Bighorn Stone Ghosting

 

"Lichens are symbiotic assemblages of species: filamentous fungi and photosynthetic algae and cyanobacteria. Lichens are themselves a kind of landscape, enlivened by their ghosts." --Elaine Gan et al 

Marking on stone extends the landscape in this country west of the Warner Mountains, Modoc County, California.  Once home to Bighorn who became extinct with the arrival of white settlers with domestic sheep. The native wild Bighorn are not immune to the Euro-bacterial diseases.  Past attempts to reintroduce Bighorn from Canada, via an introduced herd in the Lava Beds have failed. A particular kind of ghostly landscape. 

Below: This stone lies close to the ground near the complex of petroglyphs on the low rock rim (below and pictured above.). Click to enlarge.

 

Another rock rim in a nearby canyon reveals a two-legged ghost magically floating near two dream-like bighorn poised in the timeless now.  Lichen marking stonescapes in the endless passing of seasons. 

—Opening quote referring to the work of Anne Pringle, from the "Introduction to Ghosts on a Damaged Planet." In Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet, editors:  Anna Tsing, Heather Swanson, Elaine Gan, and Nils Bubandt, 2017.

Ghosts Now and Then

"Forgetting, in itself, remakes landscapes, as we privilege some assemblages over others. Yet ghosts remind us.  Ghosts point to our forgetting, showing us how living landscapes are imbued with earlier tracks and traces."  —Gan et al.

Above this rock outcrop, this wall of stone, an ephemeral playa lake pulses. In the High Lakes country of Lake County.  The playa, decades ago dammed by the big cattle outfit operating in Warner basin. This pooling of the playa enabled cattle to graze into the summer.  

Once I hiked in as some fellows, rifles poised, were leaving the playa in a quad, heading back to the highway. I discovered a freshly shot marmot on a rock rim above some petroglyphs on the stones edging the playa. 

Another time, a coyote dashed out of hiding out into the middle of the playa, turned around and barked at me. Then trotted on their way. Each being — in death and in living — conjures desire and absence. All ghosts now. You, too, and me, how so? 

How do we count time out here?  Still the nights and days come and go. As do the spiky stars and the luminous moon. Clocking what we don’t know.

"As artists, we conjure magical figures, weave speculative fictions, animate feral and partial connections. We necessarily stumble. And try again. With every mark, difference haunts and struggles to appear anew." —Gan et al.

—Quotes from the Introduction to Ghosts on a Damaged Planet. In Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet, editors:  Anna Tsing, Heather Swanson, Elaine Gan, and Nils Bubandt, 2017.

Geometries of Emptiness

The geometry of the Universe, it's inherent structure, is a dynamic entity, that deforms, ripples, twists, and, as some places, sinks. It all depends on the energy and matter that fills it. 
—Ersilia Vaudo

Near ground-level, three discrete petroglyphs in close proximity on the north side of a low canyon wall. I wonder as I kneel to take the pictures:  what, rather how, is the meaning of these deceptively simple yet unusual geometrics? Visionary? Experimental? Messages? I won’t know intent, though I sense a presence.

Susan Murphy takes us deeper: 
Who is this person who genuinely wonders, Who? as they write, or read, or walk, or talk? The vast emptiness that walks about upright in a human form—bones, flesh, hair, eyes, hands, feet—and feels waves of loneliness, desire, boredom, fear, overwhelming joy ... who is this? Easy responses die fast and something else opens up, a rich and productive form of silence that is strangely embracing and unflappable, when that question is simple and steadily held.

 

The ephemeral rock-well at the terminus of the low canyon, carved in bedrock through various ice ages past… to be continued.

NOTES
—Ersilia Vaudo in The Story of Astrophysics in Five Revolutions (2025, trans Italian)
—Susan Murphy in Red Thread Zen: humanly entangled in emptiness (2016)
—Photos:  DB, Lake County, Oregon, September 2026
—Vaudo adds, quoting American physicist John Wheeler:

"Spacetime tells matter how to move; matter tells spacetime how to curve.”

Animates: The Lives of Stone

I have pictured sets of photographs, finite and free
—Anna Moschovakis

Center: classic lizard-anthropomorph. Upper: sketchy bighorn sheep. Lower right: faint figure grasping a waving line of power. Far left: Ambiguous possible birthing figure.

Below: Context of the above figure. A split boulder.

Minimalist figures ecstatic in the landscape.

Below: Detail.

Unusual man-figure, on a boulder in the playascape.

Above:  Petroglyph as a six-toed grizzly bear paw print. Six-toed, a strange and not uncommon appearance.

Below:  Lizard-toadmorph petroglyph in crevice.

Animates:  Figures in stone in motion. Along a desiccated playa lake in southeast Oregon.

Note:  Descriptions arbitrary;  these beings animate their own lives, before and after our fleeting appearance. Enjoy these moments...

 

CODA

 

Wake up.

The wind is not for seeing,

neither is the first

song, soon half-

way gone,

and the figures,

the figures are not waiting.

To see what is

in motion you must move.

—Susan Stewart

Night of Stone II

An environment eternal:  this place of water in the desert attracted travelers, seekers, through thousands of years of solidity and change… Seeking resolve, resolve in seeing with the night of stone.  A mineral landscape of erosion, adherence and deposition.  

Then, the cutting through, the exposure of the light in the stone. The old atomic knowing.  The night of stone wavers, shadows the inevitable departure.  

Sparks, marks, made, signaling to and from, to and fro, involute, the universe, Indra's jeweled net.

CODA

The Tao is infinite, eternal.

Why is it eternal?

It was never born;

thus it can never die.

Why is it infinite?

It has no desires for itself;

thus it is present for all beings.

The Master stays behind;

that is why she is ahead.

She is detached from all things;

that is why she is one with them.

Because she has let go of herself,

she is perfectly fulfilled.

TAO TE CHING

—Translated by Stephen Mitchell

NOTES

—Photos above from the rock rim pictured in the July 21 2026 post:  The Night of Stone.  Harney County, Oregon, with good fortune for fellow travelers, photos by DB.