Limited Edition
Signed and numbered
Linoleum Blockprints
2024
image:4x6inches
paper: 5x7 inches
matted: 8x10 inches
 
Printed at the Historic Mancos Commonpress
 
While wandering along Pojoaque Creek in northern New Mexico, I found a raccoon skull.  Instantly I was brought back to a moment on the Verde River in Arizona where I had found raccoon tracks under water in the river bottom mud. I carved this image and wrote an accompanying vignette the following week.
 
PROCYON LOTOR
from Latin meaning: “The washer”
 
Rock radiates cool white in the glow of the moon.  The world is silent except for rushing water tumbling moonlight into darkness.  An occasional chirp or screech reveals the presence of others in the darkness.  They pad across land and rest in juniper branches through these long hours.  Noises amplify where eyes falter.  Smells deepen as colors become a distant memory.  Saguaros stand sentry on this land.  Then the water starts gurgling a slightly different tune.  A dark figure hunches in the rock bottom shallows.  They walk: left foot placed gingerly by right hand, right foot by left hand.  Two by two they skirt the slickrock bank.  They stop, turn, dip their hands into the moon’s reflection, and roll one palm over the other, placing fingers into the depths, then repeating.  They obscure what is in their hands, but the water whispers hidden secrets as they press their treasure back into the current.  Eventually, they place hands to mouth, pause, turn away, and drift back into darkness……
 
The midday desert sun bleaches everything it touches hot white.  A canyon wren chirps.  Kinglets twittle.  I crouch on the slickrock.  Little handprints disrupt settled particles on the riverbed’s smooth stone.  Two by two the prints travel.  I place my hand, fingers spread, above the water’s surface as if to stretch my body’s knowing into the story of the solitary raccoon who walked this land the night before.  I close my eyes and imagine……
 
 
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