Those of you who have visited my portfolio on DxO in their Image Masters section https://www.dxo.com/intl/photography/gallery/dwight-lutsey  may have seen this photo before. For those of you who haven’t this is an image of seven warriors drawn on the surface of the stone and is located in a small cave at the top of a bluff in the foothills of Northern Colorado. It overlooks the plains below with nearly a 180° field of view.

It is a very special place and dates back to a time before the tribes acquired horses. Experts in these types of drawing speculate that these figures represent hunters or warriors because of the large shields they are carrying. After horses arrived the shields became much smaller so they were more easily managed while on horseback. These figures are petrographs rather than petroglyphs as they are drawn on the surface of the stone rather than etched into the surface.

As you can see there are seven figures represented and if you could visit this cave you would see that there is no way that seven people could fit into this space. It is difficult to get more than 2 or 3 people in there and that is a tight squeeze. So why seven figures? One can only speculate. Perhaps this was the number in the party that waited back in the safety of the rocks while the viewer in the cave looked for animals or enemies, or is a warning to others that he saw seven warriors below. Perhaps they were a raiding party and this was a regular path or trail they followed that could viewed safely from this cave.

To view these figures at all you must lie down on the cave floor as they are on a small ledge that forms the edge of the ceiling and are only 3 to 5 inches in height. The artist who created them had to draw them from a prone position. The seven figures are the only petrographs in the cave. The cave is a cool place to sit and watch out over the landscape below. Cool as in temperature, but also cool as in, cool.

While lying there attempting to figure out how the drawings were made and possibly why, I heard a small fluttering noise and turning my head discovered that I was nearly lying on the nest of this little wren. She was civil about it, quietly telling me to move over as she had to feed the young inside. Being a busy mom she was constantly coming and going usually with an insect of some sort in her bill. I could hear the young rustling about in the nest but couldn’t see them due to the shadows that partially hid the nest from view.

I was hoping to have a conversation with her about how long her family had been nesting in this cave and did she have any stories about the earlier inhabitants that may have been passed own from mother to egg but motherhood was making too many demands on her time so the conversation would have to wait.

This part of Colorado has an amazing amount of history attached to it and a person is constantly made aware of all the events that took place here. There are teepee rings, and Oregon trail wagon tracks, the occasional headstone signifying the loss of a loved one by those heading further west, stagecoach stops and outlaw dens, all the stuff you heard about as a kid is here if you know where to look and be observant. It is truly a photographers privilege to be here and more so to share it with you.