A Thousand-Year Connection

As I wander through the ancient ruins of the desert Southwest, I often find myself slipping into the past. I try to imagine the lives of those who once called this place home - what they feared, what they celebrated, and whether they too paused to marvel at the beauty around them. A thousand years is a vast stretch of time in human terms, yet here among the cliffs and canyons, the landscape feels almost unchanged -  its silence still intact, its stone faces barely weathered.

Were the people who built these walls so different from me?

I pause, and my thoughts begin to drift…

One thousand years ago, in a shaded alcove along Comb Ridge, a man pressed wet mortar between sandstone blocks, shaping a home for his family. Each ridge and groove he left behind in the clay bore the quiet pride of purpose - the work of a builder, a father, a dreamer. 

The walls were nearly complete, but not yet ready for occupation, so that evening he laid his blanket under the open sky and watched the moon rise over the desert. As he drifted into sleep, he gazed at the familiar orb above him. It had always been there - constant, luminous, steady - marking time across the seasons and guiding his travels across canyon and mesa. The moon, to him, was not distant. It was a comforting presence.

One thousand years later, I am shaking hands with Buzz Aldrin. For me, a lifelong space enthusiast, it was a surreal moment. This was a man who had not only made history but had left footprints on the very face of the moon. Until that moment, the moon had always felt like a distant symbol, a quiet companion in the night sky. But when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked its surface, the moon became something more: a place. A place Neil once described as “resembling the high deserts of the western United States.” A landscape where I now make my home.

Years later, I find myself standing before a weathered wall deep within the cliffs of Comb Ridge. The structure has surrendered to time, but one thing remains - finger impressions, pressed into the mortar a millennium ago. I reach out, unable to resist. The same hand that once gripped Buzz Aldrin’s now gently settles into the grooves left by another explorer - one who never left Earth but still looked to the same moon.

As my fingers fit into those ancient impressions, I feel something shift. The gulf of time collapses. I am linked to the builder, to Buzz, to Neil - to all who have ever looked skyward and imagined. The moon connects us not just through time, but through wonder. From Comb Ridge to the Sea of Tranquility, it has always been there: a beacon, a constant, a comfort that connects us all.