Today we wandered out in the desert for awhile, frolicking as it were with cacti older than our country. We were in search of the picture rocks. It felt a bit fey (giving the impression of vague unworldliness) to slosh along a rock strewn sandy wash following a mishmash of foot prints. I can only imagine what this part of the world looked like when the inhabitants spent many of their days chiseling figures into the face of the rocks. The best petroglyphs we've come across were outside of White Sands near Las Cruces, New Mexico. There, literally hundreds of images are etched on stone. In my mind's eye I can see those men scratching their visions into the stone. I'm sure it was the men because likely the women were back home doing most of the work. I wonder if the artists who carved the petroglyphs knew they were leaving a mysterious legacy. Maybe it was just a way to communicate, sort of like a newspaper (if you're old enough), or a tik-tok story (if you're hip enough). I wonder if anything was off limits. Maybe cancel culture existed fifteen hundred years ago. Or maybe they had comedians like Stephen Colbert who said, "This would be really damaging if anything mattered anymore." And I wonder what mattered back then, especially in light of how long it takes to scratch a figure into stone. I mean wasn't survival paramount? I can't imagine a Kroeger's, a Piggily Wiggily, or a Walmart popping up among the Chollas. I do know this. As an artist, if I got to make art without constraint, life was certainly good, especially that day.
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