Confessor was spending 60 years building an Abbey that is still functioning,  the Hohokams were building stone based shelters for the basic necessity of shelter.    Of course this location at Sears Kay is rather remote. There is no body of water to bring constant foot traffic.  You would never know it was there if it wasn't for the road sign.

 

 Sears-Kay Ruins, taken with Iphone, park signage .

 

The Hohokam had everything they needed up here.  There is wild game to hunt, small floodplains for growing corn and beans and many native plants like saguaro, cholla, prickly pear and mesquite.  Then as now, the foothills provided ideal habitats for deer, sheep and rabbit; the burned bones of these animals have been found in the trashed deposits at Sears-Kay Ruin.

 

Sears-Kay Ruins, taken with Iphone, Lara Serbin #coloreffects.

 

I really felt on top of it all up here.  Even though the temporary means of construction were no longer, I could still feel something vital.  How could you not, the views were powerful in every direction.  It is worth a return trip to watch sunrise.  I will be surprised if my red stone arrowhead is still sitting where I left it.