Pack Creek Ranch, San Juan County, Utah
Good Friday morning, March 21, the 81st day of 2008
The birthday of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685)

KIVA

If you are familiar with the Pueblo Indian culture of the Four Corners region of the Colorado Plateau in the American southwest, you will recognize the word: kiva. Perhaps you have visited the great ruins at Chaco Canyon or Mesa Verde or Hovenweep, where kivas have a place of paramount importance in the architecture. If you have been a back-country hiker in this region you may have seen or actually been in one of the many kivas left behind by the Anasazi – the ancient ones – when they abandoned their almost inaccessible stone villages more than nine hundred years ago.

Or, you may have been fortunate enough to attend the seasonal celebrations of the contemporary Pueblo villages in the Rio Grande Valley of New Mexico where kivas are still very much in active use. Seeing dancers representing buffalo and deer emerge out of the earth to the pulsing of drums on a cold snowy winter day is a never-to-be-forgotten experience.

Simply said, a kiva is a unique sacred space. Usually circular, walled and floored in native sandstone, and built underground with a roof of logs, wattle, clay and stone. The inner walls were plastered over and sometimes decorated. Most have a deep altar-like niche in one side, and all have a sipapu – a hole in the floor that is said to be the passageway between the lower and upper worlds.

Ranging from the size of a small bedroom to a chamber eighty feet across, the single space is usually eight to fifteen feet from floor to ceiling. The only opening is a square hole in the center, with access by way of a single ladder. The Great Kivas at Chaco Canyon and Aztec could hold several hundred people. The smallest in high cliff alcoves accommodated only a few. As far as is known, the use of kivas was exclusive to men.

Thick books have been written by white men speculating about the purpose of kivas. The original creators of these structures left no records. Modern Pueblo Indians do not welcome inquiries or allow visits from non-Indians. It is sufficient to say that kivas were and remain the center of ritual activities – religious and cultural. The power of their place in the lives of Indians of the southwest is unambiguous.

You may be somewhat surprised, therefore, to know that I have a kiva.

It is attached to my writing/painting studio here in the mountains south of Moab, set deep in the ground, and accessible by a hidden subterranean tunnel instead of a ladder. A small round kiva, twelve feet across and nine feet high – built according to tradition – log roof, plastered walls, with a stone bench topped with wooden slab seats around the wall, a niche in the east side, a sipapu in the floor, and a square hole in the roof open to the sky.

Why? When it was being constructed one of the workers, Will Chavez, who was himself a member of the Jimenez Indian tribe of New Mexico, not only had the same question, but he was personally offended by what he saw as a White Man’s Wannabe-An-Indian attitude.

I will tell you what I told him. I do not want to play Indian in any way. I simply wanted a small, private, sacred space to use as a personal chapel. A kiva seemed to be the most appropriate design for the purpose. A gesture of respect, to be sure, toward the traditions of his past. But built to serve the personal spiritual needs of a modern man who badly needs to sit in a special place from time to time and be quiet and still – well away from the cacaphonic noise and mad traffic of his usual daily life.

Will Chavez could accept and understand that. Once, after the kiva was completed, I found him sitting alone in it. He took my hand, and without any elaboration, he said he had, in his Way, added his blessing to the kiva.

Most mornings I begin my day by going into the kiva, where I first sweep it clean of what blows in through the sky hole or is left behind by visiting birds and rodents. I light a small oil lamp and a stick of incense, and place them in the wall niche. I strike a small bronze bell. And sit down. Hoping only that a few minutes in that sacred space will help preserve a sacred space in me – a wordless mindset that will carry me sanely through another day. It’s a stopping by a well to drink a cup of peace of mind. And to address a yearning within me for inner grace. That’s all. Nothing more.

Locals who know about my kiva help preserve the myth that I get naked in there, paint my body blue, do animistic dances, ingest mind-altering mushrooms, and make ritual sacrifices of live rabbits. I have encouraged this myth. A reputation for eccentricity helps preserve the solitude I seek.

I do not consume the bleeding hearts of bunnies, but only seek the quiet heart of a man who tries to keep in touch with himself in a sacred place.

This is not easy to accomplish when I am elsewhere. The noisy busyness of the world is an unyielding distraction. Sometimes in Seattle or in Crete I withdraw into the quietest room of my house, turn out the lights and close the shades, put a black sleep mask over my eyes, and adjust a pair of Bose sound-deadening devices over my ears. Alas, all too often, the retreat into inner space only results in sleep. A nap is not a bad thing, but, still not quite what I seek in my kiva.

On my travels I used to seek out cathedrals and mosques and temples, but the invasion of the chattering masses of guides and tourists carrying cameras and cell phones did not bring peace of mind – only homicidal urges – a desire to cleanse the holy places with assaultive screaming rages at the insensitive heathens. OUT! OUT! OUT! To avoid arrest, I avoid these religious compounds now. I say that a place of worship should not be a public museum except at very limited hours of the day.

Actually, I’ve found that great cemeteries at dawn are the only places where some sacredness of space is still available when traveling the world. How strange. The dead are better company than the living. And I am reminded that, in time, I will find, underground, ultimate peace of mind in the smallest sacred kiva space of all.

Meanwhile, when I sit in my kiva I try very hard to burn the image of the experience into the center of my mind, so that when I am far away and overwhelmed by the wonky world, I can close my eyes and sit in the kiva in my minds eye of imagination, take a deep breath, and be in that sacred space between the world above and the world below – between now and forever.