Today’s site is another lesson in the “Once you’ve looked at all the obvious petroglyphs or pictographs, start looking around for the hidden ones!” track. There’s a small but well-remembered list of sites where I’ve done the hard work of finding the site and taking pictures, only to learn later that “But wait! There’s more!” For at least one of those sites I know I missed a large panel of petroglyphs. Walked right by it, basically, and didn’t see it. I haven’t been back because it is one of those “many miles” sites, and the miles weren’t easy, either!
So, on to today’s “take a real good look around” site. In this case, it wasn’t me who didn’t look around – it was another source, whose site report I read. And if I had gone by that site report, well, I would have missed some petroglyphs. I found that there were plenty more petroglyphs on the top of a large boulder, directly below the rather rudimentary element that formed all of the site report.
Looking at the pictures from this site reminds me of something: as I walk along ridges on the Volcanic Tablelands, looking for these signs of the past, I’m forced to acknowledge that I may be walking right past some beautiful sites without knowing it. These ridges are often formed of vast, tumbled boulders, and climbing into each nook and cranny would be a monumental task, requiring more free time than I have in this world. So instead I walk the ridges and do my best to inspect anything that looks interesting, while knowing that I may be missing a lot.
Let’s look!
I’m cheating here – this is not the view you’d see from the bottom of the ridge! I already climbed up some and I can see the horizontal panel poking out below the scratched “checkerboard”. Also note the little petroglyph on the large boulder behind the checkerboard. That little guy caused me to clamber up the back of the checkerboard boulder ( which was the only way to get good pictures of the horizontal panel, as it turned out ). Trust me, that boulder is bigger than it looks. For someone like me who starts feeling woozy when I stand on my tippy-toes it was quite the ordeal! Once I was done taking pictures I had to cling to the top of the boulder and think happy thoughts for a little bit before I could slide back down. I was actually not doing that badly until I was done taking pictures – gazing through the viewfinder is really disorienting for me for some reason.This view is more representative of what you’d see when you first approach. If you don’t climb up into the rock pile and peer at the top of the boulder below the checkerboard you’ll miss out on an interesting panel.The checkerboard. It is rubbed into the rock face, petering out towards the right and the bottom. I think a right-handed artist made it, starting in the natural top left position and working down, with decreasing dedication, so the element peters out in the areas that were worked last. Or maybe it was a left-handed artist, perched on the boulder below the element, able to exert more force towards the top left than the bottom right, as would be natural for a left-hander? Interesting possibilities.Closer look. There’s a slightly awkward scramble ( don’t get high-centered! ) over an angled boulder to get to the point where you can hold the camera over your head and take a shot like this one. This looks like a really interesting panel but I’m not sure how to get better shots of it. I could technically scramble up on the boulder it is on but I’m not going to do that – these boulders are more fragile than they look and I don’t want to damage it.Time for some close looks. Isn’t this wild? These three elements have the same design – circle, squiggle tail – that is found very commonly in the Great Basin and the Mojave desert, but here the leftmost one’s circle was turned into a cupule. Tiny dots of lichen are sprouting, glad for the occasional moisture pooling in the indentation.I’m still in “let me stand on tippy toes and lean over the boulder with the camera over my head and see what I get” mode. It leads to this picture of another part of the panel where an element was also gouged out to form a shallow depression.Now I’m up above the panel, having scrambled up the backside of the “checkerboard” boulder, and I changed lenses. This gives me a good top-down view of the boulder, but the drastically narrowed field of vision I experience through the viewfinder will also give me a case of the “I’m up too high now” creepies soon. Right now I’m staying safe by peeking down through a cleft in the top of the boulder, but soon I will be leaning over the top of this boulder for better angles.Here is a nice close up view of a couple of concentric circles, heavily filled in by lichen in parts.From my new vantage point I can see more detail. Those three circles with squiggle line tails actually form a single element! Here it is – the squiggle tails join up, just visible in the bottom left of the photo. Some dumbbell elements round out this part of the panel.Over on the edge of the boulder is a somewhat typical shield element. More elaborate examples exist in the same region, for example at the Chalfant site. This one has a trail of eight pecked dots leading away to the edge of the boulder.I’m presenting the pictures out of order – if I was aiming to tell a nice story about this panel I’d be examining the panel in order! But this is the order I took them in and maybe this disjointed progression helps to represent my precarious perch way up above the panel, snapping pictures in between going “gosh man, oh no, I’m not much good at heights am I?” Remember the three circles with squiggle tails? Over to the very right you can see some of the tails. The element with the pecked out circle above it is also visible, lower center. That same design repeats just above, another circle with multiple lines radiating from one side of it, but in that case the circle is hollow.Back with the wide-angle lens, I snap an overview of the entire panel. Phew! Maybe now I can get down off of this boulder and stand on my own two feet again. But first I gotta take a quick shot of this rather elementary element, close to the lip of the big boulder I’ve been uneasily clinging to to take the previous pictures.Oh, and this element up top, too! Not that I can get a full view while sitting on the boulder. I’m going to have to stand up, close to the top of this steeply angled boulder, right above the checkerboard and a heck of a way down if I stumble, just to take a picture of this one element. Wise? Maybe not. Worth it? Always!You better appreciate this picture of a weird diamond chain element with two antennae, sun flare and all. It was a terrifying experience getting it!On the way down I spot a single fleck of obsidian.
So, that’s it! A neat little site, tucked away on one of the many, many ridges that traverses the Volcanic Tablelands. I really enjoyed finding this little site, and discovering its hidden petroglyphs ( though some of the joy was of the retro-active, “I’ve-done-it!” kind, since clambering up on that big boulder to take some photographs from above was terrifying! )
