Happy 100th Birthday National Park Service! Writings in the Desert

Hello and welcome to the J.Q. Rose blog! I was very ambitious earlier in the week and announced today would be the day I would share our trip to the Grand Canyon National Park to commemorate the 100th birthday of the National Park Service. Unfortunately, for many reasons, the Grand Canyon video is not ready and I don't want to put it up until I'm happy with it. Please check back next week, fingers-crossed, to join me on an armchair tour of the amazing Grand Canyon NP.

First Lady, Michelle Obama, helps to get the word out in this You Tube video--
The First Lady Celebrates the National Park Service

Writings in the Desert by J.Q. Rose

After visiting the Petrified Forest National Park, I made an astounding connection and gained insight into my writing. 

A writer’s compulsion to write is a puzzlement to most people.  Ask an author why she writes and you will most likely get the answer, “because I have to.” Ideas for stories swirl around in the writer’s brain and will not go away until the idea is fixed on paper or screen.

This drive is not a new behavior for human beings. Cave men expressed their ideas on the walls of caves. This summer my husband and I visited the Southwest region of the USA. Signs of ancestral native people who lived in this harsh environment left their drawings on rocks in the desert. I don’t mean rocks the size of a stone you can skip across the lake. These are enormous ROCKS with identifiable pictures of water birds and faces of what scientists believe symbolize the spirits the people worshiped. The drawings are called petroglyphs.

Petroglyph --Faces of spirits of the Ancestral Pueblo culture

Petroglyph--Water bird drawing in the Petrified Forest National Park

Evidence of the desire by ancient people to leave a record of their lives are scattered throughout the Petrified Forest National Park in Eastern Arizona. Visit my blog post about the Petrified Forest NP here.

Rocks, “varnished” by Mother Nature by the clay minerals and sand collected on the surface of the rock, make the perfect canvas/background for the prehistoric man to scratch out recognizable shapes and figures about their existence. The latest Ancient Puebloan drawings are believed to be from around 900 A.D. to 1100 A.D. 

The Painted Desert located in the Petrified Forest National Park

I felt strangely connected with these primitive efforts at sharing the artist/writer's ideas with others, as if the artist was reaching out across the centuries to assure me it's okay to have that drive to express my ideas through my writing. 

I wonder if any of today's e-books and print books will exist 1000 years from now for future scientists to discover!
Photos by J.Q. Rose
Originally posted on the Books We Love Insiders Blog. I'll be posting regularly on the BWL blog on the 20th of each month. You're invited to visit.

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