That next morning a lot of activity centered around the adobe house of Jasper. Several men had arrived in their trucks and 4X4s to speak with the shaman. Valery, while serving the two breakfast, quietly told Blake and Russel these were tribal elders of the Navajo. Men who had come to discuss the sightings from the day before. Apparently, the craft she and her mother had seen was witnessed by a great number of people across the desert, and within the territories of the Navajo nation. Jasper left with these men at sunrise, she told them. Off to what she called a kiva, a traditional ceremonial center outside the town where they would discuss the situation.
In keeping with the morning plan, Dan arrived back at the house around 8:00 AM to ferry Russel over to Santa Fe and the small domestic airport there for his departure to San Diego. Blake was prepared to travel with Michael on his bike, across a stretch of New Mexican desert to engage in some business he had pre-planned while still in New Haven. He insisted it related to what Blake wanted to know, though gave no more details about it.
By 9:00 AM all were prepared for their respective journeys.
"See you back in Santa Cruz!" Blake shouted to Russel as he climbed into Dan's 4X4. Wearing his hooded sweatshirt and sporting his backpack, which Valery supplied with sandwiches and several bottles of water, Blake climbed onto the back of the Harley Davidson and Michael kick-started it with a roar. Valery and Milat saw them off as the young shaman donned a pair of dark sunglasses and throttled the powerful bike up. They accelerated out of the driveway and onto the lonely road out of town. Michael commandeered the bike southeastward on the only existing highway and at a cruising speed of 100 MPH. Blake just held on silently.
"You OK?" Michael shouted back to him as the Harley rumbled along loudly.
"Yeah, I'm good," he shouted back.
By Michael's doing, neither men were equipped with a helmet, which Blake found strange for a guy of his superior intelligence. Michael's long dark hair blew freely backward in the intense wind.
After a half hour drive though the pristine and barren desert, Blake felt the sun warming up the air in that bleak world surrounded by distant mountains. These flat monolithic tables, known as mesas in the Southwest, themselves seemed bare of anything but sparse bush-like vegetation. The highway began to finally climb upwards off the desert floor to a series of elevated plateaus. Reaching a high overlook of the arid countryside at a particularly desolate place, Michael pulled off to the side of the road and shut down his bike. He took off his dark gasses and led Blake over to the edge to look down. Blake was amazed to see what appeared to be an ancient, abandoned complex of geometric buildings the color of cinnamon, exactly the color of the earth surrounding them. Intermixed with the angular buildings with no roofs were many circular structures inside the complex's walled perimeter.
"That's Chaco Canyon down there," Michael said of the expanse below, brushing his hair back with his fingers. And you're looking at one of the former living complexes build by the Pueblo people. The original Anasazi as some call them."
"Wow! That's impressive. It looks like it could be the layout of a modern city."
"Precisely. And there's fifteen of those engineered living centers in this canyon. All abandoned over three hundred years before the Spanish entered this area. At one time they housed thousands of people."
"Jesus! And that one's huge! So how long did they . . ."
"It had its flowering from around 850 to around 1200. About the same 300-year time span as the United States has been around today."
"Wow."
"It's a complete mystery why they left . . . or even where they went. Virtually vanished. And rather suddenly. . . every man, woman and child. But they did leave these astounding places."
"So, where did they go?"
"It's a great mystery . . . maybe one of the greatest of all pre-Columbian America."
"Amazing."
"Yeah. So we're here today to get a little more insight into that."
"Really? How so?"
"You see there's what looks like a visitor's center along the road down there?"
"Yeah."
"And then closer to the sandstone buildings, a few little blue tents, and a couple of cars outside the main wall?"
Blake strained his eyes to see such signs of modern mankind. Finally, he could clearly make out the few tents and vehicles near the complex which Michael spoke of.
"That's a select team down there from the University of New Mexico," he told him. "I've got a good friend who's poured a lot of research into this place. Years in fact. She's down there now, and we're going to speak to her this morning."
"Wow, OK."
"There's some new stuff that's come up about the complex which I need to know about. It relates to my own work."
"Great."
"Let's get back on the bike . . . Tuwa is waiting for us down there."
"Seriously?"
"Have I ever lied to you, Blake?"
It was a surprising question.
"No. I guess not."
"And you promised you'll keep all this under wraps, right?"
"Yeah, I did."
Michael smiled and gave him a slap on his shoulder. "You're pretty cool, for a Whiteman, Blake."
He smiled back. It was a well-received compliment.
"Now if Tuwa asks, just tell her you're a guy from Yale doing some stuff with me. No questions."
"Alright."
"Just stay generic. There's so much to all of this you're unaware of . . . the world is unaware of."
"Yeah, I get that."
"Let's roll!"
With that, the two climbed back onto Michael's bike where they followed the road as it wound back down to the desert floor. As they approached an expansive canyon a large sign along the roadside came into view. It read: Chaco Culture National Historical Park.
Rumbling along the paved drive and seeing the rust-colored massive complex in the distance, Blake felt he was entering yet another world, an extremely ancient one. What relation this intriguing place might have with the scavenging for UFO evidence his father had done for so many years, was just one more of the great puzzles he hoped to solve before returning to California.
Soon they came to the park gate and headquarters. Blake produced from his pocket a plastic laminated card and the female ranger looked at the two and with a friendly smile, then motioned them to freely enter.
Inside there was a visitor's parking area with ten to fifteen cars—presumably the curious who had ventured out for the day to take in the hike around archeological attraction, and obviously its significance to Native American culture. Michael drove beyond the lot to the other side of the enormous complex. There they found the tents and few vehicles Michael had pointed out earlier from above.
"Just know," he told Blake as they left the bike and walked into a passage way through the stone wall, "Tuwa is a resident archaeologist here and a professor over at the University of New Mexico. She's an authority on Caco Canyon. Did most her work here. Mainly on this, the largest of the canyon constructions, Pueblo Bonito."
Michael spoke more quietly as they passed down a rock and adobe walled corridor.
"She and her team have been trying to solve the mystery of this culture's total disappearance . . . their abandonment of the numerous structures around twelve hundred. It's been a massive controversy for decades. Best of all . . . she's Indian herself and knows a lot of stuff she doesn't always share with the academic community, particulalry the government. Plus, she keeps an eye on this place for us. So we're here today to talk about genes."
"Genes as in . . ."
"Yeah, genetics."
At that moment they moved into a large circular room of the stone complex where colored string markers formed a gridwork on the floor. The interior space appeared to be a great circular hall, tightly enclosed by careful stonework but open to the sky. It was obvious a lot of effort had gone into the excavations within the deep section pits, comprising the once level floor.
"Hello Michael!" came a woman's voice from off to the side of where they stood. As she approached, Blake could see the owner of the voice was tall, athletic, raven haired, and with indigenous facial features not unlike Michael's--almost Asian in appearance.
"Tuwa!" The two embraced.
"This is my colleague, Blake ... it's his first time to Bonito. Blake, this Dr. Tuwa Ahote"
"Nice to meet you Blake," she offered, smiling.
He nodded and took her hand, briefly.
"Let's go over to the tables," she said, and led the two out of the circular chamber down a narrow hallway to another enclosed room, like the others, roofless. There were certain modern amenities there--tables, chairs, an ice chest and several plastic buckets full of hand tools.
"Sit over here," she said.
Tuwa looked to Blake to be in her mid-thirties, but could have been much older as her hair, tied back in a ponytail, and her having an athletically fit body from years of outdoor work, probably had defied her true age.
"It's good to see you working out here again, Tuwa," Michael said. "So much is going on with my own research these days back east. A lot of information , especially around D. C. . . . hidden for so long is finally coming out. The Star People connection . . . so protected by our forefather's, has finally gained traction. Exposure through other discoveries, like yours here, Tuwa, and the whole Disclosure Movement is going strong now on through the Net.
"Yes, I'm aware of all that," she said, leaning back comfortably in her canvas chair. The initiative you're speaking of is exposing seventy years of government cover-up . . . both about what they discovered, and kept classified from the public."
"Seems the dots are finally being connected, Tuwa," Michael added, nodding.
"And especially with what I'm learning through genetic analysis here. From the Chacoan's remains we've recently unearthed this year. It's an exciting time for us, Michael. I feel we're on the edge of a whole new period of awareness. A sort of disclosure itself. Cosmic in scope."
Blake just sat quietly, amazed at the potential of what he was hearing. It gave him some degree of pride, however, just knowing that his father had been working in some similar capacity, pairing with them what was being hidden by the US authorities, and what evidence he was preparing at some point to expose.
"So, what have you got for me here . . . in your remote corner of the world," Michael asked. "I remember when the story broke years ago. When gene analysis of the Pueblo people here determined they were . . . "culturally undefinable" . . . not connected to any of the tribes claiming to be descendants . . . Hopi, like you, or Zuni like me."
"Right. And you also rememeber the shock waves that sent through the Native American nations here in the Southwest. A total revolt. Then came the laws against further genetic sequencing of indigenous remains."
"Yeah. So how have you dealt with all those restrictions?"
"Most of the controversy was over the original human remains taken right here from Pueblo Bonita in the 1890's when the complex was first discovered. The tissue and bone remains were turned over to the New York Museum of History before the turn of the century."
"So long ago?"
"Yes. It's been over a hundred yeas. Then when genetic processing came around a few years ago, the museum carried out DNA analysis. But with no permission from the tribes claiming descendancy from the Pueblos, like ours, and also the Navajo."
"Disaster. I remember."
"Yeah, totally. When the results came out, and it seemed inexplicable that the Pueblo people might have been a totally different race, restrictions came into place about removing any indigenous remains, period. Nor studying them without the permission of contemporary tribes claiming their ancestry."
"Exactly. So how have you gotten around this today, Tuwa?"
"Well it helps that I'm Indian. And mainly through bringing in the elders of each tribe here. Then just reminding them that our direct connection to the Chacoans is more significantly about our similar belief systems. Our rituals and oral traditions. These are customs we have all kept, regardless of the science behind any gene study. That's really what connects us."
"Good point. They have to agree with that."
"Yes. But frankly Michael, and in terms of what we are working hard here . . . and out there . . . to prove about links to the Star People . . . genes do matter. And I think you'll be pleasantly surprised if not shocked by what I am about to share with you today."
* * *