We’ve been to some pretty amazing sites in Joshua Tree National Park, and it is hard to pick a favorite. Some are awe-inspiring because their pictographs are tucked away out of the reach of the elements and still as pristine as the day they were painted, however many years ago. Others have evocative imagery or a strong sense of place and of the people that made them. And others simply defy description: isolated, extensive, awe-inspiring.

The site I’m writing about today fits in this third category. It is in an impossibly hard to get to spot. We had to spend hours scrambling, clinging to unforgiving terrain, and sometimes simply slogging for some distance over non-murderous terrain, in order to reach it. We were setting out for this area because I had a hunch about it a few years back. At that time we had a go at reaching the vicinity but got turned back by winter weather.

Today, though, was different. We toiled under the bright spring sun. The day was warm but not hot, one of the final days of spring just before summer bears down. We had already come a long way and had just picked our way through some challenging terrain when we dropped down into a wash where we could simply walk, without fear of courting disaster with one misstep. It didn’t take long for my partner to notice something interesting up ahead, and as he does when he has his sights on something, he pulled ahead of me easily. I followed, and still had a little dry waterfall to negotiate when I could see him up ahead making a beeline for an opening under a huge boulder, his movements excited. This was one of those sites where you immediately could sense it was something special as you approached.

I was still picking my way down when he disappeared into the long, low tunnel that forms the site. By the time I reached the spot where he had dropped his pack he was back, and grinning. I peered into the darkness under the boulder, my eyes not used to shade after the bright desert light, and asked “Found something?” He said something along the lines of “Jackpot!” so I quickly did what I usually do at new sites: I shrugged out of my backpack and in my excitement to see the discovery I promptly found the nearest cactus to walk into ( just kidding! It has happened before, but in this case my partner warned me to look down at the cactus I was about to get tangled with — just in time! ). Once my eyes adjusted to the gloom under the boulder I realized that we had indeed found something special. It wasn’t just that the cave was spacious and unusual – it was also that there was a grinding station by the entrance, and right on top it, perched on one of the slicks sat a mano, left undisturbed for all these years.

Let’s look!

Look at that! You can just make out the mano sitting at the entrance, if you squint really hard. In the foreground is the cactus I almost collided with.

Up close. This shelter is huge! I’ve been in a hollow boulder larger than this one once before but that boulder had no pictographs whatsoever. The bedrock in the foreground has grinding slicks, and my heart beats faster when I see the mano. Finally – a site where a mano still sits atop the grinding slick it was last used at! Wow.

The pictographs are painted along the northerly side of a long, low tunnel under a boulder. You can see some of them peeking out in the top right corner of this photo. There’s also a lot of surface left unadorned in this shelter.

The mano is smoothed by many years of use. You can see the reflective surfaces where the granite bedrock was worn smooth by use.

Yes, I will show one more picture of that mano! This was a thrilling discovery for me. I have never found a site that wasn’t picked clean of artifacts before. I leave the mano just where it is – I do not even pick it up. I only run my hand across it once, to feel how smooth it is.

First, we will examine this panel, close by the entrance with the mano. There are large pictographs, possibly painted at at least two different times based on the pigment coloration and wear, on the surface that stretches from the left-center of this photo towards the interior of the shelter.

A bit of DStretch to show how the elements fit together. These elements are quite large and the shelter is fairly narrow, so it was difficult to get good overview pictures of the panels.

Over on the left we have a large abstract element, painted in a purplish pigment, barely visible in this picture, and also an elaborate diamond-chain net.

This diamond chain motif or net is very evocative – south of here it is associated with female puberty rites, and in the creation myths of this area the creator figure used a net to cast the sun up into the sky. This motif is frequently found in large shelters in the greater area. The purplish element is abstract and appears unrefined next to the carefully drawn diamonds.

The other end of the diamond chain terminates near some wavy vertical lines, and past that are two spoked elements and a very elaborate burst-like element made up of chevron shapes. It looks like there’s also some black pigment in the lower left portion of the panel, doesn’t it? Is that a bisected circle?

What a view! This colorful DStretch enhancement shows the whole panel. There are definitely two black elements, two circles atop each other with a line bisecting them vertically. This element is very common in the Great Basin and the Mojave. It shows up in petroglyphs, tiny red pictographs, big black pictographs, big red pictographs … it is an important element in this region for sure. There are also two spoked elements, a smaller one drawn in the same pigment as the diamond chain and the burst, and a larger one, also more faded just like the abstract element on the left. Finally, we have the wavy lines and below them a loose, Linear starburst shape.

Let’s have a closer look at the collection of bursts and spoked circles.

After applying some DStretch we can examine them in detail. The burst in the lower left is pretty faded, but in this close-up we can see that it actually overlays the black element, which in turn seems to be overlaid by the chevron burst element, which in turn might be overlaid by the spoked elements.

This is already a nice find, isn’t it? Seeing a diamond chain this large and elaborate is not common in this part of the desert.

We were not done with this shelter, however. After examining this panel we crawled deeper into the shelter. Tired from our long walk, we brought our backpacks in, set the cameras aside, and rooted through our packs for our lunch. As we ate and downed water, trying to restore some semblance of normality to our parched and tired bodies, we kept gazing at the pictographs. We were sitting underneath the second panel, struck by its sheer size. As I gazed at it something tickled in the back of my mind about the shape of some of the elements, but I didn’t realize what my brain was trying to say until I examined the panel more closely – and then that realization turned this site from “marvelous” into “fantastic, unbelievable!”.

Curious? Then have a look at The Gallery, the second part of this site.