Ehrenberg Revisited, White Tanks Petroglyphs
In the previous post, I showed a pic of a cemetary monument in Ehrenberg that had a boulder with glyphs on it. I was pretty content with myself for having noticed, and was ready to play the advocate and scold the guilty parties for their criminal act.
Well, I made some phone calls and talked to one of the locals. That monument is decades old, and if I want to talk to anyone who was involved in the construction, I was going to need a shovel because I'd have to dig them up first. The local I spoke to said that he'd be surprised to see glyphs on the monument because at the time of construction, Indian/Settler relations weren't so hot, so it would be unlikely that the deceased would be honored with decorations made by local Indians.
That being said, I think I'll let this one slide. I'm sure I'll find some other windmill to charge later on.
So I signed up for a class with the AAS. It's called Rock Art Recording. It involves actual classroom instruction on Monday nights, and a week camping out in the field recording glyphs in the Tonto National Forest. A week camping, wow. And that's not even a vacation. My kids are gonna be pissed when they hear I spent a week in the woods and didn't bring them along.
It seems to me that the folks that are taking this class must have a lot of time on their hands. One night a week for 3 and a half hours? No problem. A week out in the woods? Uhhh...that's gonna sting just a little bit. But these little side trips? That's too much. It seems that in addition to class, we're supposed to have these little field trips. Last Sunday we met at White Tanks Park. We were supposed to be there at 8am. I get off work at 7:30am if I'm lucky, then had to haul my butt from work to White Tanks to get there just in time for the petroglyph hike. Of course I had just worked 3 nights in a row, so I was tired and still wearing scrubs.
Showing up in scrubs presented another problem. When asked earlier what I did for a living, I was vague in my response. I'm proud of my job, my title, and the work I do, but sometimes I don't want to walk into a group of people I just met and announce that I'm a RN. I'm sure anyone in my profession understands my point. It's almost inevetable that once people find out what you do, someone drops their pants, shows you a part of their body that rarely sees the light of day, points to something, then ask "Is that a pimple or a boil?" If something goes wrong, I'll jump in and do what I can to help, but I kinda wanted to put this off for a bit.
Well, it wasn't but a few minutes before everyone knew what I did for a living. At the next meeting (which I was late to), the instructor informed the group that I would be their "Red Cross person" in the event of some kind of emergency during the camping trip. Yes, I was asked first, and yes, I agreed. But what was I going to do, refuse?
On to the White Tank glyphs. My daughter and I went on that exact same hike and saw the same glyphs back in March. I should've just went home and got some sleep. There were a couple of ladies who were very knowledgeable about the site and had devoted years to recording glyphs in the area. Some of my fellow students asked a lot of questions. Questions are good, but I find sometimes that if you let a person finish what they're saying, they end up answering your question for you.
One man insisted that this is a glyph of a palm tree. Never mind that palm trees aren't native to Arizona, never mind that it looks more like a corn stalk, and never mind that it's well established that the tribes in this area grew squash, beans, oh and CORN!
Here, check this out. Water and corn. I shouldn't act like I'm so sure about this, because I feel most of this stuff defies interpretation. But one thing that I'm pretty sure of is that these aren't palm trees!
Well, I made some phone calls and talked to one of the locals. That monument is decades old, and if I want to talk to anyone who was involved in the construction, I was going to need a shovel because I'd have to dig them up first. The local I spoke to said that he'd be surprised to see glyphs on the monument because at the time of construction, Indian/Settler relations weren't so hot, so it would be unlikely that the deceased would be honored with decorations made by local Indians.
That being said, I think I'll let this one slide. I'm sure I'll find some other windmill to charge later on.
So I signed up for a class with the AAS. It's called Rock Art Recording. It involves actual classroom instruction on Monday nights, and a week camping out in the field recording glyphs in the Tonto National Forest. A week camping, wow. And that's not even a vacation. My kids are gonna be pissed when they hear I spent a week in the woods and didn't bring them along.
It seems to me that the folks that are taking this class must have a lot of time on their hands. One night a week for 3 and a half hours? No problem. A week out in the woods? Uhhh...that's gonna sting just a little bit. But these little side trips? That's too much. It seems that in addition to class, we're supposed to have these little field trips. Last Sunday we met at White Tanks Park. We were supposed to be there at 8am. I get off work at 7:30am if I'm lucky, then had to haul my butt from work to White Tanks to get there just in time for the petroglyph hike. Of course I had just worked 3 nights in a row, so I was tired and still wearing scrubs.
Showing up in scrubs presented another problem. When asked earlier what I did for a living, I was vague in my response. I'm proud of my job, my title, and the work I do, but sometimes I don't want to walk into a group of people I just met and announce that I'm a RN. I'm sure anyone in my profession understands my point. It's almost inevetable that once people find out what you do, someone drops their pants, shows you a part of their body that rarely sees the light of day, points to something, then ask "Is that a pimple or a boil?" If something goes wrong, I'll jump in and do what I can to help, but I kinda wanted to put this off for a bit.
Well, it wasn't but a few minutes before everyone knew what I did for a living. At the next meeting (which I was late to), the instructor informed the group that I would be their "Red Cross person" in the event of some kind of emergency during the camping trip. Yes, I was asked first, and yes, I agreed. But what was I going to do, refuse?
On to the White Tank glyphs. My daughter and I went on that exact same hike and saw the same glyphs back in March. I should've just went home and got some sleep. There were a couple of ladies who were very knowledgeable about the site and had devoted years to recording glyphs in the area. Some of my fellow students asked a lot of questions. Questions are good, but I find sometimes that if you let a person finish what they're saying, they end up answering your question for you.
One man insisted that this is a glyph of a palm tree. Never mind that palm trees aren't native to Arizona, never mind that it looks more like a corn stalk, and never mind that it's well established that the tribes in this area grew squash, beans, oh and CORN!
Here, check this out. Water and corn. I shouldn't act like I'm so sure about this, because I feel most of this stuff defies interpretation. But one thing that I'm pretty sure of is that these aren't palm trees!
posted by Glyph Hunter at 9:14 AM
1 Comments:
There *are* palm trees native to Arizona -- a back issue of AZ Highways confirmed it -- and there are a couple of pockets of them left in the wilderness, in clefts along sheer hillsides, watered by springs. Perhaps 1,000+ years ago they weren't so rare...
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