Mystic Glyph
They possessed a knowledge of the land that modern paths of inquiry still struggle to understand. A connection and understanding honed by harmony with season, with place, and other forms of life. Most physical evidence of their culture has been ground to dust by the flux and wear of time. But the mystery of Southeastern Utah’s First Nations’ lifeways still lives on in the inscrutability of their rock art. The above image was taken in Moab, a gem of the high plateau, with narrow washes and tight caves opening up to 100-mile vistas in any direction.
There is beauty in the detail and beauty in the vastness; one look up from a grape-green scorpion crawling over my boot gave way to a portal between ridges: the La Sal mountains shimmering in the distance, plump with April snowpack. A new friend and I just barely finished up a long weekend of camping and communing with others in Moab’s deep backcountry. While breaking camp and caravanning back towards home, we noticed a petroglyph high up above…
My first exposure to indigenous rock art was in 2018 while off-roading through Namibia with my father and brother. We arrived at Twyfelfontein, a UNESCO world heritage site and probably the finest collection of indigenous rock art in Southwestern Africa. Over 5000 instances of mystifying rock paintings and petroglyphs cover a site around 2/10ths of a mile in area. I found the magico-religious significance of the site to be palpable, and recall locals referring to it as a dying place. Boulders easily thousands of tons lie face flat in a field with rock faces saturated with images of local wildlife. On their downturned faces are images we will never see. Such contrasts are a striking reminder of the weight and consuming nature of time. Watching the careful craftsmanship of San people's art fade into spectacular scenery as we walked out of Twyfelfontein moved me beyond words. The sensations I felt in Africa I have carried forward to the moments that I get to dialog with rock art in America.
The silence one may encounter when interfacing with the work of an artist whose bones are ground to dust echoes in the chasm on either side of the brief spark we call conscious life. We try to apply meaning to the art, searching for a modern explanation to language and expressive modality that is older than the English language. We fail. Utterly. Yet that does not preclude us from appreciating and protecting such amazing cultural resources.
My friend and I were struck by a sharply defined petroglyph of a hand reaching skyward, out of a sun, with another alongside reaching towards the same sun. Located about 25ft up a very steep rock face, leaving such a carving would take time and great climbing or balancing skills on a ladder. Though it would be improper of me to extrapolate too deep of a meaning, I cannot help but write about the feeling of aspiration I get when viewing this unknown artist’s final mark to the world. The hand reaching out of and towards the Sun, our force of life-giving energy, is mysterious, and largely unknown to the world due to its isolated location. Who has passed through the valley before us to interface with the petroglyph? Who will speak with it in the future? Why is it so inspiring?
The above photograph pursues strong contrast between clear sky and strong rock, dynamically calling the viewers attention to the enthralling petroglyph on the right side of the frame. The intangible cultural experiences that result from seeing such indigenous art in person is a privilege all Americans get to enjoy on their public land. By making the inaccessible and sometimes invisible, visible, I am able to better appreciate the mystery behind the art within the art piece. This comes from the broader conversations that visual art can inspire when attempting to answer the defining questions of our time. Perhaps we can go forward with a desire to preserve the mystery of the art of those who walked before us, for those who may yet walk in our footprints, in that dry and craggy valley, somewhere in Moab, Utah.