Kokopelli Forest Traditional Cache
SoulDancer: Warren High School students participated in a river clean up, which will keep the trails enjoyable for many hikers and bikers to come. I had SoulsLilGurl pick up this cache of mine at that time.
The TB is safe and sound and will be moved to a cache very soon.
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This area can go from damp to totally flooded, please use caution.
Well that flute player has found a forest in which to play music for all who will listen. You might want to grab a friend for a trail dance as you make your way past the babbling river. You might be lucky enough to see a beaver busting a move near the rivers edge.
Kokopelli has been worshipped since at least the time of the Ancient Pueblo Peoples. The first known images of him appear on Hohokam pottery dated to sometime between AD 750 and AD 850.
Kokopelli may have originally been a representation of ancient Aztec traders, known as pochtechas, who traveled to the Southwest from Mexico. Such traders brought their goods in sacks slung across their backs, and this sack may have evolved into Kokopelli's familiar hump (in fact, many tribes make Kokopelli a trader in this way). These men also used flutes to announce themselves as friendly as they approached a settlement. This origin is still in doubt, however, since the first known images of Kokopelli predate the major era of Aztek-Anasazi trade by several hundred years.
Another theory is that Kokopelli is actually an anthropomorphic insect. Many of the earliest depictions of Kokopelli make him very insect-like in appearance. The name "Kokopelli" may be a combination of "Koko", another Hopi and Zuni deity, and "pelli", the Hopi and Zuni word for the desert robber fly, an insect with a prominent proboscis and a rounded back, which is also noted for its zealous sexual proclivities. A more recent etymology is that Kokopelli means literally "kachina hump".
Because the Hopi were the tribe from whom the Spanish explorers first learned of the god, their name is the one most commonly used.
Kokopelli is one of the most easily recognized figures found in the petroglyphs and pictographs of the Southwest. The earliest known petroglyph of the figure dates to about A.D. 1000. Kokopelli was one of several kachina dolls sold to tourists. The Spanish missionaries in the area convinced the Hopi craftsmen to omit the phallus from their representations of the figure. As with most kachina dolls, the Hopi Kokopelli was often represented by a human dancer. These dancers apparently had great fun with missionaries and tourists by making obscene and other gestures that the foreigners did not understand.
In recent years, the emasculated version of Kokopelli has been adopted as a broader symbol of the Southwestern United States as a whole. His image adorns countless tourist items such as T-shirts, ball caps, and keychains. A bicycle trail between Grand Junction, Colorado and Moab, Utah is now known as the Kokopelli Trail.
This cache is in the heart of Muggleville! You must be extremely stealthy to get to this and get out without being seen!
PLEASE REPLACE CACHE THE SAME WAY YOU FOUND IT!
Happy Caching!
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