Mesa Verde was a striking place. I often wondered, based on pictures I would see, why a people would choose to live in houses built in a cliffside of a desert. Then I got there and realized that this is not a desert. It was green with forests and wild flowers. It would be a place of life and safety. You can see for miles from the high overlooks. It would be easy to see smoke from fires from a very long ways with the flat valley floor below. I can see that a people who had been walking through a desert and heat would come to these mountains and hidden valleys and see a paradise home.