With Carol’s brother as our guide we visited an ancient petroglyph site near the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming, likely made by ancestors of the Shoshone. It is one of a number of such sites in Wyoming. A petroglyph is a marking etched or pecked on stone. In the case of those we viewed they are pecked onto canyon walls which required us to do some uphill hiking to get to. We hiked to a number of sites in the same area. While the sites we visited have not been studied as far as we know, others in Wyoming go as far back as 10,000 years. It is very moving to find these ancient petroglyphs and try to reflect on what they depict and their meaning. The symbols may have told stories or may have been used as sources of spiritual power. They may have been connected to vision quests. They were produced at special places of spiritual significance to the Indians. It reinforces the reality that these people were the first Americans or residents of what is now the United States. All in all we feel the Indians’ historic and spiritual presence right here.
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Landscape south of Dubois, Wyoming, site of petroglyphs
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