Long Time Gone: Day 15 — Mesa Verde National Park

Up early this morning, and we left the campsite a little after 8 to traverse the park’s steep and winding roads and make a 10 a.m. tour of Long House, which, at 315 feet, is the longest Ancestral Puebloan cliff dwelling in the park.

Our tour guide this morning was Ranger David, who is half Lakota, and who kept fingering the two long braids that hung over his shoulders. There were at least 30 people on the tour, and we were all listening politely and intently to his informative talk, but for some reason he singled me out for not laughing at his jokes (even though no one else laughed, either, and even though his jokes were not even jokes but rather observations). He continually picked on me for not smiling — he thought I was not enjoying his tour — and my feelings were deeply hurt, because I was enjoying myself; I had been concentrating on what he was saying, and obviously he was misinterpreting my Resting Bitch Face.

This isn’t the first time this has happened. A tour guide in Alaska called me out for the exact same reason.

For the record: I’m really, really touchy about RBF. I would bend over backward to help a stranger. I am dying to be your friend. And it breaks my heart that people are turned off by my apparently severe expression, when all I’m doing is listening, or concentrating, or letting my mind wander. I can’t help the way I look. When Keith points out the RBF (he calls it Asian Poker Face), I focus on plastering a silly smile on my face, just to seem more approachable, but honestly that takes so much energy that I can’t pay attention to what actually is happening around me. What I wouldn’t give to have been born with a naturally radiant countenance.

So, it goes without saying that David did not end up on my good side for picking on something that I am already incredibly self-conscious about.

After the two-hour tour of Long House, we hustled it to another corner of the park for a tour of Cliff Palace, followed by a tour of Balcony House. In all, we spent four hours on guided ranger talks today. And at least three hours in transit. It was after 5 by the time we got back to the campground for showers, followed by a fantastic mac-and-cheese dinner.

These trees, along the path to the Long House cliff dwelling, burned in the Pony Fire of 2001. Trees won't be able to grow here again for hundreds of years. In the last 20 years, more than half of Mesa Verde National Park has been scorched by forest fires.