Thursday, February 11, 2016

Ventana Cave, Tohono O'odham Reservation, Arizona, United States

The surrounding Castle Mountains are like Rorschach blots: you can see many things in the ridge lines, the rock faces, the color variations.

Two big crows, ravens, with white or light (lighter than their otherwise black feathers) wing-tips circling, cawing, visiting a high, ssmall cave in the rock wall above the main Ventana cave. How long have they patrolled this spot? How many generations of their ancestors have lived here?

Canyon wrens calling, ascending and descending, rapid staccato chirps.

Dream: I was trying to peddle a bicycle, to go fast, but even if I peddled as hard as I could, I was going slower than I wanted. Feeling of frustration. Recurring dream: I'm running, or doing some physical activity, trying to go fast, but going slow.

Why does such a high place have water? The back of the cave has been damned with a two or three foot square rock wall, with mortar between the rocks. (There is also a cistern, built with cinder blocks, in front of the dam, with damp rocks visible at the bottom.) 

Lots of bees on seeps in the rock wall dam.

There is water behind the dam; I could see it and when I threw a pebble in it, it gave a satisfying plopping noise that indicated the water was at least a couple feet deep. How far did the water go back? I could only see about ten feet; it looked as if the reservoir continued beyond that.

Granite egg-shaped mass surrounded by arkose? rhyolite? lighter, beige rock, forming the hanging roof above the cave.

The rock in these Castle Mountains forms many contorted shapes, like frozen silly putty.

Rock art scratched, painted onto the ceiling. Vertical lines, circles, figures? animals? a fence? the sun?

Arch in the rock big enough to walk through.

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I camped, outside, well down from the cave along the dirt track leading up to it. Watched the sun rise.

From the cave, you can see Baboquivari Peak far off to the east.

I had to get a permit from the Hickiwan District Office. The guy showed me a stuffed mountain lion he said had been hunted down a couple years ago, because it was killing pets. The mountain lion looked small to me, a couple feet high, dog-sized. I didn't feel scared. I felt more scared of the guy, because of his social powers.

When I left, a Law Enforcement truck was pulling in on the road out. Checking up on me? It was unmarked, with the same flashing lights on the sun visors that the guy who stopped me in the Table Mountains Wilderness had. These two guys looked Indian. They bid me a "good afternoon" as I passed.