On The Road Again

My Scholarship Entry - The Paintings Of Palmarito

MEXICO | Thursday, 4 July 2013 | Views [262] | View Larger Image

And finally Palmarito! On the trail our guide Armando led the way at a pace he was accustomed to, still in his T-shirt as it drizzled. His pace was hell-bent and the temperature was in the upper forties or low fifties. I called him a man of the mountains and he did not disagree but smiled…. Nothing prepares for the sight of the paintings- color, line, composition, site, all is sublime. To take a picture is insufficient but it buttresses our memories so that is what we do.

On the road to Palmarito the reality of the Cochimí traveling this landscape by foot from the mountains to the Pacific and the Sea of Cortez is made manifest. What could the lives of the paleoindian painters that preceded the Cochimí have been like? We know that they traveled great distances to procure their pigments; that the act of painting was likely a part of ceremonies enacted to achieve terrestrial goals by supernatural means, dwarfed as they were by this vast landscape.

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And we are on our way again, though with fuller hearts as we camp beneath the stars that shone down on Baja's prehistoric painters, the Cochimí and the Spaniards that led them to extinction. That humankind's ancestors were able to create such works in these desert places is stirring testament to what we might yet achieve today. We dream about what we have been fortunate enough to see, hidden in plain sight along the Baja Peninsula- if one cares to look.

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On The Road Again

My Scholarship Entry - The Paintings Of Palmarito

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