Guardian

Yesterday I hiked into a ruin in an amazing part of the forest (location undisclosed). The ruin is in a spectacular setting and aside from being an incredible ruin it also has some local history. The structures were built by Anasazi, then Utes came into the area (many years later) and created historic rock art at the site (mainly horses and riders) and lastly a local looted the sight back in the 1980's. The looting of sites, unfortunatley is not uncommon. The difference with this looting is the guy was actually caught. You can read about the case here. I love it when the bad guys get caught. He eventually died of cancer after serving a lengthy prison term.

This is a petroglyph located on the wall behind the main ruin. I had to manipulate the light but you can see that it is a snake and a human. I thought little of it, until I reached down to examine a pot shard sitting on top of one of the ruin walls and saw this (see below)

Respect the Ancient Ones or pay the price, sometimes in the form of prison time, cancer or a bite from a guardian rattlesnake.