10 October 2022

Indian Land

Lizard ex/claims Indian Land. 

A trace as tracing. 

Red Lizard becoming sign on sign. 

Bound up in space becoming place. 

Time hovers as ghost immemorial.

As longing, as stones and bones.  

Obverse of the sign:  Geology Oregon:Abert Rim.

Sign faces US Highway 395, looking west over Abert Lake

In 2011, sign on US Highway 395.
Two ways of imagining, of mattering...

Spirit guardians lean into Future, 

grounding Abert Rim, one of the highest fault scarps

in US and the longest exposed fault scarp

in North America.

Grinding slicks on basalt boulder overlook the ancient lake,
a salty terminal basin, remnant of Pleistocene Lake Chewaucan.
Translucent point, photoed and replaced
2012, a year later, chalked outline
and naming Indian Land erased.
Lizard abides...
... by 2015, sign disappeared,
Geology dismissed, Lizard displaced. 
Notes

 In recognition of Indigenous Peoples' Day

— Prints of the Indian Land and Oregon Geology photographs purchased from this writer by the University of  Oregon Law Library in 2017.  Two of eight purchased for permanent display in the Library’s main reading room at the Law School; the other six are photos of petroglyphs, Oregon Northern Great Basin aka Indian Land.

— The above Indian Land/Geology sign photos from 2011 appeared prior to the now popular Land Back movement which emerged in 2018. 

Land Back
All beings abide