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Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Hiking up a wash Part II

Can you feel what it is like to hike up a wash, scramble over some rocks and finally come to a place like this one, within about six miles from what is, at least for awhile, your home down here, where the rocks have left behind a story to tell of a people who lived here long ago? They had dreams and goals, walked these same places, sought shelter, food, and sometimes left behind their stories pecked or painted on the rocks. The places always feel sacred to me as they appeal on emotional and physical levels. Sometimes the symbols appear to represent a story of how they saw life, like the spirals which are seen most often in the Hohokam sites.

To stand where I know people did hundreds of years ago and look at their rock art is always a very special experience for me. The Hohokam people occupied central Arizona from around 200 B.C. until about 1450 A.D. when they, like most of the cliff dwellers to the north (Sinagua and Anasazi), left at least their established villages and disappeared into history.


As you start to hike up this particular wash, in the foothills of the Catalinas, there are owls that nest under an overpass. From the drawings, it appears that they have always been here.


Do enlarge the photos, especially the one of me because it was one of those lucky shots. We didn't know when it was taken that the waning moon was also in the shot. You couldn't plan a shot like that if you wanted and yet here it was with three elements come together-- the symbols of a people long ago, a person from today, and the moon representing the cycles of life.

4 comments:

Dixon Webb said...

Good Morning Rain . . Beautiful pictures. You and F.B. have the eyes of artists. It's also evident that you have a fascination with the spiritual element of our lives. The Bible talks of the soul and I equate the soul with the spirit. When religious people suggest that there will be a resurection and we will end up in heaven, I have always taken that to mean the physical body returns to the earth and only the spirit wends it's way to heaven. I think of the spirit as the essence of man and not possessing any substance. In my mind I see the markings and other traces of ancient people as a physical reference representing a spirit that long ago went to whatever the individual thought of as heaven.

Anyway, Merry Christmas

Dixon

Kay Dennison said...

Beautiful!!!!!!!

joared said...

I recall driving through the Chiricahua Mtns. on a back road, all by ourselves -- saw no other vehicles or people. Strange sensation imagining Apache Indians once standing on those rocks high above us and thinking of all the history.

TorAa said...

I'm very humble when visiting sites like this. I try to image what life was like at the time of those civilations. And allways ponder why such great civilations just disappeared.
Like for instance Angkor Vat and Teotihuacan and other Mexican cities
(Maya - Monte Alban etc)

Excellent photos - and you looks great on the rock