Election Night

I am camping among red rocks in Valley of the Gods, in southern Utah. (I voted early!) This area was once home for thousands of people. They built villages in the cliffs, they hunted in the nearby highlands, and they farmed. They lived in this area long enough to build substantially, from Mesa Verde in Colorado to smaller settlements, such as this one at Monarch Cave.
This must have been a remarkable place to live; the village is sited under massive, overhanging rock. Within 100 feet of the buildings there is large pourover which, during a summer cloudburst, would have become a stupendous waterfall cascading into a pool 200 feet below. The pool is still there. Was it the water source for the village? Did people dive into it from the rocks above?
It could not have been an easy thing for them to abandon such a place, but they did, along with most of the inhabitants of the pueblos in the 4 corners area, great and small. Why they left, approximately 700 years ago, is still a mystery. Perhaps climate change, perhaps resource depletion, perhaps a relentless enemy. In any event, they left, headed south, to settle in the Rio Grande Valley in Northern New Mexico, the mesas of Hopi Land in Northern Arizona, the Zuni and Acoma Pueblos in Western New Mexico, and possibly in Southeastern Arizona and Northern Mexico.