Puako Petroglyph Park

We walked around 1.5 miles today through a tulgey wood to a petroglyph field. (Len thinks the wood wasn't quite damp enough to be really tulgey, but I found it tulgey.)

The petroglyphs were carved by Hawaiians in the early days, around 300 years ago. They walked a long trail parallel to the beach, sleeping in small natural shelters in the rock. Little is known about why they walked and why they carved many images in certain fields of lava rock. Here are a few examples.

Me taking photos of the petroglyph field

The beach nearby has particularly deep blue water, and across the straight you can see Haleakala, which seemed to be producing occasional puffs of steam or sulphur gas. What a magnificent setting!

Plants and Stones: The Petrified Forest

A plant can grow to look like a stone. The desert is slightly spring green today with tiny somewhat camouflaged plants as well as the showier flowering ones among the rocks:





Trees can turn to stone, or once they did so. The back story: once there was a tropical forest full of huge trees and dinosaurs. The trees fell, and were covered by silt, or maybe a volcano or two erupted and covered the broken forest. Eventually, the trees all turned to stone and sparkling, colorful minerals replaced their organic elements.



Around 250,000,000 years later, humans have evolved. Early Indian tribes found the petrified trees, which had by then been delivered to North America by continental drift. At least two groups built pueblos in the area, and left petroglyphs on the rocks that as yet have no translation.







A few centuries later, humans discovered what they could do with mineral resources, invented the steam engine, and began looking for places to put railroads. The explorers and rail planners found the stone trees. Once the railroads were built, a whole industry grew up near the forest, ready to grind up the petrified wood and process it into many things. The railroad shipped tons of petrified rock out of the West, and brought tourists to see the natural wonders that seemed inexhaustible. Also, the beautiful agates, geodes, and other sparkling crystals that sparkle mysteriously in the ancient tree trunks were in time all pried out of the petrified wood and taken away.

By the time the Petrified Forest National Park was founded a century ago, it was almost too late, and the looting didn't stop. What's left of the petrified wood is beautiful and fascinating, but a little sad, especially the area called the Crystal Forest where all the sparkle is gone.



The landscape itself is still utterly beautiful.



And the older park buildings have a lot of their early-20th-century charm.



We had a lovely day in the park, while driving from Albuquerque to Flagstaff.

Saguaro National Park, Tucson

UPDATE: two more photos from Len's camera:

These are petroglyphs from the Hohokum Indians who long ago inhabited the area.

Petroglyphs

Ancient Hawaiians walked long distances between important ceremonial and population centers. They slept in half-open caves in the lava rock, especially at one particular location that was a natural stopping place north of Kona, where the last king had a palace. In the flat lava rock, these travelers carved dots, circles, human stick-figures, animals, and other geometric and naturalistic images. No knowledge about how to interpret the images has been preserved.

Alas, respect for this important cultural emplacement has been lacking. On each visit over the last 15 years or so, we have seen increasing numbers of modern additions: people's initials and other unfortunate defacements to the original. Worse yet, the golf course that surrounds the petroglphs and the various rental apartments all around are increasing in size and more and more seem to dwarf the ancient monument -- in the last photo, you can see both golf course and the rocky petroglyph field.

I can only imagine the despair of a people who see their heritage treated this way.

Incidentally, the site of the royal palace in Kona is now a hotel, named for the king -- admittedly, he made the decision to disestablish the native religion and order his subjects to convert to Christianity. The foundation of his royal temple on the hotel grounds now hosts the nightly luau put on for the tourists.

In the National Historical Monuments, one to the south and one to the north of Kona, one finds better treatment of native traces. And we learned today that in building the new condominium complex where we are staying, measures seem to have been taken to respect and preserve the traces of ancient houses and shelters that were mainly on an adjacent preserve, which we see from our windows.

Utah, 2003

One of our most enjoyable days on our trip through Utah in 2003 was a river trip through a small part of the enormous Canyonlands National Park. The start of the trip was quite close to our motel in Moab, Utah, the logical place to stay while visiting Canyonlands and Arches National Parks. First we drove on rough, off-pavement trails barely wide enough for the SUV provided by a local tour company: Tag A Long Expeditions.

The driver/guide during the first half day was remarkably skilled at navigating, as well as highly informed about the geology, history, and terrain of the park. At many points we looked directly from the car window down into an abyss with the river far below.



We also looked up or down at birds and animals, the only residents of this incredible, desolate space. Note the mountain goat, protectively colored:



We stopped often, once at the top of a flat-topped arch, the same type of formation that gives its name to Arches N.P. The narrow stretch of rock that I'm walking on -- gingerly -- was above this arch:


During both the morning drive and the aftenoon boat trip, we also stopped at several Indian locations, where we saw grain storehouses, cave dwellings, and petroglyphs from the early Indian nomads and village dwellers.


Above: an ancient grainery.


Above: petroglyphs on the rock face.

In the course of the conversation, the guide (whose main job is as a high school teacher) told us many things about the town of Moab, the history of the area, and the students and families he has met, particularly the back-country Mormons, who often have large and only somewhat acknowledged polygamous families. As a result of their customs, many Mormons in Utah are quite poor, and the children suffer for the decisions of their parents and the pressure on them to marry young.

At the bottom of the trail, the road seemed to dive straight down into the river canyon. At this point we met the boat and new driver. The two guides prepared our picnic lunch, and we boarded the riverboat while the driver returned overland with the SUV. The bottom of the canyon was as dramtic as the roads above it. For a while, we stripped to our bathing suits and jumped into the cool, swift river. A thunder storm boiling on the cliff tops provided some excitement while we were tubing downstream.




Above: at the end of the trip, we and the others on tour (shown here) disembarked and took a shuttle bus back to the outfitters' office in Moab.

At my request, the first guide recommended a few books about the terrain, its people, and its history. I have read these books since we returned from Utah, and found all of them as fascinating as the guide himself:

Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire
Wallace Stegner's Mormon Country
John Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven : A Story of Violent Faith