« Posts by Randy Langstraat

Placing the Stars

Placing the Stars

It took me a little while to finally find these petroglyphs after two different trips searching for them. I was just about to give up again this time when they caught my eye. I wasn’t looking quite high enough to find them originally.

Some believe that this scene depicts Coyote in the act of placing the stars. According to one Hopi creation myth, Old Spider Woman provides Coyote with with a sack filled with stars. After climbing to the top of a mountain he begins to distribute them neatly in the heavens, including creating the well-known constellations. Soon, he grows tired of this work and picks up the bag to throw its contents into the sky. This is the reason why many of the stars are not arranged in an orderly fashion.

Looking at this petroglyph site you can see many dots surrounding the coyote-like figure that could represent the stars and the bag-like object that is held in one of its hands.

>> Black Friday in Nine Mile Canyon

Slot Panel

Slot Panel

Here’s a large and very interesting petroglyph panel found in a narrow slot between two big boulders. The well-defined anthropomorph and bighorn sheep are pretty cool in their own right, but the very unusual bird figure at the lower left is really interesting. Because of the narrowness of the slot, it was tough to get a photo of this site without a very wide angle lens. To give you an overview of the location of this panel, here’s a photo my friend Marty took of me as I took some photos from above.

Photographing Boulders

>> Exploring the Book Cliffs near Green River

Spiral Tail Panel

Spiral Tail Panel

While hiking near Moab in search of new rock art a few weeks ago, we came across this large and impressive panel just as we were running out of light and needed to head back to the Jeep. This is a very cool panel containing a few interesting figures including the bighorn sheep with the large spiral tail. However, I have no clue what the largest and most prominent figure in this panel is? My first guess was a large bear because there are a few others around Moab, but after examining the figure closely, I really have no idea what it is. Feel free to comment with any guesses as to what it might be.

>> Exploring Mill Creek Canyon

Newspaper Anthropomorph

Newspaper Anthropomorph

Here’s a very close look at one of the anthropomorphic figures found at the massive Newspaper Rock on the way to Canyonlands National Park Needles District.

>> Newspaper Rock Petroglyphs

Handprints & Torsos

Handprints & Torsos

The Green Mask Alcove in Sheiks Canyon contains many fine basketmaker pictographs including the well-known Green Mask. It also contains a large panel known as the Breech Birth Panel. This is a section of that panel containing many handprints and a few large-sized anthropomorphs.

>> Sheiks Canyon & The Green Mask