The road not taken

 

The road not taken on October 12th was Interstate 25 north from Las Cruces the 225 or so miles to Albuquerque, our next three-day base of operations. Instead we headed for Albuquerque by a more circuitous route, initially toward the northeast, that let us stop at the Three Rivers Petroglyph Site near Tularosa, which I’d never heard of till I did research for our New Mexico trip. And a good stop it was. The website says the property is home to more than 21,000 petroglyphs! Within the limits of our hiking I’d say we might have seen a couple of hundred, depending on how you count them. Apparently the best known petroglyph is the one above, which shows a longhorn sheep that has been shot with several arrows.

  

 

⇡ It’s sometimes hard to tell where the representational ends and the non-representational begins.

 

   

⇡ Look at the checkerboard pattern on this animal.

 

 

⇡ Some designs seem purely geometric.

 

  

⇡ Concentric circles with dots were a common motif.
There’s one toward the right in the previous photograph as well.

 

© 2022 Steven Schwartzman