Walking over the top I was surprised to look down on the Gila River and fertile fields. Even more surprising were the petroglyphs, some quite good. Here a man walks toward the man on the moon, who is smoking a cigarette.
The place abounded with classic symbols like the spiral sun, scorpions, and big horn sheep. Under different circumstances I would have just yawned. Anyone who moves to the Southwest goes through a romance with rock art their freshman year. They clutter the house with kokopelli-endorsed welcome mats, lamp shades, clocks, etc. By their sophomore year they decide that the world just doesn't need one more kokopelli.
But just a few days earlier my dog, Coffee Girl, had had her great adventure shepherding five bighorn sheep, so seeing this petroglyph was delightful.
Some of the symbols weren't drawn just by clicking on a standard folder of clip art. Consider this one. Clearly the rock-stylist had anticipated Nietzsche's "UberMensch."
I kept walking and snapping photos, quite amazed by it all. At one point I pulled out a note pad and pen and looked for a smooth rock to write on. My gosh, so had they, so long ago! And finally the wall melted between this observer and the observed.
How much history there was to writing that I had never given a scratch for: a sharp stick etching cuneiform letters in clay tablets in Sargon's Sumeria, the invention of paper and papyrus, quill pens, movable type. If you were stranded on a desert island, how would you go about making a ball point pen?
