Petroglyphs and pictographs are
pecked or seeped into rocks all over the West. It is the tenacity of the marks
that pulls me in. Chipped lines differentiate themselves from the surface of
rock as do lines of pigment and urine or blood that have bound themselves to
stone. The lines seem inconsequential even temporal, yet they remain. I’ve not
thought much about the meaning of the symbols, but Mary Clearman Blew describes
a broken circle surrounded by another circle with a triangular head that resembles
a uroboros - the tail eating snake, or the Eastern interlocked Yin and Yang, or
the Greek Alpha and Omega, or even the mathematical infinity symbol. I have
never related my dual life to anything so lofty as archetypal symbology, but
maybe it is the simple structures of living that inspire lofty concepts. Perhaps
there is a connection between my summer/winter life and what someone long
before me committed to stone.
