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!
But there are other parts of the Park where you can also easily get lost … and we were out in one of those areas one morning in the early spring. We both have a solid sense of direction and we have been rambling overland for many years now, so we were enjoying our walk. As we walked I recalled some of our first overland trips and how dangerous it felt then to be simply doing what our ancestors did for years on end – navigate across the land. I thought about how natural and relaxing it now felt to do so. We were not far from the part of the Park where we first developed a taste for going overland, and I remembered how concerned I was that we would get lost then. ( Spoiler: we totally did take a wrong turn and had a much longer walk than necessary! ) That was then, and this was now, and what were doing now, wandering down a maze of little washes, felt natural and safe.
Eventually we climbed out of the maze to explore some nearby rock piles. The sky was partly overcast with that milky film that seem to show up a lot in the shoulder seasons. It kept some of the sun at bay and I was glad for it. This was our second day in the desert, and on the first day I was reminded that it wasn’t winter anymore, so short sleeved desert wandering meant sunburn!
The haze also flattened out the landscape and made taking landscape photos pretty futile, but fortunately that doesn’t matter when you are photographing a cramped rock shelter. Which was good, because we found one, and it had pictographs in it. Let’s look!
A boulder with an opening under it doesn’t go unchecked when I walk by, so we headed on up towards this one.
Our effort is immediately rewarded with a bit of pigment on the lip of the shelter, above my head as I enter the opening. There’s another fainter squiggle of pigment above and to the left of this streak as well. Do you see it?
Ah! That squiggle is actually part of a larger, faded element.
Let’s look closely at the area around that squiggly line … can you see the shape of the element? During my visit I had to look long and hard before I saw it.
Pretty neat, isn’t it? I haven’t seen this kind of element in Joshua Tree National Park before.
The shelter has more than just a streak of two of pigment in it, though. At the back there’s some pretty nice elements.
I’ve seen this motif of a spoked wheel and a trailing “tail” of dots or lines a few times now. Some of those sites were hundreds of miles from this one. Fascinating how certain elements repeat no matter the geographical location.
Down below this spoked element, which is the best preserved element at the site, there seems to be more to see.
Definitely some circles and lines here.
How about above us, up towards the ceiling? Yes, there’s some pigment here as well.
Need some DStretch for this, but not bad! There’s a tiny rake towards the left, and some small abstract elements around it.
The elements towards the back of the shelter, to the left of the spoked design, appear kind of indistinct, but there may be an anthropomorph here.
Not really sure … these elements are pretty smudged.
When I turn back around in the shelter I notice another faint dab of pigment just inside the lip of the shelter.
Here’s a really close look at that. What do you think? Natural streaks of oxide in the rock? Pigment?
DStretch sure gets excited about that pigment! I’m still not sure if this is just minerals leeching from the crack in the granite or not.
You have to be careful in these shelters. This one, like many others, has some packrat debris inside. This means just enough imported cholla needles that you can’t just sit down without looking.
We don’t go all that much further before another, larger shelter draws my attention.
Nothing exiting here, though. Just a pretty large but low-ceilinged shelter. As I sit there, a bit disappointed, I do notice something.
Again on the ceiling, a streak that does not look natural.
I wonder if some shaman or puberty rite participant huddled in this shelter long ago, perhaps recovering from the effects of a vision quest after they had painted the shelter we just visited, and accidentally brushed the ceiling with a stick or brush that still held pigment as they entered this shelter. Otherwise, this streak on the ceiling is just so random.
We spent a lot more time wandering, but nothing else turned up. Still, later that afternoon we found a nice bedrock mortar in a rock pile. There’s also about five little cupules on this boulder.
That’s a pretty nice mortar. Mortars are scarce in Joshua Tree National Park so it is nice to find one. See if you can spot the cupules.
On this trip we spent a great deal of our time just wandering. We didn’t find much in the way of sites but we still had the quiet of the desert around us, and had a relaxing time of it.
Make sure to tread softly should you visit this shelter. Don’t touch the pigment. This elements in this shelter are pretty faded now, and in an isolated spot where you may find it worthwhile to spend some time as well, and think about how the world used to be.