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This year I went to Arizona for the first time. One of the things I saw in the stunning desert landscape was Montezuma Castle National Monument.
The National Parks Service describes it like this: “Established December 8, 1906, Montezuma Castle is the third National Monument dedicated to preserving Native American culture. This 20 room high-rise apartment, nestled into a towering limestone cliff, tells a story of ingenuity, survival and ultimately, prosperity in an unforgiving desert landscape.”
But the most striking thing to me at this “monument” was the sign explaining that the people who lived in this dwelling, between the years 1100 and 1425, used the landscape around them as its structure, intending for their home to wear away with time like any other rock. They didn’t want it to be preserved.
And so as I stood on the ground, looking up at this entirely misnamed “monument,” all I could think was, “wow, we couldn’t even do that right.”
So much of twenty-first century US culture revolves around a craving for permanence.
What do I mean by that? Well, from strictly enforced national borders to owning pieces of land to crying foul when a TV show is taken off a streaming platform to feeding the multibillion-dollar anti-aging industry — these are all cries to…