Local arborglyph researcher Peggy Bergon led some special guests on a tour of Pagosa area aspen tree carvings earlier this month, pointing out a few of the hundreds of carvings — signatures, dates, human figures, geometric shapes — left by shepherds working in the high country forests along the Continental Divide during the first part of the 20th century.
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Bergon began to notice writing on the aspen trees while on a horse pack trip in the late 1970s in the San Juan Mountains above Pagosa, and her interest has turned into a life-long research project.
The carvings Bergon found were not “run-of-the-mill graffiti, but beautiful cursive handwriting along with charming pictorials and dates from the 1940s all the way back to the teens,” says Bergon. Completely captivated, she began to photograph the carvings — sometimes known as arborglyphs — and has continued to make images of the signatures and figures as a weekend hobby for over 15 years. Continued...
Local researcher Peggy Bergon points out a detail in a cartoon-like portrait left by a shepherd in the aspen forest along the Continental Divide. Bergon has been documenting the Hispanic carvers over the past 15 years. |
Along for the tour was noted film producer Sandy Corley, who is currently preparing for an IMAX film about arborglyphs found in the hardwood forests of Georgia. Arborglyphs in the Southeastern United States were often carved into the pale bark of the beech tree, and the carvings included a range of symbolic characters intended to provide directions, mark survey locations or even to advertise services available. Corley was accompanied by her husband Howard Deutsch and friend Marge Schweri.
As the group moved through the aspen forest high in the San Juans southeast of Pagosa Springs, Bergon pointed out favorite carvers she has documented over the years — all with familiar Hispanic names like Archuleta, Gurule, Trujillo, Cruz. She expressed special appreciation for the classic calligraphic handwriting evidenced in some of the carvings — a handwriting style that we nowadays see, she noted, “only on wedding invitations and very formal documents.”
“During the later part of the 19th century and early part of the 20th century thousands of sheep were raised in the wilderness of Colorado,” Bergon writes on her web site, www.arborglyphs.com, “The sheepherder, away from loved ones for months at a time, expressed his loneliness and boredom on the vast canvas available to him, the soft white bark of the aspen tree. Visions of home, hearth and missed loved ones adorn trees all throughout the forest. These carvings are known as arborglyphs, which means literally ‘tree-writing,’ and date from the late 1800s to the early 1950s.”
Bergon’s research into the Hispanic sheepherders has led her to conclude that domestic sheep came to the New World aboard the ships of Columbus, Cortez, and other Spanish explorers, who brought them mainly as a food source. In the Pagosa area during the last century, the sheep and their caretakers left the dry lowlands to spend the long summer months high in the alpine forests, where grass was plentiful.
“The sheep needed attention in the morning and in the nighttime, and slept during the day — that was called ‘nooning’,” Bergon noted during the tour. “And that was when the shepherd has all this time on his hands, during the day when the sheep really didn’t need his attention.”
The paper thin white bark of the aspen served as a convenient writing and drawing surface during those idle times. Bergon noted that the shepherd signatures and figures are quite shallowly carved, compared with the much more recent initials and names of hikers also found gouged into the aspens along the National Forest trails.
“Due to the relatively short life span of the aspen — 80 to 120 years — a significant number of [the old] carvings are being lost to age, disease, blow-downs and fire,” Bergon notes on her web site. “After the devastating Missionary Ridge fire of 2002, which destroyed nearly 75,000 acres nearby, the fragility of the arborglyphs became even more apparent.”
Bergon’s affection for the carvers, after documenting their work carefully for so many years, is quite evident — she referred to the men by first and last name, a very familiar tone, as she led our little group to dozens of old carvings scattered around a high mountain lake.
Bergon pointed out a name marked in bold, printed lettering on an old, graying aspen maybe two feet in diameter. “September 11, 1936. S. Trujillo. His first name was Solomon, and he is one of my favorite carvers in the forest,” she said with an obvious smile. “He liked to draw figures — of all varieties.”
Standing there in the quiet forest, I was transported back to an earlier age, when a shepherd with time on his hands carefully etched his marks into the bark of a much smaller tree, surely with no idea his work would be under our appreciative gaze 70 years later. |