When I was a kid I used to pour water in the sand

[ashling]

and imagine that the resultant crevices and swirls were millions of years of time eroding the landscape. Whwn we would go on vacation driving through west Texas and New Mexico I would look out as we sped along the new Interstate Highway and imagine I saw Apache's hunting or Comanches on the way to Mexico or paleolithic bands of Amerinds.

I still drive through the hill country in Texas or the mountains in Washington, or the plains of Nort Texas and am awed by the landscape and what it must have been like in earlier eras.

Today I happened across these two random pictures on the internet. They look strikingly like a before and 100,000 years after picture.
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[suninvited]

1. I never did the water pouring thing

but to this day when driving through undeveloped areas I look out at the wilderness and imagine indians running wild and free.

From Jonas and Ezekial by the Indigo Girls

"I used to search for reservations and native lands
before I realized everywhere I stand
there have tribal feet running wild as fire
some past life sister of my desire"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmQngqkYNNQ

[Arkansas Granny]

2. Oh, it does! When I was a kid, there was an old wagon trail that cut

through the back of our acreage. It was just a couple of ruts worn into the ground sunk down a couple of feet below the surrounding ground level, but the last time I saw it, there were still no trees or brush growing up in the track. I used to imagine what it must have been like riding in a wagon through the woods all day just to go to town.

[MiddleFingerMom]

3. Some years back, I took a nice leisurely vacation around the perimeter of Arizona...

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... using www.roadsideamerica.com to plan little stops-of-interest along
the way (I recommend it as an INCREDIBLE resource for ANY vacation
ANYWHERE within the U.S. and/or Canada -- it's fantastic).
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In Springerville, AZ (eastern border dead-center), I noted that there was
one of the "Madonnas of the Trail" - a series of 12 identical 10-ft statues
(18-ft with base) honoring the pioneer women of America.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madonna_of_the_Trail
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It was one of the highlights of my trip (along with Flintstone Village near
the Grand Canyon http://www.roadsideamerica.com/search/tip ). I sat
and looked at that statue for literally hours and tried my best to get even
a glimpse of what their lives must have been like.
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It's a pioneer woman striding with an infant in one arm and a rifle in the
other, with a toddler clinging to her skirt. They were all postioned facing
westward, except the final one in California (which I had thought was
facing back east -- it faces south).
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The one in Maryland, it was finally noted when it was temporarily removed
for maintenance, is the only one facing east (a mistake that still exists).
I found this reference at the wikipedia page link above:
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A longstanding joke about Maryland's Madonna was that she was
placed facing east because no sensible American woman would
think it a good idea to turn her back on Washington, D.C.
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[Arkansas Granny]

4. I have never seen those before. It kind of gives you a chill to imagine what

the lives of those pioneer women must have been. I was raised in rural southern Missouri and talked one time to an old woman who had moved there with her family when she was a child. She remembers watching from the back of a horse drawn wagon. Her descendants were neighbors of ours.