August 5: The Rochester Art Panel: Believing is Seeing

One of our goals was finding out how local residents of Utah regarded the rock art sites in their state, or if they were even aware of them.

We have been learning that there is a lot of local knowledge and pride.  Wherever we go, people want to engage us in conversation once we reveal our meanderings. At some of the more accessible sites, we have encountered grandparents showing their grandchildren the panels.  One woman from Salt Lake City was going out of her way to see the Buckhorn Wash Pictographs as she drove down to Moab.

A couple of tattooed country guys, wearing Harley Davidson T-shirts, engaged me in conversation about who these people were and what the images meant.  A guy stopped us in the supermarket and told us about additional sites in Nevada.  In the Price library, an elderly woman remarked that we looked like we were on safari.  (This was ironic since just that morning I had made a lame pun about safari so goody to Janet.  There have been a number of weird coincidences like that.)  When this women saw our blogs, she started recounting her own childhood experiences visiting rock art sites and went down a list of places we should not miss.

I heard a lot of interesting stories about what it all meant.  Grandpa noted that it all made him realize how small our own history is.  Some thought extra-terrestrials were responsible for the panels.  Others suggested peyote.  (Peyote is grown in a restricted area in northern Mexico and is an unlikely source of shamanic visions for pre-historic Plateau shamans.  Datura—called Moonflower in the Moab area—is a more likely visionary resource, though I am not persuaded that is the best explanation.)

The Harley Davidson guys asked the right question.  They came right out and asked us what we thought regarding the perceptions of the ancient people who pecked and painted on rocks.  What were they “seeing”?  “Art depicts what you see, doesn’t it?,” they queried me provocatively.  They got it right.  That’s the issue in a nutshell.  What were the ancient “artists” seeing that we cannot see with our literal, utilitarian way of perceiving the landscape? We use only our eyes to see.

OK, so today threat of thunderstorms deterred us from venturing into Nine Mile Canyon as we had planned.  Instead, we drove 30 miles south from Huntingdon to another site well publicized in magazines (like National Geographic) and coffee table picture books—the Rochester Rock Art Panel in Rochester Creek Canyon.

As I will say over and over, landscape and physical setting is crucial to almost every significant site.  In this case, the canyons opened up after driving miles on flat open and dusty prairie.  To reach the famous rock art panel, one has to cross a narrow “isthmus” above the canyon floor that actually separates the mouths of two different canyon systems.

The far end of the isthmus terminates in a high rock formation that is the perfect defensive location for noting any human intruders or for noting the movement of game.

 (Or was it also a place of encampment or possibly sacred rituals, like a fire ritual?)

There, next to a narrow passageway between two boulder leading out to the terminus of the overlook, was the Rochester Rock Art Panel.

Right now I will not attempt to explain the panel.  That will be an academic discussion.  The confusing assortment of figures and geometric shapes, including the “multi-lined rainbow” that draws everyone’s first attention,

 shows the work of various styles and cultures and is too complex for short shrift.

I will draw your attention to a few puzzling images.  Is this a woman giving birth (as one lady suggested to me)?  But figure of a prone human under “her” is usually an image of death.  Does this side panel show a bent-over woman with large breasts?

  Why are so many of the anthropomorphic images so weird, when very realistic human figures are also shown?

  (Is this last image a teacher, a band leader, a disciplinarian, a magician?)

If the panel were etched by Fremont visionaries, why does there seem to be so much influence from the Barrier Canyon culture, perhaps 2,000 years before them?  Does this show cross-cultural artistic and visionary influence?  Note the strange, supernatural figures with sprouting appendages.

  Note the goggle-eyes.

 Note the fringes that suggest spiritual flight.

  Is this an owl?

What does the human near it signify and what do the hands and the posture mean?

Once again, we encounter “horned” serpents, as we will in Nine Mile Canyon (Fremont) and Buckhorn Wash (Barrier Canyon).

There are few Mountain Sheep on the Rochester Panel, but a lot of strange, exotic, threatening animal images.

But the most provocative image of all was one that Janet pointed out.  There is a line that runs about 25 feet from the base of the panel to the top of the rock.  What does this line show?  More tellingly, why is there a small, supernatural image on the line itself?

Is the line part of the spirits “body”?  What are we seeing?  Shamanic flight?  A journey of the dead to the spirit world?  The rising of prayers or offerings to the powers that create and govern the landscape?

In a somber mood, as we returned from the panel, we decided to make one last stop.  Several miles away, east of the town of Moore, along the Old Spanish Trail (see earlier blog), we looked for a boulder that many people drive right by.  There it was, the six-foot long serpent.

 Or is it more like a ten-foot long serpent?  I did not measure.  There was no mistaking the importance of serpents from looking at these boulders.

 
We were reminded that this was once rattlesnake country.  Still is, but not so much after the ranchers and settlers unloaded their rifles.  Even so, while we hike, seeing may be just as important as believing.