Category Archives: On the Creative Life

On the Creative Life, On the Writing Life, Walking All Day On Stone

La Plus Ça Change

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Smashed PotAs we walked a low ridge we came upon a mystery: a dozen square feet of desert pavement formed by gray Archaic potshards and eleven fragments of chert knives, none from the same knife.

Patricia said: Nah, no mystery. Some Archaic woman, PMS-ing, had busted her eight pots and eleven knives, hollering, “I’ve had it! Mend your own damn loincloth!”

No trace of habitation. Had we stumbled on a sacrificial place, where pots and knives were broken to send their spirits onward with the dead? Was it the site of a solstice ritual like Zuni’s, when pots were smashed? As a theory I like Paleo PMS.

On the Creative Life, On the Writing Life, Walking All Day On Stone

Visions

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Stone Circle DB243Stone circles. Dozens, possibly more than a hundred.

Most of them consist of a single course of unworked rocks in a ring five or six feet across, usually on a high place.  Because they are clearly ancient and the stones have been scattered it’s hard to say for sure, but most seem to have a gap that faces a distant landmark: a mountain, a volcanic plug. They’re too small to be hogan or teepee rings. A visiting archaeologist friend took one look and said, “Did they do vision quests in these parts?”

Quite possibly. The circles’ size, placement and ephemeral quality—ephemeral for stone—seem right for solitude, fasting, and waiting upon silence. I am deliberately vague about their location lest there be an influx of Native-wannabe vision questers; those who have a right to know where they are no doubt already do.

One ring was more horseshoe-shaped, built higher at the curve and sloping to an opening that may have faced the winter sunrise. Another was built on top of a seven-foot-tall yellow sandstone hoodoo just the right size for it. Its rocks were bright red.

On the Creative Life, On the Writing Life, Walking All Day On Stone

¡Buen Provecho!

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Snake and Mice EnhancedEarly in the day we saw a bright, limber young bullsnake, the diameter of a thick pencil, its body many tiny wiggles instead of the sober curves of an adult. And late in the day I almost stepped on a two-foot Western diamondback.

Its coon-tail and coon-mask were a dustier color than the bright scales in the middle of its back. It didn’t buzz, and seemed quite unbothered by our admiration. No wonder—halfway down its fat, spread-flat body was a mouse-sized bulge.

Though it didn’t react much, it knew we were there: its tongue was busy, tasting our airborne molecules. In spite of this “tongue smelling,” a rattler hunts largely by heat detection. On a summer evening, how does it tell a warm rock from a warm mouse?

On the Creative Life, On the Writing Life, Walking All Day On Stone

Black Glass

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Malpais hikerOn the Malpais, the McCarty’s lava flow, only three thousand years old. The surface looks fresh as yesterday, like Kilauea’s: so crevassed and glassy that Jan said, “On the Malpais, you don’t bruise.” We kept a sharp lookout for rattlesnakes—there’s sure to be a black morph.

The perfect, trembling webs of orb spiders stretched across the black fissures as if to draw the shattered rock together.

On the Creative Life, On the Writing Life, Walking All Day On Stone

Where We Walk

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2014-06-09 02.38.21Desert pavement on Penistaja Mesa. Pebbles eroded 65 million years ago from long-lost ranges, tumbled in quick creeks and dropped at the feet of trees in green estuaries. Time and the rains wash away the clays from the polished stone. Here’s where we walk, marveling.

On the Creative Life, On the Writing Life, Walking All Day On Stone

Caught Knapping

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FlintknapperA flint knapper’s site. Flakes everywhere, all from the same crystalline quartzite core. The knapper had built himself a seat by propping a sandstone slab against two smaller rocks. Bill said he must have been an old guy with arthritis who had to get his chair just right.

To me the site seemed recent, say 300-500 years old: the slab had not toppled, the flakes had traveled only about thirty feet down the slope. But the quartzite was typically Archaic, which would put it back a thousand years at least. Possibly much more.

On the Creative Life, On the Writing Life, Walking All Day On Stone

Hidden Honey

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Wild BeehiveThe dry stream bed we followed left the sandstone and entered a twisted granite canyon, narrow and deep-shaded. A barn owl startled and flew, soft clop of wings. High on the canyonside was its nest hole, the entryway streaked with mutes. Striations on the roof of it were the weathered wattles of a wild beehive, the remaining honey cells like waxy lace.

That hive was abandoned. But when we dug at a damp place in the sand, water welled up and thirsty bees came clustering. Somewhere in that canyon there is a hidden hive.

 

On the Creative Life, On the Writing Life, Uncategorized, Walking All Day On Stone

Visions

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CabezonFrom the western ridge of the syncline a pass looks out over Cabezón, shadowy and shadow-washed. Many ancient, rudimentary stone circles scatter their boulders on high points. Each may be the site of a vision quest; we can think of no other explanation. Below lie mineral springs. One is raised on its deposits, a breast whose nipple is a pool, perfectly round, green as an old penny.

As we walked back along the ridge, some small creature far down among the split rocks screamed at us: Squee! Squee! Squee! An ear-splitting insult that never stopped until we went away.

On the Creative Life, On the Writing Life, Walking All Day On Stone

In Just Spring

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HornyToad4 DB128A tiny harlequein horned toad with reddish body, gray legs and stripy gray tail. Was it so variegated because it lived among multicolored gravels? It was barely the size of a quarter.

Later in the day we came upon truly horny horned toads, a mating pair. The female was fat and tan, the male slender and ash-colored. When we came close to look they fled, but they fled together. The male, even in fear, followed the female and would not lose her.