Ancient Ancestors

The painting ‘Ancient Ancestors’ is from the discovery of some petroglyphs that Dino, one of the ranch hands knew about.  I had come back from above tree line that day and on the drive back casually asked Dino if he knew of any places that had wall script or images on them.  He said "Sure, I think there are some paw pictures on some rocks where all the kids hang out at night.  I used to go there in high school".  I asked around to see if any one was interested in going, it was the middle of the day and everyone was committed to there project or taking a break.  So, I grabbed my camera, and Dino and I jumped into a green truck.  We drove around for quite a while before we found the right area.  The rocks were located at the bottom of a huge 200’ cliff.  It was blazing hot and so bright it was difficult to see anything in such bright light.  There were pieces of twisted metal, bottles etc.  The area was on the edge of the ranch were the hills end and the land gets very flat for miles.  As we climbed around on looking we thought maybe it was not as he remembered, then suddenly he hollered "I found one".  I raced over tripping over broken rock and imbedding cactus spines in my shoes, and sure enough there was a 20 foot high blue black volcanic rock, covered with lines and circles.  The intense sun made this rock glisten and set off the white etching of the petroglyphs.  As we turned to look for other images, we discovered they were everywhere on the faces of the rocks we had been walking by!