“Sky Portal” Pictographs

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Last I checked, we’ve visited around 40 sites in Joshua Tree National Park. Some of these, exposed to the elements, are more weathered than others. Others, like the “Diamond Solstice” site, are open to the sky but well-sheltered by an overhang and face away from the prevailing wind, so the pictographs are still pretty vivid. And some, like the “Hidden Cave” or “Sunny Side Up” sites, have the pictographs completely enclosed and protected from the elements, so they are still very, very vibrant.

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“Take a Bow” Pictographs

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We happened upon a small pictograph site on a rather desolate hill in Kawaiisu territory one hot summer day. I had foolishly thought that, since the desert was out of bounds with inhumane temperatures, we could at least enjoy the foothills in early morning. Turned out I was really wrong! Boy! It was barely 10 in the morning and we were already sweating buckets in sweltering temperatures and looking forward to recuperating at a nice microbrewery on the way back home. Beware the summer, everyone!

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“Faraway Find” Pictographs

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Over the winter we found a small site with some unusual imagery out in Joshua Tree. Some of the elements are reminiscent of the pictographs at Counsel Rocks, which lies many miles to the north. This site seems like it was part of a habitation site at some point because there is a pretty big patch of midden a short distance away, but I didn’t find any grinding slicks adjacent to it.

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“Tale of Years” – The Twins

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A couple of years ago I was in the area and went to visit the “Tale Of Years” site again, since my pictures from my first visit to this site were not that great. The site was still in good condition back then, and now, more than two years later, I finally get around to posting the pictures.

For a complete overview of the site, see the original post I linked to above. Here I’m just going to touch on a handful of highlights that are better shown with this set of pictures.

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“Smooth Sailing” Pictographs

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Okay, so this little site was a complete surprise, and is a bit of a mystery to me!

Backing up a bit: the summer heat had baked us clean out of the high desert, so we fled for the Sierra foothills, only to find that we brought the heat along with us. I was plodding up a slope, head down, thinking thoughts about being another few thousand feet higher up where maybe, finally, the summer heat would let up, and wondering why it felt like I just couldn’t reach that nice-looking rock I wanted to check out … when I lifted my head, saw the rock right in front of me, and … stared blankly at what seemed like a blank rock face.

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Counsel Rocks – Womb Rock Petroglyphs

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This is one of the most awe-inspiring sites I’ve visited to date, because of the feeling of great age and meaning that surrounds this site – more so than most other sites I have been to. The volcanic tuff making up the boulders in this vicinity is relatively soft ( for rock! ) but also quite rough to the touch. Yet, at this site, a lot of the surface area is worn smooth and patinated. That is the kind of look only rock touched by human hands over a great period of time will acquire.

Some researchers speculated about the astronomical ties this site might have to the winter solstice, and estimated that the site may have first come into use at around 250 B.C. to 250 A.D. If true, that is an impressive age.

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“Slick City” Habitation and Petroglyph Site

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Sometimes you come across a site that is almost stupefying in its sheer abundance – petroglyphs on every rock, for a quarter mile or more. These sites are thrilling to find, but they are difficult to document. I have a few like that sitting on the back burner, where every time I open the photo folder I think “I can’t really not show any of these 200 photos I picked from the 500 I took, they’re all good photos showing interesting elements … but who would want to sit through a blog post the length of a football field?”

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“Spoke and Tail” Pictographs

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Parts of Joshua Tree National Park can be bewildering and dangerous if you’re not used to navigating overland, or not careful when you do wander.

For example, the Wonderland of Rocks has a reputation for being bewildering, and it can be if you are new to traveling overland, or have a bad sense of direction. Of course, it is potentially dangerous if you go alone, but the danger is not so much in getting lost as it is in slipping and falling while scrambling!

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“Take the Turn” Petroglyphs

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Sometimes you can have a good day by simply pointing the nose of your vehicle off the beaten track.

One spring morning, we were doing just that, leaving one of Nevada’s straight, lonely paved roads and nosing down a dirt track, in search of what lies over the ridge. Think about it: you have a lonely paved road, sparsely travelled … and only a tiny fraction of this road’s sparse travelers ever turn to go beyond the scrubby ridges that make up their horizon as the road they follow winds from basin to ridge to flat to ridge and back down to basin again.

But we wanted to see what the world looked like, and so we followed the dirt road.

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