One of my various ways of keeping a roof over my head is editing TechDispenser.com, a technology blog aggregator. If you’re into tech, it’s a great place to keep up with the blogosphere’s reaction to technology-related news.

But some of the blogs that are a part of the TechDispenser network include off-topic posts. I reject those posts; it’s what makes TD special. The reader doesn’t have to sift through posts about a blogger having a runny nose or that someone stole his lunch out of the company fridge today.

But sometimes, there are real gems that have to get rejected for being off-topic. And I just feel compelled to pass along these posts in whatever way I can. Which finally brings me ’round to the point of this post. Andy Updegrove of the consortiuminfo.org Standard’s Blog is on vacation, hiking around New Mexico and Utah, and he’s blogging about his adventures.

And damn, the man can write.

Please check out his post, Preserving Our Past to Help Us See Our Future: A Reunion with Spirit House and if you enjoy it as much as I did, pass word of it along to your friends.

So what is Spirit House? In Mr. Updegrove’s own words:

Why all the interest in this one site? As cliff dwellings go, Spirit House is hardly the largest, nor the grandest, nor the most dramatically situated. With 49 rooms spread along a quarter mile of ledge in a pleasingly sinuous, but otherwise unremarkable canyon, it is for the most part typical of the hundreds of other ruins scattered throughout the Four Corners area. And yet it remains perhaps the best loved, if not the best kept secret, among Anasazi ruins.