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Not far from my home is this an intriguing rock formation called ' The Praying Monk'. I've seen it since I moved to Phoenix years ago, staying in a home across from Camelback Mountain, here in Phoenix. 

The size of the 'Monk' is deceptive. Really it is ten stories high and that is quite far up the mountain, which is named for it's look of a camel with it's humped back. People hike it, not for the faint of heart. quite a trek. 

The name of the mountain comes from its shape, which resembles the hump and head of a kneeling camel and it's a prominent landmark of Phoenix metropolitan. Located in Camelback Mountain Echo Canyon between the Arcadia neighborhood of Phoenix and the town of Paradise Valley.

Camelback Mountain is designated as a Phoenix Point of Pride, I feel that way. Proud I live near it. It is part of our home's landscape.

A cave was discovered on the north side of Camelback Mountain indicates that it was used as a sacred site by the prehistoric Hohokam culture before they abandoned the area in the 14th century. This to me makes sense, looking at the mountain, trying to picture it hundreds of years ago, without the crop of homes around it. Just a wind howling through the desert. I can well imagine the ancient people believing there is a living spirit in that rock on the mountain.

Hohokam was a culture in the North American Southwest. They existed between 300 and 1500 CE, with cultural precursors possibly as early as 300 BCE. According to local oral tradition, Hohokam societies may be the ancestors of the historic Akimel and Tohono Oʼodham in Southern Arizona.

In modern-day Phoenix, the Hohokam are recognized for their large-scale irrigation networks. Their canal network in the Phoenix metropolitan area was the most complex in the pre-contact Western Hemisphere. The original canals were dirt ditches and required routine maintenance; those currently in use are lined with concrete. When Hohokam society collapsed, the dirt canals fell into disrepair.

Even the Monk himself looks as if he could be one of the Hohokam, an ancient people who lived here , wrapped in a blanket, praying to some an ancient God of the sky.