[Estimated reading time: <1 minute] Today I think that I love rock art because it challenges me to reckon with time, with the modern, Western clock-world I was born into, and its the linear passage of calendar days, months, years marching ever forward. Tick tock. So hard to believe it is just a concept. Face-to-face with a rock art panel, even just a photo, it is as if my references drop away, our whole culture, history itself, then millenia. There is only here and now. That etched bear paw is here in front of my eyes “now” — and was in front of someone else’s in their “now.” Without the confines of time, I actually feel more human than ever. I recognize the act of creating that paw. This human from some other experience of existence, across a span of solar and lunar cycles beyond anything I can actually understand, did the same thing I do: used a tool to make a mark on a surface in order to depict something, capture some truth, share a story or perspective. It would seem to be an important part of our way, we humans.
