I think he might be kind of confused. Vacantly confused and observant. Baffled but curious. Innocent. Possibly powerful.
Up and to the right of him there was a tiny antelope scratched into the rock. Perhaps he'd dreamt about antelopes the night before and was trying to figure out what the dream meant. He was big, the sweet button-face petroglyph, maybe about a yard across, and he was higher up than my head. Perhaps the artist had had a prophetic dream about the coming of buttons. Or he is a nature spirit, maybe-- he reminds me of the clicking nature spirits in some of Miyazaki's films.
He was scratched onto the wall of the huge red rock canyon we camped in last weekend in Moab. When we scrambled up to the wall and discovered him, it was nearly sunset, and giant puffy thunderheads were gathered above us in the east. We'd seen petroglyphs earlier that day, smaller, on a smaller rock-- people with wings, snakes, rivers, and footprints. And then this.
