Wonders

I've always known that this corner of the state was interesting from a historical perspective. Most places you don't pick up arrowheads willy nilly, nor do you turn over every rock and find a fossil.

What is here though, in places, is wondrous.

From a complete Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton found near our distinctive, and dormant, volcano (now displayed in the Denver Museum of Nature and Science) to the well hidden fossil imprint of a whale in the wall of a canyon. From stick figure horses, warriors, and prey painstakingly scratched into the rocks near natural springs to the startling parallel markings that appear beside them, that certain experts say are clearly a coded written language first discovered in Ireland.

Picture Canyon is the most accessible, and most famous, place to view the Native American carvings and paintings, and the most famous instance of the ogam.

Crack Cave contains possibly the most agreed upon example of ogam in the country. There is some scholarly discussion, since the examples found in this area are, as far as I know, universally missing vowels. But there is very little argument about the Crack Cave carvings, considering their translation and the event that happens there at sunrise every equinox.

On the north wall of the cave behind the narrow fissure in the canyon wall there is a knob of rock, the ogam following it's contours. Among those who accept the idea of ogam in the United States, it's fairly well agreed upon that the inscription translates as "Sun strikes (here) on the day of Bel" with the parenthetical here being assumed, since every equinox, for a few minutes at the moment of sunrise, the light caresses that bulge of rock.

Those who have seen it say that it is an amazing sight, watching the first rays of the sun sweep across markings that were made so long ago.

There are actually three examples that read "Grian," meaning "Sun," in that cave. The inscription on the north wall, another at the back of the cave that stands alone, and one on the south wall, reading "Aois Grian"- "People of the Sun."

There is another site, on private property, that the authors of Ancient American Inscriptions- Plowmarks or History? called the Sun Temple.

In addition to having a circle inscribed at the back of a depression in the rock, indicating where to put your head on cross-quarter days at sunrise to see the sun framed as it crests the horizon by an outcropping in a canyon wall, it has another ogam inscription. This one reads "Noble Twins" and around it are scattered markings, shaped like plus signs. Based on similar carvings they assumed they were meant to indicate stars, and seemed to show a very specific alignment of Saturn, Jupiter, and Venus.

So, the authors of the book went to a cosmologist who had a program that modeled the movement of the universe, and found that, according to the program, that alignment, and the placement of the stars around it, also shown on the carving, happened before sunrise on the cross-quarter day, August 8th, 471 AD.

471 AD. Whether it was a traveler's documentation of something that happened before he arrived, placed there because of the site's relation to the cross-quarter days, or something that an observer documented as he saw it, we may never know, since at this time there is no reliable way to date the carving, but it is a wondrous thought, isn't it, that someone may have seen something he considered so amazing that he had to carve it into a rock wall for those who came after him.

Yet another inscription, this time in Central Colorado, is one of the longest translated inscriptions I found in my research. It is found along what seems to be a commonly traveled path, among rock shelters and some evidence of ancient fires.

"May be used for shelter. This is a sheltering place for travelers... Route sign to the west is the frontier town with standing stones as markers." (Translated by Leanord and Glen, 1981)

To the west of that site is a town that did indeed have standing stones as markers.

Some of the translations seem to be mostly guesswork. Not only is the written language dead as a doornail but it's like trying to translate snippets of a journal, written in a language you barely know, by a man who couldn't really spell, and who had really poor penmanship.

There isn't any commonly accepted explanation for the lack of vowels in ogam in the United States. It hasn't been found common anywhere else. Personally, I think perhaps the people who came here were mainly here for trade. At that time, to my understanding, only scholars had knowledge of the written word. Perhaps the people who carved these marks were traveling with traders, who would probably not wait their travels on a single man making marks in rock. In which case, dropping the vowels in a written language in which each letter took multiple marks would be a time saver, and the consistency of the dropped vowels would allow those who came behind to be sure to understand the messages.

It doesn't seem so far fetched to me, considering the way people today drop vowels and substitute letters for whole words online, or in text messages, to save time.

Srsly, it sounds plausible to me.

Of course, I'm not a scholar. If you'd like to know more, read the book I mentioned earlier. If you'd like to see Crack Cave for yourself, make your way to Southeastern Colorado. My county seat holds a festival spring and fall for the Equinoxes, and there are guided tours of Crack Cave to see the mystery in action.

Blogorado Products

Yes, I finally got some products done, like I've been promising. More will be added as I get the designs done, and if there's something else you want with one of the Blogorado logos on it, let me know, and I'll get it put together.

The designs currently available are all customizable, so if you want to add your favorite quote or a saying to them, you can.

Check out the store to see what we've got! There's also a link on the sidebar, and I'll be putting a gadget on Tractor Tracks' brand new Facebook Page as well. (Yes, I made a Facebook page for my blog. Go become a fan and feed my ego.)

Proceeds from sales of Blogorado merchandise will go towards financing this year's Blogorado.

*Edit: The gadget will go on the Facebook page when I can figure out how to make it work. It's not being very cooperative right now and I think the app may be broken. I shall try again later and see if it works better then.

*Second Edit: After a frustrating while, and a bit of research, it appears that Zazzle hasn't updated the app. Instead, I put up the link on the Facebook page.

Chapter Nine

Is now available.

Ya'll know the drill by now. Go, read, enjoy.

The End Is Nigh

At least I hope it is. Feeling much better, in spite of the pure evil that has taken up residence in my sinuses.

I'm still digging on the issue of the original Pinon Canyon acquisition, including the oft-repeated in regional papers rumor of a "promise" from the Army at the time of the original establishment of the Maneuver Site that it would "never be expanded."

I'm branching out in my search a bit since the local library, chronically short on funds, has little in the way of Colorado history in that time period, and the internet is remaining quite mute on the subject other than references to the original establishment inside pieces on the current issue of expansion.

Hopefully I'll be able to find... well, something, and shed some more light on the issue.

Until then, I did some research on a vaguely-related line, brought up in the comments on my last post on the subject.

Commenter Well Seasoned Fool brought up Picture Canyon (which is one of my absolute favorite places in the area to go trail riding) and I shared a bit of information beyond what he'd known. At which point commenter Chas S. Clifton suggested a book, which I found at the library and spent an afternoon digging through to get enough pertinent info to make a blog post.

So, coming soon, some information on ogam (or ogham, I've seen it spelled both ways and I'm not entirely sure which is correct) carvings in Southeastern Colorado.

A method of writing that is considered to have originated in Ireland found heavily in the middle of the United States, especially heavy in a "corridor" here in Southeastern Colorado that is generally agreed to have been one of the easy travel routes for trade.

One carving appears to document a planetary alignment that may have happened, according to a cosmological model, before sunrise on August 8th, 471 AD.

Very, very interesting stuff, and I'm working on a post to do it justice and trying as best I can to keep my facts straight, considering I am neither an archaeologist, nor a student of ancient languages.

That's in your coming attractions, anyway.

Phlegm River

I be fighting it.

Getting back towards feeling semi normal, and I'll get that research done as soon as I feel I can go in the library without getting my butt kicked by the librarian for bringing her germs.

Which will be soon, hopefully.

Per The Previous Post

I've been trying to find some "Official" information concerning the original creation of the Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site.

I have not yet found the information that I was searching for, I'll have to make a trip to the library and do some digging there.

When I get it, I'll also have some pictures for you, from one of the canyons included in the site, and the murals that one owner painted on the living rock. Murals which were promptly used as target practice once the Army got a hold of the land.

Pinon Canyon

Peter and Wing asked me whilst they were here to visit the last couple of days about the signs they saw on the highway on the way into town.

"This Land Not For Sale To The Army"

"No Pinon Canyon Expansion"

This, understandably, confused them. This issue hasn't really made a lot of waves as far as I know outside of the state of Colorado.

But, perhaps it should.

Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site is a training site for the US Army, located outside of Trinidad. Take a moment and look that up on google. Got it? Good.

The initial map of proposed expansion to occur over the course of five years, detailed that they would expand that site from where it currently is, roughly to the southern Colorado state line, east to the Kansas state line, and north to US Highway 50.

And kick everyone out.

Since I live within the area that would be, by the original plan, "acquired" in year five of this plan, and most of our land is in the "future expansion area" I sort of have a problem with this. (A map leaked to the public detailing the original draft of the plan can be found here The LaJunta Tribune-Democrat found it to be a bit obscure so they did their digging and made it a bit easier to read here.)

It's been an uphill battle for farmers and ranchers in this area to oppose this, without being painted as anti-military. We aren't. We're anti land-grabbing.

Some of the "sparse population" has been on their land for generations. Many ranchers can take you to the crumbling adobe or sandstone-block hut where their grandfather or great grandfather or his father homesteaded their land, and they're proud to do so.

This is their heritage, their livelihood, and their love.

The area targeted also feeds half a million to a million people, annually.

The people here, and all across the proposed expansion area, are tough. They work hard every day to make a living and they, being among what some would consider "throwbacks," don't take kindly to the idea that anyone, even the Army, would come and attempt to take their homes and the land that they love from them.

So they've created the Pinon Canyon Opposition Coalition to make their voices heard. Those are the signs along the highways, bringing attention to an issue that shouldn't be hushed up.

Seventeen thousand, two hundred and sixty three.

That's the number in the Army's own proposal (released October of '08 see it here) used as an estimate for total "displaced population" at the end of phase five.

6,914,328 acres in total. Functionally, the entirety of southeastern Colorado.

So far, congress has refused funding. Next year, that may change, and thousands of people, including myself and the Farm Fam, may be "displaced."

Look at the information, look at any information you can find, and make up your own minds, but for me, there's no question.

This Land Is Not For Sale To The Army.