This. This is a rock.
Here is the same rock, a little closer. Notice anything yet?
This is starting to look like something more. Like something more than just a rock. More like a newspaper, perhaps.
Thousands of these pictures communicating messages we can only guess about cover the rocks. They were made a long, long time ago by the people who lived here, in the Painted Desert in Arizona.
These pictures are called petroglyphs, and I am fascinated with them. When we were at Mesa Verde, I desperately wanted to take a 4 mile hike to go see some, but reason took over after realizing that my six year old would not be up for such a long walk in the two hours we had until sunset. She is capable of walking that far…both my kids have proved that they are awesome hikers! But that day, it was not to be.
It turned out that I would have my chance to see hundreds of petroglyphs in the Petrified Forest and Painted Desert. Ancient people scratched away the “desert varnish” from the rocks to create pictures, and amazingly they can still be seen today a thousand years or more later.
This. This is a blog.
My blog is my Newspaper Rock. My attempt at communication, with you, with others who might stumble here accidentally. With myself. So many times I haven’t even known what I was going to write until I just sat down and started typing. And there it was; another blog post. Another few hundred words, sent out into the world. Communicating messages that in a thousand years no one will understand what it was all about.
