drawing time

Rinconada Canyon is a several mile hike through a desert area surrounded by low-rolling hills and etched rock formations. This was one of the warmer outings, with temperatures around 105 degrees fahrenheit earlier in the day.

Petroglyph National Monument protects one of the largest petroglyph sites in North America, featuring designs and symbols carved onto volcanic rocks by Native Americans and Spanish settlers 400 to 700 years ago. These images are a valuable record of cultural expression and hold profound spiritual significance for contemporary Native Americans and for the descendants of the early Spanish settlers.

Riconada has a mixture of imagery from Indigenous Peoples of the area, as well as Spanish Sheepherders and Farmhands hundreds of years later. Here are some of the later markings from the 1900’s.

Further down the path, I walked by several clusters of Petroglyphs created by Ancestral Pueblo, with the largest grouping at the mid-point of the trail loop.

Leaving pictograms on objects of permanence is a reflex of our species. Everything we draw from and on is an information relay of sorts. It’s interesting to think what marks we make now will carry into the future. What from 2024 will become the folklore of 3024?