[ VISIT & PATRONAGE ] · CARRIZAL PLAYA · 31° 17′ N
Stand where the beam lands.
STELE I is remote by design: a hundred-year build on a dry lakebed at 31° north, reached by arrangement, in season, in small numbers. To visit is to keep an appointment with the sky. To endow a degree of arc is to keep the instrument that keeps it.
[ 01 ] · THE APPROACH · 31° 17′ N
Reaching the Carrizal Playa
STELE I stands alone on the Carrizal Playa, a dry lakebed in the high desert at latitude 31° north. The remoteness is not an obstacle to the work; it is part of it. An instrument meant to keep the time of the turning sky must sit under a dark, unbroken horizon, far from any glow a city throws. Getting there is slow on purpose.
Come honestly informed: the slab is recently begun. What you reach today is a working site — a poured footing, formwork and a steel guide-mast, survey pins and a single container shelter — not a finished monument. The monument is a hundred-year undertaking, and most of it lies generations ahead. People who make the crossing now come to stand at the beginning of something, not at its end.
There is no road to the slab and no gate to pass. Admission is granted in writing, dated to a specific window, and held to a small number. The facts of the approach are below; read them as conditions, not suggestions.
- 01Coordinates
- 31° 17′ 26″ N, 105° 41′ 12″ W. Elevation 1,283 m (4,210 ft), under a Bortle-2 sky.
- 02Nearest town
- The rail siding at Ánimas, 74 km north — the last fuel, water, and cellular signal before the playa.
- 03Final approach
- 38 km of graded caliche track to the lakebed edge, then 2.1 km on foot to the field station. A high-clearance vehicle is essential; there is no recovery service.
- 04Field station
- One container shelter and a composting privy. No power, no running water, no shade beyond the slab itself.
- 05Season
- Reachable roughly November through April. Summer storms flood the track without warning and dissolve the crust; the playa closes on those terms, not ours.
- 06Admission
- By written arrangement, dated to one window and capped by capacity. There is no gate and no ticket.
[ 02 ] · CONDUCT
What the playa asks
The playa keeps a stricter etiquette than any building. Its salt-and-clay crust is older than agriculture and slower to heal than stone — a single tyre rut can stand for a decade, a footprint off the line for a season. You are a guest of a surface that measures time the way the instrument does. The rules are few, and they are absolute.
None of this is ceremony. Each rule protects either the crust underfoot, the dark above, or the one calibrated mark the whole instrument is built around. Keep them and the reading holds; break them and the damage is reckoned in centuries, not in apologies.
- 01Leave the playa as you crossed it
- Pack out everything. Walk the marked line; the crust does not forgive a shortcut.
- 02Silence at alignment
- From ten minutes before a reading until the light has passed: no speech, no shutter, no device.
- 03Red light only
- No white light after dusk. It blinds the eye to the sky and fogs the instrument's long record.
- 04Do not touch the mark
- The engraved solstice point is the one calibrated surface. Skin oil and pressure are damage measured in centuries.
- 05Nothing crosses the aperture
- No drones and no flight over the array. The line of sight is kept clear, ground to pole.
- 06Carry your own water and shelter
- There are no services within 60 km. Self-sufficiency is the price of a dark horizon.
[ 03 ] · FIRST LIGHT
First-light windows
The instrument has one true annual tick. At the winter solstice a low sun rakes through the solstice aperture and lands, for a few minutes, on a single engraved mark inside the slab. That amber light is the reading the whole instrument is built to make — Solstice Amber, the only colour STELE I keeps. Everything else is preparation for it.
The other alignments are quieter and no less exact: the equinox shadow falling clean along the meridian, the summer sun dropping the full depth of the polar bore at noon, the pole itself held in the shaft on a clear winter night. Windows are few, dated, and witnessed by a handful at a time. The table below lists the readings open for the 2026–27 cycle.
| Event | Date | Alignment · MST | Phenomenon | Witnesses |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Winter Solstice | 21 Dec 2026 | 07:21 | The Amber — solstice beam strikes the engraved mark; the year's one true tick | 12 |
| Vernal Equinox | 20 Mar 2027 | 12:09 | Meridian shadow falls clean; day and night stand equal | 24 |
| Summer Solstice | 21 Jun 2027 | 12:05 | Sun at 82.2°; light drops the full depth of the polar bore | 24 |
| Autumnal Equinox | 23 Sep 2027 | 12:02 | Meridian shadow returns; the year balances a second time | 24 |
| Sidereal Vigil | Clear nights, Oct–Mar | 21:00–04:00 | The celestial pole framed in the shaft; the sidereal day kept | 8 / night |
[ 04 ] · DEGREES OF ARC
Endow a degree of arc
A circle holds 360 degrees of arc. The instrument is laid out on such a circle, and so is the way you can keep it. We do not sell STELE I and we do not take it to market by the quarter. We ask keepers to endow it — one degree of arc at a time — and to hold that degree in their name for as long as the instrument stands.
Patronage is plain about where it goes. There is no finished product to buy; every gift funds the next pour, the next season of cure, the next mark cut true. To become a keeper is to put your name on a specific part of a build you will not see completed, and to trust the keepers who come after you to carry it the rest of the way. The tiers below name the standing each gift carries.
The Witness
Your name entered in the field ledger in graphite, and later cut in bronze. Admission for two to one first-light window, capacity and conditions allowing. Not an endowment — a first standing at the instrument.
Keeper of a Degree
Endow one of the circle's 360 degrees of arc, recorded against your name on the bronze rota and held in perpetuity. Standing admission to one alignment each year for the life of the keeper.
Keeper of an Hour
Fifteen degrees — one hour of right ascension. Funds a full season of pour and cure. A cast plate set at your hour's bearing, and the Amber window reserved for your party once in your lifetime.
Meridian Keeper
Endow a cardinal bearing: a named segment of the build and its first century of maintenance. A seat on the keepers' council, and the instrument's survey and records opened to you.
The Founding Pole
For those who would underwrite a whole stele, or the polar bore at its heart. Named in the foundation, in the charter, and in the trust meant to outlast all of us. By private arrangement only.
[ 05 ] · ENQUIRY
A quiet enquiry
There is no checkout here, and there will not be one. Patronage and admission both begin with a letter and a slow, considered reply — conversations measured in weeks, not minutes, as befits an instrument measured in centuries. Tell us who you are, which window or which degree draws you, and we will write back with what is true and what is possible.
Write to the studio. We read everything, and we answer plainly — keepers@obliquity.studio.
[ 06 ] · THE CHARTER
The deep-time charter
Every keeper signs the same short covenant, the deep-time charter. It holds the studio and its patrons to one promise: that STELE I is built to be maintained, recalibrated, and read long after all of us are gone. The pole star itself is not fixed — the Earth's axis swings through a full circle once every 25,772 years, and the star the shaft points to today will drift, fade, and be replaced. The charter accounts for that drift. It instructs the keepers of the year 14000 as carefully as it instructs the keepers of this one.
This is the discipline the work asks of everyone who touches it: patience as a form of accuracy. We will not see the circle closed. We will not read a full turn of the pole. We set the datum true, pour what we can, write down exactly what we did, and hand it on.
| Horizon | Phase | What stands |
|---|---|---|
| 2025 | Datum | True north fixed; the meridian benchmark set in bedrock — the instrument's first and oldest stone. |
| 2026 | Groundbreaking | First pour of the foundation raft; formwork and the steel guide-mast on the playa. Where the work stands today. |
| 2031 | First light | STELE I raised to its 23.44° lean; the solstice aperture cut and the Amber read true for the first time. |
| 2049 | The first ring | Three steles set on the degree-circle; the array begins to keep the sidereal day. |
| 2126 | The circle closed | Centennial. All 360 degrees stand; the instrument is complete as designed. |
| c. 4000 CE | First drift | The pole's slow migration is logged within the shaft; the first recalibration mark is cut. |
| c. 13700 CE | Vega's turn | Vega nears the celestial pole; later keepers re-bore the shaft to follow it. |
| c. 27800 CE | One full turn | A complete 25,772-year precession; the pole returns to where the build began. |
No keeper will witness a full turn of the pole. We build for the ones who will.