on the walls of utah's canyons were patterns, like primitive writing by some ancient people now forgotten though their scribbles remain. it made me think of recent experiments by writers playing with scribbles that look like words but are not (i'm thinking primarily of writers like the australian tim gaze). the canyons were filled with such scribbles, some of it actually fragments of pictographs, some of it just the writing of natural processes on the rocks. it reminded me of emerson's phrase "the mad wind's night work," though lately emerson's ideas of nature have been grating on me because of their inheritently human connection. he sees us as disconnected from nature except perhaps through mind. that view just announces a more friendly version of what is essentially the judeo-christian divide between humans and nature that has allowed us to achieve so much as well as damage so much.
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