Following the Riverbed

We had a lovely low-key holiday. First though, we had to celebrate baby Simon turning one.

His mom made a delicious cake for him to destroy.

Don't get any ideas...none of you!

Out of the cold and into the...

...Mars! From our campsite in the San Raphael Swell.

Taking a morning walk on the red planet.

We hiked into that canyon and out the other side.

Shingo heading in.

Me walking the watercourse.

Shingo checking out a waterfall.

Searching the ground for rock chips

Discovering an unexpected watercourse on our way to another canyon.

Shingo taking a break in between the towering walls of canyon #2

Me, totally absorbed in this stuff. I can't get enough.

A very large, very old, juniper tree in the wash.

Shingo with some things he found (yes, that's a cow skull in his right hand).

Camp...dinner and music played on top of the skull.

Next, we drove through Buckhorn Wash to see some ancient rock art I have been dying to check out. The figures are a few feet off the ground, and seem to be about 4 feet tall. Typically, we see rock carving or petrogyphs but the paintings are from prehistoric people; those who came before the Fremont and Anasazi Native Americans and before the birth of Christ.

"I look across the paintings overhead. 
Their designs tell how it was once done here, how the world was once perceived.
 If I follow the people who lived on these verges,
 if I anchor myself to to their generations of knowledge, then I have a chance. 
I can use them like a rope, a handline on a cliff, as I reach out to share the marrow of the land. 
I extend my hand toward the ceiling, tracing shapes in the air, 
pressing these images into my memory."

-Craig Childs from Soul of Nowhere

Buckhorn Wash Pictographs- these are supposed to be about 2,000 years old.

 Buckhorn Wash

Buckhorn Wash

 Here is the entire wall. It's approximately 100 feet wide and blew my mind.