peter's story pictures

Silent for Thou­sands of Years: Now Chris­tians and Ancient Aliens Speak for Its Soul –

The trail down the West rim of Horse­shoe Canyon, to the floor 750 feet below, is not dif­fi­cult in the cool of early morn­ing.
The Park Ser­vice says to allow 4 to 7 hours for the 6.5 mile round trip to the bot­tom, hike to the Great Gallery and return to the West rim trailhead.

The Great Gallery is the photographer’s reward.   And The Jour­ney — I’m not sure whose reward that is.

In October-November, 6 or 7 hours is prob­a­bly about right. In June, when we did it, the jour­ney was an entirely dif­fer­ent story.  By the time you get to the floor, you notice the air warm­ing up.  It will go over a hun­dred by lunch time.

But you’re not con­cerned about the sun and the heat because you are really deter­mined to cap­ture the Great Gallery and its Holy Ghost (above).

The blue rocks in these pic­tures – where did they come from?  In truth, they are red rocks, but the light reach­ing them is cold, blue.  The light bounc­ing from side to side of this deep, nar­row canyon, is cooled enough to change its tem­per­a­ture from hot at the top to cold at the bot­tom.  Yet in sum­mer day­time, the air down here feels like a furnace.

The main group of char­ac­ters (below) to the right of the Holy Ghost group holds an ethe­real qual­ity.   Per­haps it is the con­se­quence of dif­fer­ent sizes of fig­ures with dif­fer­ent (sur­viv­ing?) sat­u­ra­tion in the rock of the canyon wall.

As you hike from cairn to cairn (it’s a canyon — where else would you go?), you see painted fig­ures on the canyon walls watch­ing you — per­haps 30 to 50 feet above the floor, like this old elk hunter below:

And this com­pli­cated group­ing (who is doing what to whom?).

Q. How did the artists get up there to paint that?

A. The Indian artists prob­a­bly painted at shoul­der height.  Since then, ero­sion has cut the floor down, say 25 to 45 feet – so, if you can guessti­mate the rate of ero­sion at dif­fer­ent points in the canyon, you can play arche­ol­o­gist and guessti­mate the age of the paint­ings and the era when those folks lived down here.

So, how old are these pic­tures? The Park Ser­vice guessti­mates range from 1900 BC to 300 AD.  Some sources say, no, the Great Gallery is prob­a­bly more like 7,000 years ago.

Other paint­ings through­out the canyon were prob­a­bly added more recently, say as recent as 2,000 to 4,000 years ago.  Some depict hunt­ing scenes, some may be memo­ri­al­iz­ing cer­e­mo­nial events, and some may be guardians, placed on the canyon walls to pro­tect it dur­ing the absence of its peo­ple.  In the panel below, some inter­pret the fig­ures on the left as guardians, while oth­ers say, no they are hunters lying in wait for the elk on the right.
Noth­ing is safe from rein­ter­pre­ta­tion in the medium of the day.  At right is a “pho­to­shopped” ver­sion of the guardians shown just above, left.  Does Photoshop’s can­vas tex­ture and other light and color adjust­ments achieve a more “painterly” effect?  Or is it just kitsch in com­par­i­son to the con­ven­tion­ally edited pic­ture above?

Well, to get to the point of inter­pre­ta­tion ver­sus rein­ter­pre­ta­tion, how did the abo­rig­i­nal inhab­i­tants invent the Holy Ghost in his head piece, even before the Judeo-Christian era?  We don’t know whether they did or not.

The Horse­shoe Canyon’s Holy Ghost group has at least five mem­bers with oth­ers close by – hard to rec­on­cile with any trin­ity con­cept.  Yet, the name of the Holy Ghost group was affixed by 19th Cen­tury, European/American vis­i­tors on their own author­ity.  What­ever else you might have to say about the Holy Ghost group in Horse­shoe Canyon,  the name abides into the 21st Cen­tury.
And I thought that was the whole story.

But no, just last month I saw a 2-hour pre­sen­ta­tion of Ancient Aliens on Dis­cov­ery Chan­nel that changes every­thing (it was broad­cast again last night on the His­tory Chan­nel).  Near the begin­ning and near the end­ing was a pic­ture of this Holy Ghost paint­ing in the Great Gallery,  the pre­sen­ta­tion grouped it with many other phe­nom­ena around the world (Pyra­mids, Stone­henge, Easter Island mo’ai and numer­ous Maya and abo­rig­i­nal sites in the Amer­i­cas).  Indeed inter­views within the pre­sen­ta­tion asserted the total­ity of these phe­nom­ena as sci­en­tific, fac­tual evi­dence of the Ancient Aliens who vis­ited earth and then went away into space.  We are to await their return, per­haps soon.  Some UFO buffs say per­haps they are already…
Accord­ing to the Ancient Aliens pre­sen­ta­tion, the Holy Ghost cer­e­mo­nial head­piece, is not that at all.  It is a space hel­met and the squared shoul­ders are fea­tures of his space­suit.
Well, I hate to be taken for such a doo­fus — that I was there, saw the Holy Ghost at arm’s length (no, I did NOT touch it) and failed to rec­og­nize his astro­naut gear.  I went back to my photo files and I didn’t see any of the things that either the Ancient Aliens broad­cast or 19th Cen­tury explor­ers are try­ing to push on us.   What did I see there and in these pictures?

IMHO I saw a very dig­ni­fied and mys­te­ri­ous group­ing, a part of the canyon wall, look­ing down on me.

I clicked my pic­tures, and we started the return trip.  There was no more ignor­ing the heat, and the sun, mov­ing directly over­head, left almost no shade in the canyon.
About a third of the way back, we came to the Great Alcove. An enor­mous cave-like amphithe­atre, nat­u­rally hol­lowed out of the stone wall of the canyon.  In this shade we ate, napped, and looked at the walls inside the alcove: more ancient paint­ings,  but also graf­fiti.  19th cen­tury tourists  carved their names into the ancient rock paint­ings.
How­ever, since the tags are 19th cen­tury arti­facts they are also pro­tected prop­erty of the United States.  You can see one at the bot­tom left of this pho­to­graph of a pro­ces­sion on the Great Alcove wall:

You’d think that hang­ing out in a cave for three or four hours would be enough for the canyon to cool down.
Not really.
Climb­ing back up 750 feet in the heat of the late after­noon sun in June must be some­thing of an accom­plish­ment.
After I got down to the canyon floor I learned there is an eas­ier entrance from the East rim of the canyon.  You need a 4-wheel-drive vehi­cle to get there.
But get this:  I was dri­ving a 4-wheel-drive jeep, and of course it was parked atop the West rim.   Gotta climb up the West rim – sun baked and much steeper going up in the after­noon than it was com­ing down in the cool of the morning.

Only a doofus…

Next time, from the East rim, new cam­era for new pic­tures of the Great Gallery.  Who would like to carry my tripod?