Tribal Man

About This Experience

One of our most memorable discoveries in Buckskin Gulch was not something we had carefully planned to find at all. We were exploring the canyon, surrounded by the enormous sandstone walls and constantly changing patterns of light and shadow, when my wife wandered a little farther along the rock while looking for something else. There was no sign, no obvious trail leading to a panel and nothing from where I was standing that suggested anything unusual was hidden nearby. Then she suddenly stopped. From the angle where she was standing, she had noticed a few pale lines on the sandstone that looked too regular to be natural. She called me over, and as soon as we moved closer the marks began to resolve themselves into unmistakable petroglyphs. What she had found completely by chance was a remarkably beautiful and complex panel tucked into the canyon wall. At first our eyes were drawn to the enormous blocky anthropomorphic figure on the left. It was unlike the slender stick-like humans found at many other sites. This figure had a massive, almost architectural body, heavily pecked so that it appeared much lighter than the surrounding sandstone. Its form seemed to be built from several rectangular or stepped sections, with broad extensions projecting from the sides and lower part of the body. The upper section was especially imposing, almost like a great rectangular torso or elaborate ceremonial garment. From a distance it looked less like an ordinary person and more like some monumental being, perhaps dressed in regalia or represented in a deliberately exaggerated symbolic form. Whatever the original artist intended, the figure had an extraordinary presence. Beside it were several much smaller anthropomorphic forms. One particularly clear figure stood almost upright in the center of the composition, with a rounded or slightly rectangular head, a narrow torso, arms extending outward and long legs descending toward the lower part of the panel. It looked tiny compared with the great blocky figure beside it, which made the contrast in scale even more intriguing. Was the difference intended to communicate importance, status or simply a different artistic tradition? We could only speculate. Around these human-like forms were smaller marks and animal-like figures, some clearly recognizable while others had faded enough that their shapes were difficult to interpret. A few appeared to have four legs and elongated bodies, suggesting animals that may once have been familiar sights in this landscape. Yet the most spectacular element of the panel was the large circular motif on the lower right. It immediately commanded attention. The circle was surrounded by numerous short radiating lines, giving it the appearance of a brilliant sun, although it could just as easily have represented a shield, ceremonial emblem or something completely different. The interior was divided into several sections by strong lines. In the upper half, a vertical central element separated two dark, curved areas, while the lower half contained two large rounded forms with smaller circular or dot-like features inside them. The combination created a remarkably balanced and almost symmetrical design. The radiating strokes around the outer edge strengthened the impression of energy or importance, making the symbol appear almost luminous against the sandstone. Nearby was another smaller circular design with its own internal markings, almost as though the larger emblem belonged to a family of related symbols. Looking at the panel as a whole, it was tempting to imagine some connection between the great blocky anthropomorph, the smaller human figures and the enormous radiating circle. Perhaps the circle represented the sun. Perhaps it was a shield associated with a warrior or particular group. Perhaps it was ceremonial imagery connected to the large figure beside it. Yet we knew that these were only modern attempts to organize a visual language whose original meaning has largely disappeared. The figures may not even have been created at the same time. Different people could have returned to this wall over generations, adding their own images beside older ones until the sandstone became the complex composition we were now seeing. What made the discovery especially exciting was how easily we could have missed it. Had my wife not looked in exactly that direction while searching for something completely unrelated, we might have walked straight past without realizing what was there. From farther away the pale pecked lines blended surprisingly well with the natural textures of the rock. Once we knew where to look, however, the panel seemed impossible to miss. That is one of the strange things about searching for rock art in Utah: a wall can appear completely ordinary until one small figure catches your eye, and then suddenly the entire surface becomes populated. The longer we stood there, the more details appeared. Faint lines emerged around the large anthropomorph. Smaller animals became visible. Shapes that initially seemed like natural discolorations began to look deliberately pecked. What had begun with my wife noticing a few suspicious marks turned into one of the richest panels we encountered in the canyon. Finding it was the easy part. Photographing it properly was another matter. The best view was higher up, and the panel was positioned in such a way that standing at the bottom gave us a frustrating angle. To get closer and take a photograph that showed the carvings properly, I needed to climb two short sections of sandstone. Neither climb looked particularly serious from below. They were not high and certainly did not resemble anything that required technical climbing equipment. That probably made me a little too relaxed about the first one. I started upward, looking for footholds and trying to keep the camera safe at the same time. For a moment everything was fine. Then one foothold failed me. My foot slipped, I lost my balance and came down hard. My knee took most of the impact. The pain was immediate, and for a few seconds I genuinely thought I might have done serious damage. I had fallen only a short distance, but sandstone has very little sympathy when a knee hits it directly. The first thought that went through my mind was that I had almost broken my knee for a photograph. Considering that my wife had been the one who casually discovered the panel while simply looking around, it seemed rather unfair that I was now the one nearly injuring myself trying to document it. Fortunately, after the first shock and a careful check, I realized that the knee was still functioning. It hurt, and I had gained a new respect for what had looked like an insignificant climb, but nothing appeared broken. The sensible reaction would probably have been to remain where I was and accept the photographs from below. Naturally, after looking again at the panel and realizing how much better the perspective would be from higher up, I decided to continue—but much more carefully. The first short climb was now treated with considerably more respect, and the second one received my full attention. Every foothold was tested before I trusted it, and the camera suddenly felt like the least important object I was carrying. Eventually I reached the higher position safely. From there the panel was magnificent. The change in angle allowed the full composition to be appreciated much more clearly. The great blocky anthropomorph rose on the left like a monumental guardian, its densely pecked body contrasting with the surrounding sandstone. The smaller human figures appeared between it and the circular motif, while the huge radiating symbol dominated the lower right. From this perspective its internal divisions became even more striking. The rays seemed almost to burst outward from the circumference, and the darker areas left within the pecked design gave the circle a complexity that was difficult to appreciate from below. Around the central images, faint animals and secondary motifs filled spaces that initially had seemed empty. It was one of those panels where the camera could never completely reproduce the experience of standing in front of it. A photograph preserved the figures, but not the setting: the enormous canyon, the warm sandstone, the silence, the fact that the panel had been hidden from us only minutes earlier and the slightly throbbing knee reminding me how much effort I had just invested in getting the picture. We remained there for quite a while. The unexpected nature of the discovery made it especially satisfying. Some rock-art sites had required hours of deliberate searching, following vague clues and studying canyon walls one by one. Here we had stumbled onto something beautiful almost accidentally because my wife happened to look at the right piece of sandstone at the right moment. That did not make the panel feel less special. If anything, it made the experience more exciting. It reminded us that in places like Buckskin Gulch there may still be imagery hidden in plain sight, waiting behind a change of angle or a patch of shadow for someone to notice it. Before leaving, I carefully climbed back down, giving the place where I had fallen a very wide margin. The descent was slow and deliberate, and reaching the bottom without a second accident felt almost as satisfying as getting the photographs. My knee complained, but it held together. We stood once more at the base of the wall and looked upward at the figures. From there the great circular motif again seemed almost solar, its rays spreading outward across the sandstone, while the blocky anthropomorph beside it appeared strangely solemn and imposing. Perhaps the circle was a sun. Perhaps it was a shield. Perhaps the huge figure represented a person wearing ceremonial clothing, an ancestor, a supernatural being or something for which we have no modern equivalent. Whatever the meanings, the images had clearly mattered enough for their makers to invest considerable time and effort in carving them into this wall. Hundreds or perhaps thousands of individual blows had once sounded against this sandstone, gradually creating the figures we were now admiring. Eventually we continued through Buckskin Gulch, leaving the panel behind almost as unexpectedly as we had found it. Within a short distance the carvings disappeared from view and the sandstone again looked completely ordinary. The whole experience had been a perfect little Utah adventure: an accidental discovery by my wife, a beautiful hidden panel, a huge mysterious anthropomorph, animals and smaller human figures surrounding an extraordinary radiating symbol, and one badly judged climb that nearly cost me a knee. Of all the details, perhaps the most memorable was the simple fact that we had not actually been searching for this panel when we found it. My wife had merely looked toward a wall, noticed something unusual and revealed a place that had been hiding beside us all along. Sometimes in Utah you search for hours and find nothing. Sometimes the canyon simply decides to show you something.