In 1992, a Southern California artist and her partner purchased 188 acres near Española in northern New Mexico on which to build a new home and a new life. The land is covered with countless large, black, basalt boulders, and the boulders, as she soon learned, are covered with countless petroglyphs. Chiseled or pecked into the rock by Native Americans over hundreds of years, petroglyphs are important scared images.
This book is Katherine Wells’ memoir of life in rural New Mexico and her struggle to preserve the sacred images on her land and, eventually, the entire region. She and her partner, the late Lloyd Dennis, built their dream home and studio while doing battle with looters and developers who would exploit or destroy the petroglyphs she came to treasure. She became a local expert on ancient rock art and founded the Vecinos del Rio Mesa Prieta Petroglyph Project to record, study, and protect the glyphs. To date, more than 6,000 images have been recorded on her land and many more on the lands of neighbors. She involves the local Hispanic community as well as Native Americans whose ancestors carved the images.
Life on the Rocks is the real life story of a magnificent journey to understand and preserve a great national treasure. In 2005, Wells donated most of her land and the petroglyphs to The Archaeological Conservancy so that they would be preserved forever.
