Here in southern New Mexico, we're never far from scenes like this one at Three Rivers. The photos can't really convey the immense stillness and silence and isolation. No one is nearby. No one.
Long ago there was a village here, inhabited by the Jornada Mogollon people between 900 and 1400 AD.
Take the trail up the hill and look at their art work, painstakingly picked onto the rocks using stone tools. More than 21,000 glyphs have been found here, showing "birds, humans, animals, fish, insects and plants, as well as numerous geometric and abstract designs are scattered over 50 acres of New Mexico's northern Chihuahuan Desert." (New Mexico True: The Three Rivers Petroglyph Site).
A petroglyph—derived from the words “petro,” or “rock,” and “glyph,” to “carve,” or “carving”—is essentially just that, a rock carving. (Whispers of the Past Engraved in New Mexico Petroglyphs).
Looking back down the hill you can see the site of the village where the ancient rock artists lived. You can almost imagine the busy sounds of their neighborhood breaking through the vast silences we experience today.
