Way back, when I first became interested in pictographs and petroglyphs, I picked up some information about a little site tucked away close to my corner of the world. I had a single reference to it, which gave me a single clue about how to find it: it was actually visible from a nearby road, if you knew to look for it.
The boulder, viewed from the side.
When I first read that, I started thinking back to my previous drives in the area — and remembered that once, I did see this rock by the road, and I did think: “Hey, that doesn’t look natural!”
In short order I had convinced myself that I had seen this site before and just didn’t realize it at the time. Now things became frustrating. You know how you run into a problem and solve it, but forget how, and then months later you have the same problem again? And you remember you solved it before, but not how? That makes the second go-around twice as frustrating. If only you could remember what you did before – you wouldn’t have to deal with this again!
DStretch works wonders to show the design more clearly.
That is how it was for me and this site. At one point I was up in the area quite a lot, hunting for other things, and I kept glancing at every rock by the roadway as I drove, hoping to spot it again. ( Pro tip: do not do this. It alarms your passengers. )
I never did find it in this fashion. I had to wait until I stumbled upon a second clue that narrowed down my search area from “all of it” to “one of these three or four places, probably.”
At that point I set out with my gear and went through the areas of interest one by one. My first guess was way off, and so was my second. On my way to the third area, I backtracked over terrain I had covered before. And guess what – this time I *did* spot it from the car! Wow!
I am now certain that I did not actually see it from the road before. It is really, really hard to see. I would not have spotted it by accident. I just made that memory up to torture myself.
Viewed from the front, we can see how the lower left portion of the design is almost completely erased by weathering.
After finally spotting it I parked in the first available spot and skittered back to my prize. Finally! At last! Hooray!
Since this little site has been so inflated in my mind, I was a little put out by how small it actually was. The boulder that hosts it is wholly unremarkable: a mundane, smallish little boulder in a whole field of mundane, smallish little boulders.
At a glance the red ochre coloring on the boulder appears natural.
Still, I eagerly walked up to it and crouched down in the first likely spot to take a picture from. As I did so I noticed something half-buried in the dirt.
A 2GB memory chip! Someone else had been here and thought this very spot was a great one to take a photo from, though the area showed no signs of a visit ( a respectful visitor, then. )
Examining the memory card showed it to be a bit dusty and slightly scratched up, but otherwise in good condition. In particular, no fading of the label, or wrinkling caused by moisture, though the label was blistering slightly in two spots.
Flooding the image with red shows that the upper left has a “wing” that mirrors the clearer design on the right.
The past three years have been very dry ones, so the card may have been in the elements for a while despite appearing in such good condition. I picked it up and saved it for later examination.
The site itself is almost certainly a remnant of a larger habitation site. The hillside was dynamited and leveled for road building about 30 feet away, destroying part of the site.
This boulder as well as one with a shallow bedrock mortar are the only parts remaining in this area.
Some other habitation sites are scattered nearby.
The boulder and bedrock mortar.
The entire panel is a little over two feet across and three feet tall. The pictographs are partly faded. In particular the lower left portion of the site has suffered almost complete deterioration.
Some DStretch work teased out the remnants, and the symmetrical nature of the design makes it possible to guess at the missing parts, but a lot has definitely been lost.
The boulder face is entirely open to the elements. The tiny overhang may be protecting the right side of the panel somewhat from the prevailing winds or wind-driven rain, but on the whole, this boulder will continue to weather until it is completely erased.
The upper portion, enhanced with a different DStretch algorithm to show the symmetry of the upper elements.
The upper portion of the design shows an angled crossbar, with a burst-like element at upper left and several small hashmarks along the line. The central “horseshoe” drops down from the middle of the line, forming a large teardrop with double borders and a central line.
The lower portion, showing that the horseshoe-like design is closed to form a full half-circle.
There are three vertical lines at the top of each half, forming a triangle with a double border at the bottom. The double lines forming the outsides of the teardrop only starts below these lines, which are offset from each other.
The upper ends of the crossbar is connected partway down the central element by curved lines, with two more lines bisecting each shape created in this manner. This design repeats in the lower half of the teardrop shape.
A natural-color view of the entire panel.
Despite being close by a road, this site has suffered no vandalism. If you do visit it, please respect the fragile nature of the design and do not hasten its demise by touching the pigment. Your touch can rub off the paint or deposit skin oils that damage the pigment over time. Leave this site as you found it to help it endure for as long as it can.
PS: The memory card was actually still readable, though blank. It was formatted for a Canon camera. Later on, I discovered a worse for wear 85mm Canon lens cap en route to another site in the vicinity. So … I may have your memory card and lens cap, and you may have a camera bag with a hole in it!