Road Trip Through Time

This morning the BYU group joined us at Joe Ostraff's house where we stayed our first night. We introduced ourselves over breakfast in Melinda Ostraff's kitchen. There is a good mix of students from the two universities and academic staff from art and music disciplines with a strong representation of printmaking expertise. 

As we set off over the mountains from Fairview, Utah heading for the San Rafael Swell area, it became clear that the winter snow was still thickly covering the aspen forest and road conditions were icy and treacherous in places.

This was the beginning of a days journey which took us to locations which continued to demonstrate the extraordinary range of climactic and geological environments in this part of Utah. We were heading towards a site of anthropological interest, a petroglyph called the Rochester Panel, an early form of land art and a national monument protected by the Bureau of Land Management. 

The presence of BLM signage across all the sites we visited today alerts you to the law regarding your expected behaviors and responsibilities. This aspect of land management will become a focus for discussion over the course of the project.

The site itself is a ramshackle canyon of huge fallen rocks, its easy to navigate and and is populated with wild plants currently in full spring flowering mode. The just travelled cold and snowy conditions seem unthinkable here, although the wind is freezing the sun is beaming down and at this altitude it is   fiercer than we experience in the UK.

  

The Rochester Panel is at the highest point of a promontory projecting out into the canyon and the land beyond. It is a vantage point, a look out, and though the canyon has clearly been subjected to the disorder of the natural processes of erosion and slippage the massive rocks forming the ground for the petroglyphs seem undisturbed. 

BYU print tutor, Gary Barton, explained the different terms for the rock art in the region. Petroglyphs are carved of chiseled into the rock surface, whilst pictographs are drawings on the rock using pigmented materials such as charcoal, blood and minerals such as chalk. Some of the drawing is prehistoric and attributed to the Fremont culture and the Barrier Canyon culture, other parts are more modern and some are contemporary graffiti!

Since this project is concerned with the human impact on the landscape this has been a good place to start thinking about our interventions in the landscape. What we regard as acceptable in terms of cultural value, how we protect theses sites, and just as crucially - what we dismiss. 

I am reminded of the beginning of the 1983 film Kooyanisqaatsi, by director Godfrey Reggio, with musical score by Philip Glass. The opening sequences of the film begin in the canyon lands of southern Utah and feature the pictographs of Horseshoe Canyon. The Hopi Indian word Kooyanisqaatsi refers to an 'unbalanced life' and the film is the first of a trilogy of related films. 

The IMDb film review site gives it 8.3 out of 10 and describes the film as "....this renowned documentary (which) reveals how humanity has grown apart from nature. Featuring extensive footage of natural landscapes and elemental forces, the film gives way to many scenes of modern civilization and technology. Given its lack of narration and dialogue, the production makes its points solely through imagery and music, with many scenes either slowed down or sped up for dramatic effect."

Further Back in Time

I am traveling with BYU music professor Claudine Bigelow and her husband Mark in their car. We head for the geological uplifted environment of the San Rafael Swell. The landscape becomes a record of the geologic pressures that have taken eons to distort and fracture the ground we travel on. Every few miles the topography changes formation and rock type and colour. It is evident that time is a presence here in ways which we do not register in our own landscapes in the UK, where geological time is mostly covered by layers of soils and vegetal accumulation. We discuss the passing phenomena, abandoning the norms of landscape references and exhaust our vocabulary of adequate responses.

Todays final destination is the Cassidy Arch in the red rock cliffs and canyons of Capitol Reef National Park. To get to the giant rock arch we hike a strenuous path to the summit of a 700ft escarpment. The wind blows cold in the shade, the sun beams down relentlessly in the open. The altitude affects not just me, thankfully. I have to keep stopping to catch my breath and recover. I hold up the group of staff accompanying me. We are talking, but I can't fully contribute. It takes too much effort to breathe.

Interpretation panel at the beginning of the trail

The path gradually levels as we reach the plateau, and we carefully negotiate the trail so that we don't encroach on the cyanobacterial soil. This soil is a precious phenomenon in the desert and canyon lands. The sandy soil is host to rare and exceptionally slow growing fungal spores and bacteria which bind and stabilise the soil and so slows down erosion. Stepping on it kills the hundreds of years old systemic structure. There are footprints through it every where we look.

The students waiting on the precipice.

As we reach the group at the arched rock the clouds roll in and the wind turns cold. In our absence the students have been working on responses to a text based project proposed by Katrina an MCLA final year student. She has selected texts by the early American pioneers of environmentalism, Henry David Thoreau (1854) and John Muir (circa 1896), on the need for wildness and wilderness. The students responses and interpretations to these ideas are measured and insightful. Katrina asks us to develop our own texts which explain our own understanding of wilderness and then a distillation of this statement in four words which express the essence of this idea. 

The weather is closing in and we escape the grandeur of the canyon and head steadily down the path discussing access disputes in state protected and funded national parks in relation to the current Bears Ears National Monument controversy and the implications of contemporary global politics.

Throughout this first day many conversations with both teaching staff and students have provided confirmation that my presentation tomorrow morning will be a good reference for all the ideas that are circulating within the group. I feel more confident that sharing my research topic and strategies for thinking about place and land art will be a constructive contribution to this project.