Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Seminole Canyon State Park - Feb 16-20
We have reached Hondo, TX, (about 30 miles west of San Antonio on US90) after a WONDERFUL stay (of four nights) at Seminole Canyon State Park (about 45 miles west of Del Rio, also on US90).Seminole Canyon State Park is home to some of oldest (and most numerous) pictographs (cave paintings) in North America. We went on a guided tour Thursday; it was pretty amazing to be within a couple of feet of paintings that were made as far back as 2100 BC (and possibly older). Most show shamen, although animals are also represented. The shamen are depicted in a hallucinogenic trance brought on by a local plant (that I did not get the name of) -- surrounded by dots and lines, which evidently are characteristic of the visions the shaman experiences.
An exhibit at the Visitors' Center explained that the style of painting changed over the centuries, from a fairly accurate depiction of a human (given the medium -- plant-based paints brushed on rock with cactus fibers), slowly evolving to a point where only the "essence" of the shaman remains, much like Western Art's movement to post-Impressionism. Unfortunately, an estimated 1/3 of the pictographs were submerged when the Amistad Nat'l Rec Area was created by damming the Rio Grande; after the water receded when they lowered the level of the reservoir (parts had silted over), no evidence of the paintings remained.
We visited a boat dock that was no longer anywhere near the reservoir. The engineers evidently under-estimated the evaporation rate -- now the area is fairly constantly humid (it's was around 75% when we got there, with temps in the 80s). The vegetation is still desert -- it's so strange to see cactus growing in such a humid environment.
Friday we took a 7-mile hike and viewed more pictographs from across an arm of the reservoir -- Panther Cave Overlook. The most obvious painting is an animal that has been "officially" termed a panther. Also depicted is a row of shamen, probably painted at different times. The combination of the (very easy) hike and the beauty of the pictographs gave me goosebumps. It was very special. On the walk out we met a couple from Vermont, full-timers since Nov, whose license plate read NOCLOX. They were quite nice and we visited them again in the evening. They were full-timing in a 20-foot Chinook, so you can see that it's whatever you want it to be.
On Saturday we went on the White Shaman Tour, led by the Rock Art Foundation, a local amateur archeology group. They first showed us a mock wikiup (sp?) which is where the tribe would live, and the guide, who had carved a large rock sculpture nearby for the RAF, explained fairly graphically what a hand-to-mouth existence these people led. The really amazing fact is that they lived in this area for 10,000 years in this fashion. Modern white Europeans will be lucky to repeat that feat! He then led us down a fairly tricky path to what had been a ceremonial cave, similar to Panther Cave. Only rather than viewing these across water through binocs, we were able to stand a couple of feet from awesome pictographs. The guide offered his interpretation, which he admitted was only one interpretation, and also changed occasionally, he also admitted. Some of these interpretations are based upon trance psychology work (done by Jungian psychologists -- in a Texas accent, we at first thought there were "union" psychologists here!) done by people in the Rock Art Foundation.
# posted by Doug and Willie @ 9:55 PM 
