I first stopped at the park just to spend the night. I'd heard about the rock art there, and I'd made arrangements to meet up with Greg and Patrick on my way back from Big Bend and to "camp out" in a primitive cabin in the foundation's Galloway White Shaman Preserve. Now this unimaginable world was about to reveal itself.
We set out on foot down crumbling limestone cliffs until we reach a path of tailings. Tailings are pieces of limestone burned and cracked into small pieces in cooking or ritual fires and tossed out of caves and shelters. Many thousands of fires created this path, which leads to the shallow cave. We walk up stone steps, recently mortared, and are immediately in the presence of the White Shaman.
I seem unable to stand. This is a place for kneeling or lying on your belly on the rocks, or putting your face down and weeping. This is a place where a mother's grief is at home.
On the rear wall, facing out over the Pecos, figures of life and death are inseparable. A monster of fear undulates like a giant centipede across the rock, faced unflinchingly by the great shaman and his smaller dark, mortal self. Spirits dive and rise all around. An atlatl, a hunting weapon, throws a stone into the air, releases earth to sky, body into spirit.
This clearly is a place of worship; I see the pictographs as color and lines, but I also see the narrative of living souls.
The solid stone floor bears dozens of holes, created perhaps by hands twirling sticks or grinding pebbles for hundreds of centuries. My palm fits perfectly on the edge of a hole six inches deep. I feel the patina of silky-smooth stone and wonder: How many times did hands like mine touch this stone in ceremony? How many heads bowed to the powers represented on the wall?
Across the river canyon is a cliff from which you can hear everything said in this shelter. Was that where the "congregation" watched and listened?
There are many types of rock art in North America. Pecos River rock art is not only among the oldest; it is also distinctive for being primarily spiritual. It is centered on the experience of the shaman as the one who, on behalf of the people, overcomes death to communicate with the spirits of nature. The paintings, perhaps drawn by the shaman, are powerful images of what he experienced.
