river vignette 8 – the Pecos

Still immersed so here's another moment on the river.

*the sketches that accompany these vignettes do not illustrate that particular moment or even reflect that particular river.

We stop at a ravine and pull up the boats. We climb up the side canyon through this ravine filled with boulders and scrub. The white thorn acacias are sharp. Everything green seems to be prickly. We get up to the shelter known as the Ingram site. There on the canyon wall before us, are enigmatic paintings some thousands of years old. They are beautiful and mystifying. In the narrow ledges along the base of the shelter are smooth rounded depressions in the rock where the painters ground and prepared their pigments. The cactus wrens are building nests in the limestone above us. They hop around giving us the eye and sing now and then. We spend some time here, pausing in the shade and shadow of the past.