Images of Petroglyph National Monument – New Mexico, taken in March 2016.

Just to the west of Albuquerque New Mexico lies Petroglyph National Monument. In fact the city has grown up around the monument since it was set aside as a park in 1990. Today it is the protected site of over 24,000 images carved in stone by native cultures and Spanish settlers. Most of the carvings here are between 400 and 700 years old with some being between 2000 and 3000 years old. Some of these images are easily recognizable; human figures, birds, reptiles, plants, sheep and crosses, whereas others are known only to the individual that carved them. In most cases we can only speculate about their meaning or why they were put there. American Indians still consider this area of the Rio Grande Valley sacred today.

Hiking through the various canyons was like being on a scavenger hunt; you have to carefully scan the surfaces of the boulders which lie along the escarpment to make sure you didn’t miss anything, all the while knowing that you probably did. I spent quite a bit of time turning back to look at the scene behind me and more times than not saw something that I would have missed if I had not turned around.

What you have before you is only a fraction of the over 500 petroglyph images I took during my hikes. All were interesting in their own way and some were more elaborate than others. I was fascinated by the faces carved into the corners of a boulder so that they took on a three dimensional form which looked out in two directions (see images 9 and 26 below).

Animal images were also interesting. At one point I took a photo of a lizard carving and then ran across a Horned Toad on the trail at which time I photographed it thus creating a modern day petroglyph that I put on this photo site; “carving it” onto my high tech “boulder” for others to view. Someday this form of communication will be seen as primitive as the carvings in this park…interesting parallel and all the more reason to protect it all.