"The dark power of the declining Fourth World cannot be destroyed or overpowered. It’s too strong and clear for that, and that is the wrong strategy. The dark can only be transformed when confronted with simplicity and open-heartedness. This is what leads to fusion, a key concept for the emerging era."

- Carlos Barrios

Day 148  - Friday, November 17, 1995 - The New Mexico territory that the Sunbow walkers are now traveling over was at one time home turf for Coelophysis, Reveltosaurus, Seismosaurus, Eucoelophysis, Pentaceratops, and dozens of other monstrous creature relatives from the age of dinosaurs.

New Mexico dinosaur footprint.

The dinosaur age spans some 159 million years of our Earth's history, dating back 66 to 225 million years B.C.E. In geologic terms, that's the late Triassic period, and the entire Jurrasic and Cretaceous periods of history.

Dinosaur bones, footprints, skin impressions, and egg shells are commonly found in New Mexico, and the excavated fossils from these digs are to be found in museum exhibits around the world.

Dinosaur fossils have been unearthed across most of New Mexico. They were first collected here during the 1880s to the delight of interested scientists and citizens.

New Mexico has the most complete and revealing record of Triassic dinosaurs of any of the United States. This record includes hundreds of bones and skeletons of Coelophysis, a creature whose plentiful remains have been recognized as the official state fossil of New Mexico. 

Drawing of Coelophysis - a species of dinosaur that one roamed the land now known as New Mexico.

Hundreds of skeletons of Coelophysis were discovered northwest of where our walk is now, in the 1940s at Ghost Ranch in Rio Arriba County. Scientists say that Coelephysis was one of the first dinosaurs to evolve. Six-to-nine-feet long (two- to three-meters), it was an efficient meat-eater.

Via fossils and footprints, the Sunbow pilgrims can remember the dinosaur monsters, but they need not reckon with any as they walk on toward the Western Gate, monster slayers having long ago brought the dinosaur lineage to a halt.

The modern monsters the walkers face are 10-wheel trucks barreling along and sucking up wind and dust and wooshing out rancid noise at at 70 or 80 mph, making men and women afoot feel nearly as puny as they might encountering Tyrannosaurus Rex.

The walkers understand that while the Triassic and Jurasic periods have faded into distant Earth history, we, ourselves are striding on the cusp of particular Earth eras -- the time of the 7th Fire brigdging to the possible time of an 8th Fire, as held in the Algonquin-Anishinabe traditions of our North American Turtle Island continent.

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