Into the deep past, into ourselves
A bison from Font-de-Gaume (official photo) …We draw horned cattle with broad strokes, charcoal and ochre outline figures dropping into darkness… I was a farmer, then. I wrote those lines as I watched cattle and deer on the hillside above our West Virginia mountain farm. I’d never been to Europe, never seen the cave art that I referenced in the poem. This month, I stood inches from Paleolithic art that had haunted my dreams then, and saw the bison and reindeer move. I was on a hiking trip in the Valley of the Vézère River , deep in the Perigord region of southeastern France. For several days, I stayed in Les Eyzies de Tayac , the “world headquarters of prehistory,” and walked to a few of the shelters, sites, caves, and museums dedicated to early humankind. This is the area where Cro-Magnon skeletons were first found, where Lascaux and the other pictured caves were discovered. Much was pillaged at the