<\/p>\n
Or wait … maybe not. Was that pigment? Just a little bit of pigment? Yes? Maybe? ( Please don’t let this excursion be for nothing! )<\/p>\n
Sure enough, it was pigment. And I found a bit more around the back of the boulder, too. Well! Good start! The pictographs were extremely faded, though. I peered closely at the rock. Even with polarized sunglasses it felt like the rock stared right back, with all the glare the pale granite could muster under the summer sun – which was a lot!<\/p>\n
Yeah, definitely pigment. I fumbled my iPad out of its protective snap cover and called up DStretch. A few shots later I was sure this rock was worth photographing. On the iPad screen it was hard to make out detail, especially in the bright sunlight, but I did my best, framing the boulder in the shots even as the sun bore down and every pore I had opened its floodgates.<\/p>\n
Pictures taken, I fled downhill, back to the vehicle. I suddenly felt some sympathy towards Gollum. The mid-summer Sun isn’t friendly!<\/p>\n
Once I reached the vehicle I put away a bottle of cold water like it was nothing. It was just too dang hot to be out exploring.<\/p>\n
Once I got home and pulled the pictures off the camera I was a bit … surprised. I’m not quite sure what to make of these. So let’s look at them together, shall we?<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.peregriff.com\/wanderings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/DSC_5114.jpg?ssl=1\")
<\/a>After a bit of a slog, I look up to see this curious split boulder. Do you see the pigment on either side of the large crack?<\/p><\/div>\n
<\/a>Let’s have a closer look. There’s not much on the left side, but there appears to be a curved, hash-marked line on the right side.<\/p><\/div>\n
<\/a>Sure enough! I had hoped that really dialing up the intensity at home would reveal that that curved hashmark line was a giant circle covering the boulder face, but sadly I can’t tease anything like that out of the boulder.<\/p><\/div>\n
<\/a>It’s the far side of this boulder that really surprised me, though. I found a tiny bit of pigment in the center of it, took a picture with the iPad, looked at it with DStretch, went, hmmmm okay, looks like I need to zoom out a bit … I repeated that a few times until I could see the whole boulder, and I stumbled on this …<\/p><\/div>\n
<\/a>Well! What do you make of that? It kind of looks like a sailing ship with a curved prow and stern, doesn’t it? And also two figures standing back of the sail? And two circular elements, one below and one above the boat? And … uhm … is that front figure a little bit … intimidating? Like a hunched over insectoid figure? Maybe?<\/p><\/div>\n
<\/a>I’m on firmer ground with concentric circle pictographs, so let’s have a nice close look at this one. It is very faded.<\/p><\/div>\n
<\/a>DStretch shows us a nice set of three concentric circles, each with a bit of a peak towards the top.<\/p><\/div>\n
<\/a>The other circular element is even more faded.<\/p><\/div>\n
<\/a>It appears to be a shield design.<\/p><\/div>\n
<\/a>Time to glance back at the main design …<\/p><\/div>\n
<\/a>Boy, that ship-like element is still there. It wasn’t just the blistering sun baking my brain a bit too much. In this DStretch enhancement some of the lichen on the rock gets colored in red, but pay attention to the “stern” of the “ship”. Looks like there’s a few slanted cross-hatches there.<\/p><\/div>\n
<\/a>Finally, back in more typical pictograph territory, did you notice the Linear element in that upper alcove, way up the boulder?<\/p><\/div>\n
<\/a>Here it is again. Notice the lichen growing over the pictograph. This is not a recent pictograph panel. The weathering alone suggests that, but that could be due to a bad binding agent in the pigment. The lichen is perhaps a more reliable indicator of age.<\/p><\/div>\n