Indian Head

This is my story of the 'Indian Head' in Blacksmith Fork Canyon. 

My family loved to go up the canyon for hikes and picnics.  We went up often during the summer months.  Everytime while driving back down the canyon, my dad would slow down and stop for a minute on this bend of the canyon road.  He would say to all of us children, "Look!  Do you see the Indian Head?"  I would ALWAYS say, "No, I don't see it."  My siblings and parents would then try to explain to me where exactly I would be able to see this Indian Head.  "It's where the horizon meets the sky...." "See how there's a V?  Look right above that."  "You see his nose and his feather on his head?"  "Look where the rock is against the sky, you'll see his face right there..."  Me: "In the sky??  What's a horizon? How is an Indian Head in the sky?"  And then they'd get frustrated and drive on towards home.   

I was sick of being the only one who couldn't see the Indian Head, so I came up with a solution:  I imagined a young Indian boy with a feather on his head right in the sky.  "Oh!  There he is!"  I said one time.  And my whole family was so happy that I finally saw the Indian Head.  Little did they know that he was only a figment of my imagination until I was much much older.  Probably not until my late teens did I finally see that what they meant was, "Look, there's a profile of a man in the cliff with a tree like a feather on his head."  (Not that that explanation would have made me see it any sooner, but it seems a little bit better.)  

I took this picture this winter while driving back from a hike with the dogs.  I laugh every time I drive down the canyon and see that 'Indian Head' in the sky.  Even after I claimed to have seen the Indian Head, I would still beg my dad to slow down or stop so I could 'see' it again, and then try my very very hardest to really see it, and the image of the Indian boy only burned brighter in my mind.  I can honestly still recall the image and it doesn't look too unlike what I've drawn here.  That's why it's so funny to me.