Many of the rock shelters in Joshua Tree National Park are at least partly formed by a natural erosion process called exfoliation. There are different theories as to how exactly this process works. The theory currents in favor is that it is caused by rain breaching the surface of the granite and interacting with the minerals in the rock, causing expansion which over time causes the surface to flake off.
This companion site to the more well-known Red Lady or “Lone Woman of the Cave” site in Joshua Tree National Park is located in the same general vicinity.
It is also thought to depict the Chemehuevi legend of Tavapëtsi, the Sun, impregnating a woman with rays of sunlight ( specifically, the fan of light that can be seen shining down from the sun when the atmospheric conditions are just right ). The legend claims that the woman birthed twin sons for Tavapëtsi. In general, the legend is tied to the spring equinox and the period of fertility spring brings to nature.
I first visited this site about three years ago in the dead of winter. During our first visit we encountered the remnants of a recent cold snap: little drifts of snow and frozen tanks of water. Most people don’t associate Joshua Trees and towering White Tank granite boulders with snow, but if you visit Joshua Tree National Park at the right time you’re in for a surprising treat.
During that visit we crunched our way up the frozen washes. Instead of slogging through soft sand we were walking on top of frozen sand! We made our way past frozen pools of water and carefully scrambled over icy boulders. Granite is slick enough when dry – add a nice layer of ice on top and you risk your tailbone with every scramble.
This is one of the earliest pictograph sites I found, right at the beginning of my interest in hunting for these sites. Back then I carried a dinky compact camera in my pocket and very little knowledge of site photography in my head.
Despite their poor quality ( so poor that I’d never actually post them here! ) I enjoy looking at the photos I took of this site back then because they remind me vividly of what it felt like to discover this site for the first time – the excitement of peering up at it in the gathering dusk and realizing that the overhang contained paintings, the hurried scurrying about trying to find a route up, and finally peering into the shelter with a big smile before snapping a few hurried shots and hightailing it out of there before dark traps me in the backcountry. ( Back then I seemingly had a talent for discovering sites at the last possible moment, turning a sweaty day of frustration into a highlight at the last moment. )
This site is also in a very remote part of Joshua Tree National Park. The boulder itself looks very promising – grotesquely hollowed – but the pictographs themselves are rather nondescript. The ceiling of the hollow boulder contains a few red elements as well as evenly distributed splatters of black pigment down the two sides.
These splatters of black pigment form an interesting counterpoint to what is present at the Lone Woman site – at that site the alcove next to the Lone Woman pictograph is splattered in red and there are some black pictographs present. Here, the splatters are black and the pictographs are red.
Often a site consists of a handful of pictographs, or a few petroglyphs, or perhaps a granite slab hosting bedrock mortars. Sometimes, the mortars and the pictographs go together. Other times, there might be grinding slicks close to petroglyphs.
This is the first time I’ve found all three in one location!
I am the kind of person who looks at a topo map and thinks “Oooh, look at this lonely spot way over here, far away from anything! I wonder what it’s like over here?” Oddly named meadows and creeks, hidden little valleys and lakes draw me in.
This is why I sometimes end up on some really silly hikes … way off in the sticks. Sometimes I find nothing but solitude and natural beauty, other times I find something interesting. This entry is the result of one such hike.
I made my first acquaintance with “The Lone Woman of the Cave” a few years ago as I hurried out of the backcountry with the sun setting behind the hills. Though it was a pleasant enough evening there was a fall chill in the air and a day of exploring made my limbs heavy. It was a good time to be leaving the desert for the comforts of civilization.
Joshua Tree National Park is one of my favorite places. By now many of its nooks and crannies are comforting and familiar to me. The towering piles of stone, the clean yet erratic lines of the Joshua trees, the sparse foliage of the creosote, the arid smell of juniper and the slick limbs of manzanita … all of these hold a dear place in my heart. The desert is sharp and clean in scent and look. It draws me in. I even spare a kindly thought towards the yucca, as long as its mighty, menacing, pointy leaves don’t skewer me. I have “kabob candidate” stamped on my forehead as far as yuccas are concerned.
The area these pictographs are found in is peppered with pictograph sites – some elaborate, others just a few dabs of pigment in a secret spot.
The Serrano have lived in this area for so long that their creation myth ties them to the nearby oasis of Maara’ ( in present-day Twentynine Palms, close to the Joshua Tree National Park headquarters ) as opposed to other creation myths that are often more general, or intertwined with a migration story.