There are lots of reasons to go outside, not the least of which is that our lives require us to be busy all the time, swapping thoughts and data in and out of our heads at a blinding pace, never allowing anything to settle in for too long because there simply isn’t much room in our minds anymore.
I sometimes feel like a pebble on the lake of life, skipping along the surface, barely touching the water before I go on to the next thing. I know at the end I will slow down and touch the water more often and for longer before finally sinking gently below the surface, and the ripples of my existence will show up on the lake for a little while before they, too, settle and disappear.
And I don’t want to spend so much time in the air, in a blind rush to next experience. So I slow down and go outside, and I have to do it for long enough that that mad rush leaves me and I stop churning along a path or a ridge or a wash simply to be doing it, and start walking.
Once I start seeing rocks and trees and things and thinking about them, once I start hearing the rustle of the breeze, my poor overloaded mind can start easing out of overdrive and find the low gears where thoughts move slowly enough that they settle in a little bit, rearrange the place a little bit, maybe tidy up some frayed little corner before they softly leave.
Today’s walk was long enough that I could first rush my rush, and then walk my walk, and then emerge dusty, with sweat stinging my eyes and crusting my cheeks … all without finding a single darn thing!
Fortunately the long ridge we followed came to an end just as my curiosity to see the next rock or boulder did, and even better – there, at the end of the line, a petroglyph panel was waiting.
Let’s look!
Oh, nice find! At this point we’ve been trudging fruitlessly along ridges and through deep sand for a while, and our spirits were flagging. All that changed when we came upon this find, though! Most notable is how the elements are clustered in one area of the boulder, as if the panel is not finished.The boulder face is alive with Representational elements, featuring bighorn sheep ( center left, among others ), deer ( top left ) and other zoomorphs that may be coyotes or other creatures.There might be two circular elements in this, the lower left part of the boulder, but everything else appears natural.This is the only left-facing zoomorph element in the panel. It faces upwards relative to the rest of the panel but I rotated the photo to make it easier to see.The upper part of the panel. From some angles the element in the upper left looks like a deer with elaborate horns, from other angles, like this one, it looks like the “horns” might be a separate element that happens to touch the tips of a sheep or antelope design’s backwards facing horns.Close up. You decide if you see a deer with elaborate horns, or two separate designs! Either way, I like the detail of a jaunty little tail at the animal’s rear. That suggests a deer to me.Most of the elements are slightly darkened by age, but there are definitely a couple that seem newer and whiter – the yoni-like symbol in the center, and the element at the top right, mostly visible as two parallel lines in this picture.The design of the yoni-like symbol seems different too – more deeply etched. Maybe it is contemporary or near contemporary and the deeper lines are responsible for it weathering more slowly.Some of the elements, like this newer element, are pretty rough. This one is extremely difficult to make out since it is superimposed over some natural erosion. That’s a pity, since it looks very interesting.A couple of the zoomorphs. The upper center looks like a coyote ( maybe ). The element in center right might or might not be a zoomorph. Really hard to tell when the elements are this rough. When viewed from a little further away this element looked a lot like a sheep running with its head down.This meander line is scratched out atop a tall boulder. You have to climb up to see it.A dumbbell shape, companion to the meander line above.A glance at the boulder. Not easy to climb up on and stay on while trying to take pictures! There’s also a circle with four quadrants in the foreground, and additional elements in the background.Some scrambling to get a different angle. Those elements look like Rectilinear design, four vertical lines with two parallel bars.It’s a ways down to the ground! This half circle first attracted our attention to this boulder.The boulder in all its glory.Our time is at an end. We approached the site from the left, behind the main panel, and we’re leaving by a different route to keep exploring.
After finding this site we had enough energy to keep on exploring, following a new route back to our starting point.
Did we find anything? You always find something out in nature.
