We’re out in the desert – wandering, poking around piles of granite, looking for signs of the past. We’ve certainly found some signs of the recent past, since there are some dirt tracks leading to the area. In particular, I found a fresh campsite. I know it is fresh because, well … last night’s dinner didn’t go well for somebody and they didn’t even bother concealing the evidence. Yucky!
But now we’ve wandered past all that to a large outcropping. At this point we decided on split duty – one of us going around it each way – and we just met up again at the back end. While gazing across the desert deciding where to head next, I happen to do the sensible thing and gaze up at the rock pile. We’ve both done our due diligence all the way round, except right here where we met back up in a sandy wash down underneath a towering cliff with a high ledge. Good thing these pictographs were large because I could see them from ground level!
The view from up on the rocky ledge. It’s very pleasant up here – shady and cool, good views – so I fully expect to find some grinding slicks or similar signs of occupation. Alas, nothing of that sort.But we did find this! We don’t just climb up any old rock pile we find. I mean, that would be fun to do, but there are so, so many of them out in the desert – you would make no progress at al that way, though you would meet a lot of rocks! No, something caught my eye and that’s why we picked our way up – and here it is. We were peering up from down below, going “That can’t be natural” … and we were right. This is a pretty large pictograph, sitting all by itself in a little alcove.Well, I say all by itself, but my eyes are still adjusting to the dim light in this shady alcove. After few seconds, I notice what looks like a faint scratched petroglyph, situated below the pictograph ( lower left in this picture ). A better look. There’s some natural weathering on this boulder – cracks with rain water leeching out the minerals can create lighter colored lines where the cracks are, examples abound in this picture – but I think there is also a rudimentary pecked or rubbed petroglyph here.That does look like a Rectilinear element, right?And oh, I think there’s something more over here! Do you see the two patches of faint pigment?Over on the left, I think we have a rake element with three tines.And over on the right, a rake with two tines? Pi?Yes and yes. It takes some tweaking in DStretch, but I think that’s exactly what we can see in this panel – and look! There’s a bonus T-shaped pictograph up on the top that I did not see with the naked eye while at the site.These pictographs are extremely weathered, which I find amazing. The alcove and overhang seems pretty well protected on this fine late winter morning, as we look out over the desert. But water must have gotten in here over the years to erode them away.Back to the three lines that drew us in in the first place.These are still pretty vibrant and DStretch doesn’t reveal any additional details that would escape a naked eye view. I think these were drawn with a brush of some kind, as opposed to being drawn with a finger tip for example, because of the sharp lines and the narrow points at the top of the line. To me this suggests they were drawn top down, with the pigment petering out towards the bottom as the brush dried out.A glance back at the site of the pictographs and possible petroglyph, as I prepare to put my cameras away.
It was still a bit early for lunch as we moved on from this site, which I regretted a little later – it sure would have made a comfortable, shady spot to lunch in, compared to where we ended up! We did find a boulder later on that provided shade and decent sitting, and had our lunch there, but this little spot would have been better. It has great views and nice cool shade. We ended up huddled by a boulder where there wasn’t much in the way of views, but in the desert you pick shade over all else.
