Along the western edge of the Rio Grande Valley, 30 miles west of New Mexico's capital, Santa Fe, sits the Pajarito Plateau-a great mountain plateau showcased against the sky. The entire area of the ancient Pajarito Plateau affords one the opportunity to step back in time. Long lines of mesas, a panorama of mountains and deep canyons slashed through volcanic rock by mountain streams, lend a unique beauty to this rough land.

Once thousands of people inhabited these mesas and canyons, they then vanished, leaving behind countless villages and cliff dwellings. Today only a handful of pueblos remain. The Indians of these pueblos can trace their origins to the Pajarito Plateau inhabitants-cradle of an early Indian civilization.

Gateway to the Pajarito country is the Indian pueblo of the San Ildefonso, famous for superb pottery. It is nestled beside the towering Black Mesa, a giant escarpment of volcanic rock revered as Tunjo, the sacred fire mountain by the Indians. Trails provide access to the top of this hallowed area with its ancient shrine.

Edgar L Hewett, a prominent New Mexico archaeologist who named the Pajarito Plateau, once wrote: "If you want to feel the power and pathos of time, roll up in your blankets on any of a hundred mesas, or in any one of a hundred canyons...The stars that sparkele above you watched over the cataclysm that rent the nearby mountains some millions of years ago; saw the mesas rise out of the chaos... saw cliff and cave shaped by the wind and rain; and, at last, saw human life drift quietly in...then flow on into the river we call time."