The Road to the Rising Sun

Tumbleweeds, cheatgrass, and Russian thistles impeded our passage as we trudged toward the ancient road in Comb Wash.
They posed even more of a challenge for Kenidee, our little schnauzer, who hopped over, sidestepped, or scooted under the prickly weeds, some of which had blown into piles as big as a car.
I would have never noticed the primitive road myself, but archaeologists have mapped out many of the Ancestral Puebloans’ thoroughfares. Ted had spotted this one from the top of Comb Ridge years earlier.
Once we breasted the road itself, I could barely discern its outline, but Ted pointed to Comb Ridge, showing me where he believed the ancient people had zigzagged to the top, manually pulling large logs to build the Bluff Great House, Great Kiva, and other nearby kivas.
Constructed between 1075-1150 A.D, the multi-storied great house on Bluff’s Cemetery Hill had between 40 and 60 rooms with four small kivas and the great kiva.
However, that wasn’t the first time ancient peoples inhabited the Bluff valley. According to Jonathan Till in “A Short Bluff Valley Deep History,” small groups hunted mammoths in the rich river valley with the inhabitants adapting over time to a more sedentary, agrarian lifestyle.
Eventually, the Chaco Canyon culture reached Southeastern Utah with its amazing architecture and traditions.
Till says the Bluff “site itself was the southern terminus of an extensive network of great houses and prehistoric roads that stretched from the San Juan River to the foot of the Abajo Mountains in the north.” Even after the collapse of Chaco Canyon in around 1150 A.D., Bluff’s dwelling remained in use until 1250 A.D.
The Ancestral Puebloans built great kivas during the peak of their civilization. The circular structures were oriented to the four directions with the interiors featuring elements from their emergence stories, and most tracked the journey of the sun, moon, and stars, especially the solstices and equinoxes, important information for planting and ceremonies.
R.A. Williamson, in Archaeoastronomy in the New World, states that a great kiva provided “an earthly image of the celestial realm.”
However, they weren’t observatories, J. Donald Hughes, author of “Great Kivas of the American Southwest,” makes clear. He says, “It seems most reasonable to regard the great kivas as theatres within which great mythic events were enacted in dance and song for crowds of people who may have been considered as much participants as spectators.”
Some of the mythic enactments were probably not confined to the great kivas. G. Yamada, in The Great Resistance, A Hopi Anthology, relates, “During one of our sacred ceremonies, the One Horn and Two Horn societies close all the roads that lead to our villages.
They do that so as to clear the spiritual pathway which leads from there to the rising sun. This is the road over which they walk to offer their prayers to the Great Spirit. . ..”
I was thinking about spiritual pathways as we explored Comb Wash. The neighboring ridge with its perilous road seemed peculiarly beautiful even though my brother had texted earlier that my niece, Jane Elizabeth (Liz) Austin Robison, had passed away.
Part of me felt grateful she didn’t need to suffer anymore; the other part was so sad I could hardly lift my feet. After an hour or so, we finished our explorations, returned to the 4 Runner, and then home.
The next weekend we headed to St. George for the funeral, one of the most extraordinary memorials I’ve ever attended because Liz helped plan it.
She chose the speakers, including her brother, sister, mother, and husband, picked the music and singers, bought clothes for her two adult children, and even purchased matching blue ties for the pallbearers.
Obviously, Liz, with her focus on the divine, was unafraid of death.
Her divine focus was evident even when she was suffering. “This just happened,” her husband, Gregg, texted a month ago.
That morning at three a.m., although Liz was in pain, disoriented, and weak from not eating or drinking, she climbed out of her home hospital bed, waking Gregg asleep on the couch beside her.
He asked, “Where are you going, Babe?”
“To the temple,” she answered.
It says a great deal about Gregg’s love that he helped her into the car and drove her a few blocks to the Red Cliffs Temple, scheduled to open in March.
Once there, she realized she was shoeless and in her pajamas. Before taking her home, however, Gregg snapped a photograph of her sitting in the car illumined by the temple behind her.
At the funeral, I cried as I held her mom, sister, best friends, and favorite cousin each in turn. I hugged the entire Austin clan, including my big brother, used up a box of Kleenex, and gripped my hubby’s hand tighter than necessary.
The prayers and talks made us cry, laugh, and cry again as they highlighted Liz’s extraordinary life, influence, and faith.
People walk the road to the rising sun in different ways and with different traditions. Often that road is hedged by prickly obstacles and requires dragging loads up impossible cliffs, but meeting the sun is worth it.
Zain Hashmi writes, “And when your soul, the flame, the spark, meets with the divine fuel that is so pure and so strong, it results in immense enlightenment: the enlightenment of God. Light upon light.”
I’m sure that happened to Liz.