Long Valley lay outside my bedroom window
high desert Northern Nevada,
each sunrise
rose
brilliant red
spirals
spires
exploding
in the passing dawn,
to
the petroglyphs
we were drawn.
The asphalt became a dirt road
then the dirt road ended.
Along Long Valley
like some drive through zoo,
herds of wild burros
cattle
sheep
grazing
separated by Pinion pines
the white sage
the dust devils
and the tumble weeds
and a 52 Studebaker body
perfectly preserved
in the high desert dry air
one could only wonder how it got there.
Long Valley had its own expanse
its own vibration to the air
distinct and unique
filled with wonder
way out there.
The petroglyphs
10,000 year old drawings
at once was
the shores of ancient
Lake Lahontan
you could feel it there.
Trying to decipher
the lines and curly cues
circles and swirls
stars and shapes
of
an alien consciousness
from another land
another time.
This was no one rock
but
acres and acres
of generations
communicating with one another
the rocks worn away
from thousands of years of sitting
forming perfect lounge chairs,
perhaps sitting alongside
some receding shore line.
There were stone rock walls carefully stacked
mysteriously standing scattered
in the desert
no one knows what it really means.
While lost in the tones
the scents and vision
of the millennium,
on the hillside
through the Tamarack
and Pinion
there emerged
four wild mustangs
at a distance
on the top of the ridge
not those that wandered
into our Virgina City yards
But wild animals
tied to the horses of the millennium.
Power and Strength
spirit gods
reminding us of where we were.
The winds blew
the black mane
of the male in front
wet from sweat
chest heaving in breath
and then they were gone
over the hill
from where they had come.
The petroglyphs were silent.
The sounds of the winds
the sounds of the small stream
less than a drop
in the once Great Lahontan Sea.
Before the sun went down
we needed to leave
driving along the sides
of dry river beds
up rocky hillsides
along the electrical lines
to the dirt road
to the asphalt
as the Long Valley
sunset shot
spires of red.
When the cowboys and silver miners left the Comstock, they abandoned their horses which became free and became the wild Mustangs often now considered a nuisance and often starving. It's become another tragedy when civilization and nature meet.
The journey to the petroglyphs is a true story, my son James was there, father and son there's a whole other poem for another day.
The mustangs we encountered were healthy, free and truly wild animals, and the spirits of all animals that had once ran free.