The Volcanic Tablelands north of Bishop is one of those places you either know and love or have no idea exists.
For rock climbers and desert wanderers it is an exciting spot, offering many problems to work and remote places to explore, respectively.
For everyone else it is dreadfully dull, something to be zipped by ( going downhill ) or crept past ( going uphill ) as you navigate the steep Sherwin Grade on the nearby US 395.
The main site.
Besides, if your eyes are not on the road they are probably on the gorgeous Sierra peaks to the west, not the shallow furrows of the Tablelands to the east.
There are many places I have yet to explore in the Tablelands, and many places I have. Often, my excursions led to some exercise, some peace and quiet, and an eyeful of volcanic rock. Other times I find petroglyphs, likely made centuries ago by the Shoshone-Paiute.
These pieces of art were formed by pecking away the darker desert varnish covering the boulders. For some of these images a chisel and hammerstone was used, and the petroglyphs made this way is usually elegant and crisp. For others a hammerstone was used directly – an unforgiving technique that led to petroglyphs showing errant blows off to the sides of the main line. Occasionally, an obsidian tool was used directly on the rock to scrape away at the surface, leaving deep furrows.
Pecked petroglyphs are most common in this area but the other styles can be seen too.
This is the upper portion of the main site. There are four petroglyph panels here: an upper and a lower panel on the large outcropping, a small panel on the vertical rock surface upper right, and a panel behind the large outcropping.
I visited this particular site in the fall. Fall is often the best time to visit the desert. The light can be crisp and golden, the summer heat has broken, and the dirt roads, while dusty and sandy, are perfectly dry and any damage done by winter rains had either been repaired or smoothed out by many vehicles passing by.
In my case, my visit was marked by bad light conditions for photographs – the sharp autumn light glared off the reflective desert varnish and made photography tricky. Additionally, the eponymous feature of this site is very difficult to photograph – some of the most interesting petroglyphs lie inside a tall, narrow fissure that barely accommodates a person, let alone one with a camera.
Still, none of that detracted from a special visit. Most of the petroglyphs are in great condition. The two most easily seen panels have both been vandalized by fools with guns. This is unfortunately not uncommon in this area. Some of the panels are a little harder to reach and that small barrier to access is fortunately enough to keep the knuckleheads away.
This lower boulder is the most easily visible part of the site. It sits a little away from the cliff behind it. The surface is scoured, maybe by blowing sand from the sandy plain below. Unfortunately it attracted the attention of vandals who shot at it in the recent past. The panel consists of densely packed Rectilinear and Linear designs, with a few Curvilinear ( shield ) designs thrown in as well. Lower left is a large rake symbol – a very common entoptic pattern.
First, let’s take a look at the lower panel. The petroglyphs are well-formed if a little spindly. The two shield designs and the Rectilinear element have many small pecks filling up the interior. The “turtle shell” element in the center of the panel can also be found in other areas and seem to be a common entoptic pattern.
A better look at the upper petroglyphs. To get to this panel you have to perch precariously on the rock shelf seen in the lower part of this photo and then lean over a two-foot gap to get close enough to the rock surface. I didn’t attempt to climb up on the rock shelf myself – it seemed too dangerous! Instead, I took this picture from the ground using a telephoto lens. The artist must have been really dedicated to reaching that spot. The concentric circle, Rectilinear grid, and shields seen here are all entoptic pictures, depicting imagery that someone under the influence of a hallucinogenic substance may see with their mind’s eye. There are also a couple of bullet holes in this panel.
Another look at the upper panel. It was shot at and damaged. The designs are well-made but small compared to the available rock surface, and pretty small for petroglyphs. I think this is because you have to lean over and brace yourself against the rock in order to reach the panel. The artist was probably restricted by having to brace with one hand, leaving the other free to work the rock surface, and thus none of the designs are larger than the limited area that you can reach by working in this way.
Like most other sites in the Volcanic Tablelands this site is pecked into tumbled boulders forming a low cliff running north to south. The rock here is soft, often a type of tuff or breccia, with a distinct pinkish tint to it. These low cliffs give way to flat, sandy, featureless valleys until the next ridge rises. The Owens River and Fish Slough wind their ways through the Tablelands, draining the Mono catchment basin down south to decimated Lake Owens – a lake dried up by the city of Los Angeles importing fresh water from two mountain ranges away in lieu of desalinating the ocean at its flank.
This area used to sustain the Paiute and the Northern Shoshone. The rivers provided fish and riparian creatures, the mountain slopes provided pinyon nuts, and the fall and spring deer migrations provided access to game as deer streamed to and from the High Sierra meadows, trading the snow for the lowlands and the hot desert for cool meadows depending on the season.
These two curved lines are etched deeply about halfway between the upper and lower petroglyph panels.
The entrance to the eponymous crack. Right at the mouth is a very deeply etched design, a smaller and larger set of concentric circles joined by a bar. Inside the narrow gap a series of petroglyphs, many almost entirely covered in lichen, runs along one side of the crack. The patch of bright green lichen inside the crack, between the two petroglyph panels, is near something interesting we will look at later.
A slightly different angle, showing the crack and the petroglyph panel inside it. The petroglyphs were nearly impossible to photograph properly. The crack is narrow, barely leaving room for a person, let alone one trying to wield a camera.
A look at most of the petroglyphs inside the crack. For the most part the different Curvilinear and Rectilinear symbols are connected with meander lines.
One of the shield symbols inside the crack.
One of the petroglyphs inside the crack. The large gray-green patches of lichen have grown over many of the designs.
Photography inside the crack was a struggle. Most of my pictures look like this – kind of off center, not quite in focus!
The area around the brightly colored lime green lichen. Look closely – the lichen grows inside petroglyphs.
Well! DStretch helps a little. These are two spindly deer, the upper with a tiny body and long legs, the lower more full-bodied. The upper design reminds me of a fawn, all legs and a tiny body. The lower may then be its mother. The deer faces right.
The smooth rock face opposite the crack has a petroglyph panel consisting of three deer of increasing size, stacked on top of each other.
The large deer at the bottom. These symbols are all made with small, shallow pecks at the rock.
Researchers have tied the area’s petroglyphs to the hunting of game, pointing out that petroglyphs often occurred along migration trails and often depicted the prey.
Some of these sites are definitely evocative of this so-called “hunting magic” and probably trace their origins back to some aspect of the hunt, but many more consist only of abstract designs – designs, it turns out, that mirror the entoptic imagery seen by someone under the influence of a hallucinogenic substance such as datura or Native tobacco.
The middle deer. All three have the curved boat-like bodies typical of game animal depiction in this region.
This gave rise to theories that these petroglyphs were made by shamans instead, recording the vision quests they embarked on.
To me, it seems like both theories have their place and both are supported by some of the sites we can still see today.
We have to make our peace with the fact that we will likely never know exactly what these sites mean and why they were made. Sometimes, a culture is simply lost and we no longer have access to what they believed and practiced.
The smallest deer at the top of the panel.
Maybe that is the case with much of the culture of this continent, too. I enjoy seeing these images reaching out from the past to the present and thinking about what they meant. I enjoy the artistic expression, the way they amplify and enhance the beauty of the desert. I don’t feel any great need to interpret every last symbol. Sometimes it seems to me that I understand the meaning behind the panels, and that is exciting. Other times, I have no idea of the why of what I’m looking at – and that’s OK too.
A little distance away from these petroglyphs is another site, sheltered under the cliff side. Unlike the petroglyphs we’ve seen so far, where there is no sign of habitation – no shelters, no lithic scatter, no metates or mortars – there might be a housing circle here, tucked against the cliff besides the petroglyphs.
There is a second petroglyph site a short distance away. The petroglyphs are on the rightmost of the three rocks in the upper center of the picture.
These petroglyphs are pretty rudimentary, scratched shallowly into the rock surface. The panel has been shot at numerous times, damaging some of the designs.
This looks like a rock circle, the base of a housing structure. It is tucked in at the base of a cliff just west of the petroglyph panel we just looked at.
Finally, there seems to be another petroglyph boulder not too far from these two sites.
As we pack up to leave this boulder catches my eye. There is a patch of red pigment on it, and in places the lichen streaks seem a little too regular to be natural.
It takes some pretty extreme DStretching, but yes, this boulder also has petroglyphs on it, now almost entirely smoothed away by erosion.
Like many other sites this one has suffered vandalism. If you visit it, do leave it as you found it. Don’t touch the petroglyphs, don’t damage the rocks, and leave no trace that you were here. Others would like to see this site as well, and it is up to those of us who visit to preserve it for those who will follow.