This is what all the fuss was about

Remember the bus story? How could you forget? It was the one where I was heading out to the highway to escort the hay man back to the ranch, when I ran into a tour bus smack dab in the middle of nowhere. These tourists had paid a bunch of money to see my neighborhood petroglyphs. The good thing that came of this misadventure was that I was able to get precise directions to the petroglyphs, which I had failed to find on two previous attempts.

Anyway, over the weekend I went looking for them again. Since the directions included "crawl under the barbed wire fence," I went unaccompanied, except for my camera.

The petroglyphs were not as easy to find as I was led to believe, and there was more than one moment when I said to myself "why oh why did you not tell someone where you were going, you knucklehead?" but I did find them.

So this is what all the fuss was about. Those orange and red images are actually pictographs as opposed to petroglyphs (pictographs are painted onto the surface of rocks whereas petroglyphs are etched or carved). From what I've been able find on Google, I think the images are masks of some sort. These pictographs are located on a rock overhang, and the area underneath was just about big enough for one person to take shelter. As my imagination started to run off in its usual wild direction wondering about the artist, I looked at the ground beneath the overhang. (Cue ominous music.)

What's this? A sacred offering to the gods? Nobody told me I was supposed to bring a gift.

Upon closer examination, I figured out it was just some rodent who had chosen this place to die. Still, it was kind of weird that he picked this particular spot. Moving on...

To the right of the masks, the panel of pictographs continued. The images now looked like masks wearing blindfolds. And what about the smokey blue vertical lines to the right? Where's Mr. Scientist when you need him to explain these things?

Further to the right and in the very bottom right-hand corner of the picture above, I spotted some petroglyphs. I tiptoed through some tall grass, convinced that a rattlesnake or two was lying in wait, to get a better look.

Ho-hum. As far as neighborhood petroglyphs go, this set was pretty mundane compared to the ones I showed here. However, whomever carved these drawings chose this spot for a reason. The rock face is at a unique angle that catches the wind just right.

Above and to the left of the petroglyphs, you can see how the wind eroded a cave in the rock, where a very large (or strong) creature has now built a nest. And below the nest, the wind has carved out a formation worthy of those famous ones in Utah, albeit on a much smaller scale.

Here's a closer look at mini Moab.

I walked crawled beyond the petroglyph panel for a few more yards and found one last pictograph:

It is a mask-like figure with six toes and an evil eye, who appears to be guarding a passageway through the rocks. (Note to archeaology students who may have landed here: author has an active imagination and you probably shouldn't cite her in any research papers.)

When I find stuff like this so close to home, I can't help but wonder about all the people who have lived here before me...who they were, what they wore, where they shopped, why they chose to live in the middle of nowhere. Maybe the middle of nowhere used to be the middle of somewhere? Maybe I should just stop wondering and go do my chores.