Ancient sketches graffiti or art?

News flash from Nine Mile Canyon: A team of archaeologists and linguists have finally — after years of painstaking study and, coincidentally, on the eve of their multi-million-dollar government grant running out — successfully translated a key pictograph known as the Great Hunt Panel in what has been called America's longest and oldest art gallery.

What was long thought to be drawings of bighorn sheep and human hunters holding bows and arrows actually translates in English to: ANYONE CAUGHT DRAWING ON THESE ROCKS WILL BE FINED.

It turns out, according to this translation, that the Anasazi, Fremont and, later, the Ute Indians that inhabited Nine Mile Canyon long before it was known as Nine Mile Canyon had a problem doodling on their beautiful surroundings. This prompted their chiefs and the environmentalists among them to draw the line, as it were.

Another pictograph nearby translates to: RESPECT WHERE YOU LIVE, AND WHERE YOU LIVE WILL RESPECT YOU!

I'm making all this up, of course, but the announcement this week from the State Capitol of an agreement hammered out after months and years of discussion among numerous public and private agencies, including apparently everyone but the BCS, which protects the rock artwork in Nine Mile Canyon from natural gas developers gave me pause when I saw some photos of the endangered rock artwork.

What's the big deal? I found myself thinking. If any of this gets lost we can put some third graders to work on nearby unmarked rocks.

I am aware that such thinking constitutes blasphemy among lovers of ancient Indian pictographs, so let me quickly apologize to them for not seeing what they are seeing and not appreciating what they are appreciating.

But I am only being honest here. I am one of the worst artists in the world and I could draw sheep on roller skates and men with no necks as well as the ones on those rocks. Maybe better.

If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I am not beholding beauty. C.M. Russell did not do this.

This isn't to suggest the images shouldn't be protected. Age deserves its deference. There is a point when one man's graffiti becomes another man's historic marker.

Although there is also no doubt that timing is everything. Carve your initials or scratch out a drawing tomorrow in the rocks in Nine Mile Canyon, or anywhere on public land for that matter, and you're going to jail.

But 200 years from now, no matter if you carved "Go Lakers!" it will be a national treasure.