Tag Archives: Piedra Lumbre

On Creativity, On Illustration, On the Creative Life, Walking All Day On Stone

Time and Fire

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In the trackless mudstone of Piedra Lumbre, five or six hogan rings: stone foundations with east-facing doors, still holding what was left of the cribbed juniper rafters of traditional Navajo houses. Judging by the decay of the juniper, well over a hundred years old.  Beyond them, two circles of ash filled with fragments of trash, probably fires that burned the deceased’s possessions. The squashed casing of a cheap nickel pocket watch.

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On the Creative Life, Walking All Day On Stone

Wood and Stone

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Hiking the Piedra Lumbre area of La Leña. A cold, dry day with a storm moving in.

Lots of petrified wood. Not the brilliant agates we see so often but a frail, glittering mudstone that preserves knotholes and wormholes, almost the worm itself.

Fossil tree trunks dissolve into perfect wood chips: the desert floor is littered as though a stone woodcutter had passed, chopping stone trees for a stone fire.

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