St. Victor's Petroglyphs

I visited St. Victor's Petroglyphs earlier this week, and got thinking about a lecture Don McKay gave at the SWG conference last fall. He'd talked about deep time, or geological time, which is inconceivable to fleeting human minds except through the use of metaphor. McKay used the metaphor of outstretched arms, where shaving the very edge of a human hand's fingernail represents all human existence. The petroglyphs were carved between c. 500-1750 but in deep time, we seem to exist almost at the same time as whoever created these ancient stone carvings. This juxtaposition seemed heightened by the prevalence of graffiti surrounding the petroglyphs. While no one had defaced the petroglyphs themselves, hundreds of visitors had left their mark in the stone surrounding the area, as if responding to the images of deer hooves and bear claws with the initials of names.