With my daughter walking several steps ahead, we ventured to the Sears-Kay ruin in Cave Creek, Arizona. The climb was relatively easy, my daughter clinged to the jagged rocks as we forged ahead, careful to maintain our footing as the dirt teased us with slipping. As we hiked, my daughter would notice snake holes and cautioned me to walk around them.

We reached the top of the mountain, the air filled with history, where  a thousand years ago, Hohokam villages stretched across much of this land. The Hohokam lived in forty makeshift rooms, the remnants of their life etched in petroglyphs in the rocks. Shards of pottery peek out to remind you that there was a civilization that thrived, with adults and children.

The past whispers to you when you aren’t really anticipating it. For a second, my breath felt shallow, the gravity of the history of the people that lived here a thousand years ago captured my senses. Progress had definitely stamped its inprint in between the mountains. Huge power lines stampeded across the desert, their linear stretch magnificent.

My daughter runs back and forth, her focus on the dirt running through her fingers, the rocks that look like objects, and of course, the snake holes. In another thousand years, there will be another mother and daughter climbing these same mountains.

I’ve been told so many times that life goes on. For the first time in my life, I actually felt it.