December 10,
Don’t tell anyone but I think I hit Thumper
I don't know how I forgot to
tell you last night, must have been snow blind or something, but I think that I
may have run over Thumper last night.
Out in the middle of nowhere, the bunny was waiting for someone to light
the road so he could cross it. As I
drove by, he ran in my path. I felt a
tiny little thump. Oh no. I said goodbye to him like my Hari Krishna
friends told me to do many years ago and kept driving. Oh dear.
I think that I have a good
reason for wearing a watch. Because I
forgot a flashlight. Once again, I am
atop a mountain, well a smallish one, far away, but I am up there. And I am photographing and walking and
photographing and watching the sun go down.
At first I am concerned about how long until sunset. I have walked quite a ways up, but finally I
just decide that the sunset is more interesting. I tell myself, no more pictures and then, there is something else
that I see. So anyway, I end up on the
mountain with the sun down, though the last golden emanations are still lighting
the way down. I am off the hill in time
to watch the sky turn many different colors of pinks. Sublimely mine.
And it turns out that I was a
bit of a sleuth today. Hunted around
the town and talked to various and sundry peoples. Found out that this guy that I am going out with tomorrow -
though no confirmation yet this evening - is quite an event. He has published 24 or 25 books. He had an article in the local paper that
caused quite a stir. Says that he can
read the petroglyphs, that they are actually a language. He has found a cave filled with artifacts
that is still intact, worth big bucks.
The Forest Service is pissed because he is possibly inciting people to
hunt for the goodies and that he is contradicting popular wisdom on the
glyphs. Well, we all know that tendencies
are for society to be condescending when it comes to estimating other
cultures. Why couldn’t there be some kind of written word or
communication. Why ever not? Hopefully, the Rock Man will come
through. He promised to take me to some
"beautiful places" and it should be a very long day. Keeping all extremities crossed to increase
my odds of success.
And you know how sometimes
people just need to tell you their whole story? Happens often to me.
Anyway, this woman at the Bureau of Land Management is doing that today. Also, she's giving me all sorts of tips on
places to go looking for minerals and other cool things. She tells me that if I'm going into the cave
I need to be sure to bring a gun. Now,
I cannot imagine what would be in that cave that I would need a gun for. Did you guess? I would have thought men but she said that they are full of
snakes. Yikes. Now, I have no problem with snakes in a
general sort of a way. I have even been
known to throw rocks at rattlesnakes when I am far enough away to get them off
their ass so to speak so that I can see just how big they are. Just so you know, this strategy usually
pisses them off and they do decide to come and get you. Just in case you were wondering.
Anyway, I told them that I was
under the impression that snakes went dormant in the winter. Not all of them they assured me. Well great.
I am certainly remembering this as I am climbing down the faces of
boulders this afternoon - just exactly where a snake would be to soak up the
last rays of warmth. I don't mind snakes
that aren’t poisonous. It is the ones
that make you swell up and turn twenty shades of purple before you die that I
don't want to meet.
So, we'll see what pans out
for tomorrow. Wish me luck. Other than that, I am ready to hit the
road. Been here long enough. I'll come back but for right now I am ready
to leave.
I am sure that there are other
details that escape me but this is all that I am capable of remembering at this
point in this particular day.
December
11
Anticipation
I am heading off with the rock
man this morning. Waiting for him to
come and pick me up right now. We're
going to Las Cruces and a couple of other sites hopefully. I am completely loaded down with lenses and
film. Taking an ice chest to leave some
of the unexposed stuff in the car.
Exposed film never leaves my sight.
I don't know if I was ever
meant to be in one place for very long.
Indoors can be such a prison for me.
I love to be out, especially photographing. I prefer a longer leash, fresh vistas and dirt roads that vanish
into the horizon.
December
11
The
Rock Man and the woman who follows. File
this one under Julie didn’t read all the signs quite right and was the Rock Man
full of it or not???
What to say about today. Disclaimer,
disclaimer – so much male preening behaviour, that the stories that I am about
to relate may or may not be related to any sense or form of reality. But, they were in fact all told to me by the
Rock Man and so I report...
We drove out to Las Cruces and hiked in
to a site that was a mile or two back into a ravine. On the way out of town we got stuck in a roadblock for the
missile range and sat for around forty-five minutes. We stopped to have breakfast burritos at a place called Burger
Time before heading off the road.
The area is known as Lucero
Draw. We parked off the road near a
factory that was sufficiently nondescript.
The terrain is fairly monotonous in a desert sort of a way. Once you look closer many little secrets are
given up, but only if you take the time to inspect the lay of the land. The smells are so wonderfully
minimalist. I love the fragrance of the
desert.
The rock man and I talked the
whole time. Really it was more like an
interview of sorts. He told me that
nothing happens by accident and he had been thinking that he needed a
photographer to help illustrate some of his work and then I call.
He picked me up at the motel
and pretty much as we got started I began to hear all about the government
being the third antichrist, all the tax money that the IRS takes though they
are not an elected body and on along this vein. He also has some absolutely priceless stories about being shot
at, bombed, strafed and arrested while doing his job out here in the land of
the top-secret boondoggle. I didn't
know that part of the Star Wars, Ronnie Reagan's not Steven Speilberg's, was
out in this area. And there is some
enormous laser thing that blasts things to hell. Once he was out on a job just in front of the barn doors that
keep the thing under wraps when he sees the M P's hauling ass, just bouncing in
their little jeep over the dunes. He is
telling himself that they must be having a good time otherwise why would they
be doing something that looks like they are being pounded to shit. Anyway, the doors are opening; these guys
come screaming up saying that they are about to be killed. He explains that
they have a permit and the badge and these guys must know that they are out
here. The M P's insist that whatever
the circumstances, they are about to be blinded or worse by the laser that is
being turned upon them. Get the hell
out, crash through the gates, whatever.
There being no demand for blind archeologist, archeology by Braille not
being perfected, they follow the M P's and spend the next few hours hunkered
down behind a dune.
I didn't realize how
absolutely Wild West it was out here.
We drove by many famous massacre sights. The Apaches were completely dominating the territory for a brief
time. Horrific killings, dogs whose
rear legs were cut off and left to bleed to death, oxen tied up and left to a
slow death, people scalped and all sorts of really ugly things like that. He is a walking date book full of times and
dates and details. He has worked on
excavating many of the sites of these massacres. He has been in a cave where Billy Kid (no "the") holed
up with his gang and carved their initials.
He grew up finding arrowheads, cavalry buttons, sabers and all of the
other deleterious of the passage of the wild Wild West.
Talking of caves and snakes he
confided that he didn't bring his gun because he didn't want to scare me. Did you know that the German Air Force is
here too? The Lufftwaffe. He says that we have sold off the country
and pretty soon we will be taken over by foreign armies from within. Nostradamus, Hopi legends and all of that
stuff. These are not things that I
necessarily want to be hearing from someone who is driving me off into the
middle of the desert somewhere.
So off we drive to our dirt
path up the arroyo. We start off and he
walks faster than anyone else that I have ever walked with. I am carrying gear and all and so just trail
behind a bit, trying to keep up. I
suppose that is an occupational thing.
When you survey places for ruins and archeologically significant sites
before someone can dig or otherwise disturb the area, why would it pay to walk
at a normal pace? I point out that his
pace is far faster than mine but it doesn't slow him down. I keep up somewhat, wondering if I am
slowing him down.
And by this time he is telling
me that he grosses big bucks in his business.
Alarm, alarm, alarm. This is a
male preening behaviour that I am very familiar with. He explains to me how he has read these Petroglyphs and predicted
things. We look at the symbols that I
have taken as one thing and he explains what he believes their meaning to
be. The ones is this arroyo are
basically centered around the plunge holes.
A plunge hole is where the water falls off of the thick layer of
sedimentary rock in this particular canyon and forms a deep hole or grotto in
the ground. This would have been not
only a source of water for the Indians but a good place to hunt for the animals
that come to drink.
There are heads drawn with a
line of thought connecting them, the layout of the arroyo and places to find
water carved deeply into the rock.
There is one rock that has somebody's idea of erotic or just a graphic
female figure. There is a natural
formation that is a deep hole cleft into the rock; black rock of some sort
surrounds the opening. Without going
into graphic detail, suffice it to say that I have just seen my first erotic
stone art. Faintly carved in, at least hard to see in this particular
light. Hard to imagine just who did
this one.
Anyway, I am there taking
pictures and he goes on to tell me that he is going to let me rest and walk on
up to the plunge and see if it is still there.
He doesn't want me to have to walk all that way if there is nothing
there. I tell him that I won't be far
behind and go ahead and do my shots. I
wander on up the arroyo and hear him walking back down as I'm at another site
looking it over. Our paths are once again joined.
So, off we go, up the balance
of the arroyo. We are on some pretty
slippery trails that I am questioning myself and my sanity on. I don't typically walk on the sides of alluvial
hills with friable rocks dancing to the bottom. Just not my cup of tea if you will. But there you have it, we are going to each site, viewing each
glyph and I am not going to complain nor whine about that.
I survive one side of the
canyon doing this and then we head off to an even worse ledge on the other
side. I have a few cuts and scratches
but am not any the worse for it.
We end up back down the canyon
and I cut off to go back and shoot some black and white at one of the sites.
Some really amazing sedimentary rocks full of nautilus shells and all other
sorts of goodies. We are hiking back
and he is asking when I'm coming back and planning the next assault. There are plenty of places to go and
see. We can get onto some ranches and
places that no one else can go. He
tells me how he respects these people and that they understand that and allow
him onto their places. He tells them that they may own the land but they don't
own the history. He respects their
right to privacy and will not disclose their sites if they do not wish it. Makes for the opportunity to return. I took a couple of pictures of him at
various places in the canyon. I'll send
prints in exchange for the time he took to show me out here.
He tells me that he is
frustrated that the Forest Service ignores the work that he has published. Rock
art is a favorite term of theirs that sends his blood to boil. More comments that I cannot repeat here due to their personal nature and I am out of this picture for all degrees of the future. Hmmmm.
