Canyon country brings a sense of timelessness and stability to a society fixated on its own frenetic self-importance.

Spending time in the canyon country of southern Utah, one begins to perceive that the rock itself is alive and communicative, bringing a sense of timelessness and stability to a society fixated on its own frenetic self-importance.

At the Great Gallery in the Horseshoe Canyon section of Canyonlands National Park, a rock wall containing pictographs - the largest of which is seven feet tall - add to the sense that these canyons are alive and enspirited.  The panel is 200 feet long and 15 feet tall, and contains a multitude of anthropomorph figures radiating a shamanic sort of aura.  Anthropologists tell us that these figures were painted as early as 5000 B.C.E. by the Archaic Barrier Canyon people.  However, some Native Americans say that human beings are not the source of these pictographs.

I reached these paintings by descending 800 feet into the canyon and hiking 3.5 miles. This particular group of figures is nicknamed "The Holy Ghost Panel." On the ascent back up to our campsite on the rim, I was greeting by a full moon rising.

May 24, 2013