Moving away from the static of the rushing water in Sutherland Wash we can hear the slow, constant, distant, repeating gunshots – not close by, not a concern… not even inappropriate – but certainly an unwelcome intrusion as we try to carefully and respectfully contemplate the petroglyphs in the Sutherland Wash Rock Art District.
After visiting this area last year I spent some time reading about and looking for information – some of which is included in the post – this year my mind wanders to two books – John P. Wilson’s Islands in the Desert (an amazing history of the mountains of Southern Arizona) and Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian (a fictional journey thru the borderlands of the mid 1800s based on the Glanton Gang). In both books the landscape is a stunningly beautiful – maybe even magical in Blood Meridian, but in both books there is also terrible and stunning violence – sacred and the profane, petroglyphs and gunfire…
