For the past few months, I've been fascinated by Native American rock art. My curiosity started in Nevada; during a rock climbing trip to Red Rock Canyon I saw a small abstract etching on a boulder. It piqued my interest. I was determined to see more of the mysterious etchings and paintings tucked away in secret corners of California.
But I quickly discovered that most Native American rock art is hidden to the public, and for good reason. Too many popular sacred sites have been vandalized and burglarized in the past. GPS coordinates are tightly guarded, specific directions are almost impossible to come by.
So I've spent countless hours online, reading the obscure blogs of amateur explorers, looking for clues. I've stared at Google Maps, scrutinizing hundreds of boulders for distinct features that I'd seen in photographs. I even made a trip to the rare books section at the library to make photocopies of an old Bureau of Land Management pamphlet and some research papers. Gradually, the clues piled up.
This trip to the Sierra and Coso mountains is the result of that research.
CANEBRAKE
My alarm goes off just before dawn in the Eastern Sierra, outside a small town called Canebrake. After six hours of driving through the darkness last night, I'm seeing my surroundings for the first time. Snow-capped mountains surround the campsite. Looking up the hillside, I catch a glimpse of the boulder that I came here to see.
On my way to the boulder, I come across an ancient milling station. About twenty bedrock mortars dot the surface of a large slab of granite. The holes in this rock were created through years of use; people of the Tübatulabal tribe gathered here hundreds of years ago to grind seeds and grains.
As I near the boulder, I'm perplexed by what appears to be a blank wall. Did I take a wrong turn, or was my research inaccurate? I step closer and stare at the face of the boulder for a minute. Slowly, faded red pictographs (rock paintings) start to appear. Starbursts, wheel designs, and line markings emerge from the granite. I'm in the right place.
This gif shows how software can bring out hidden details in photos of pictographs. Note the wheel design on the far left side.
A faint trail littered with obsidian flakes leads to another boulder two hundred yards north. The panel at this boulder is overhung and protected from the elements; the pictographs are still bright red. The bold color comes from red ochre, a clay pigment, which was typically mixed with a binding agent like egg white or plant sap to create paint.
The sun peeks through the clouds for a moment to light up the wall.
Anthropomorphic figures stare back at me from the wall, their arms and hands spread wide. Birdsongs disrupt the quiet as the world starts to wake up. Wind whistles through the rocks and trees. There's no one else around for miles.
A digitally enhanced photo of the anthropomorphic figures.
A twisty dirt road takes me high into the mountains to my next stop. In an alpine meadow, across a small creek, sits another massive granite boulder.
The only visible pictograph at this location is on the roof of an alcove, at least thirty feet above the ground. I spot the small wheel-shaped painting from below, and spend over half an hour trying to climb to it. Every possible route up the crumbly, damp cliff poses a potentially deadly fall. Alone and without ropes, it's too risky, even for a rock climber such as myself.
I stare up from below, blown away by the bravery of the person who painted that symbol. What did it mean to them? What was so important about that symbol, about that particular alcove, that they would risk life and limb to leave their mark upon the rock?
FOSSIL FALLS
9 Mile Canyon Road leads me down about three thousand feet from the mountains to the basin. My next stop is a volcanic basalt flow called Fossil Falls, named for a waterfall that was created by glacial meltwater about twenty thousand years ago. The waterfall has long since run dry, but a lake remains, along with an incredible collection of dark basalt cliffs and outcroppings. It's an ideal place to search for rock art, which is often found near sources of water.
There are too many sights to see at Fossil Falls in a single day, so I just wander around, taking in as much as I can: crazy rock formations, a slope of boulders covered in petroglyphs, faint cave paintings. Though I'm just a couple hundred feet from HWY 395, I feel like I'm in a prehistoric world.
As the sun starts to dip below the Sierra, the wind picks up. By the time I get back to my campsite for dinner, it's absolutely howling. After dusk fades to night, I bundle up, grab my headlamp, and retrace my steps to an alcove near the top of the dry fall. In the dark, I have to crawl through a narrow hole to get into the small nook.
Sheltered from the wind, I shut off my headlamp and let my eyes adjust to the dark. Stars twinkle into view, framed on all sides by rock.
On the wall of the alcove is a figure of a bighorn sheep, etched by human hands a long time ago. Above it a circle; maybe a sun, maybe a moon.
LITTLE PETROGLYPH CANYON
Months ago, I learned about a place called Little Petroglyph Canyon, one of the largest and best-preserved collections of rock art in North America. The canyon is located in the Coso Range, on the site of the Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake. To visit, you have to apply months in advance and get clearance from the Navy to enter the base. The Maturango Museum does guided tours of the canyon, under the close supervision of the Navy.
There are twenty of us on the tour today, and I think I'm the only person under forty. We meet at the museum at sunrise, then continue to the naval base checkpoint for inspection. Officers spend about ten minutes searching each car before sending us on our way. On the hour-long drive out to the canyon, the guides tell us to keep an eye out for wild horses, but remind us that we aren't allowed to take pictures or use our cell phones on the base until we're in the canyon.
Finally, we reach the parking lot and descend into the canyon. Within a couple minutes, I've already seen more petroglyphs than I can count.
Our group slowly meanders down the dry riverbed, overwhelmed by the ancient art. There are tens of thousands of etchings on the walls of the canyon.
The volcanic basalt here in the Coso range is naturally a light grey color, as can be seen at the bottom of the canyon, where it continues to erode. However, over thousands of years, a "patina" or varnish forms on the exterior of the rock from exposure to the elements. This patina can range from orange to deep brown and black. To create petroglyphs, the indigenous people pecked or carved into the surface of the rock, exposing the lighter color below.
Over time, they'll fade away, but we're fortunate enough to see them today.
There's an incredible variety of artistic styles here in the canyon. Some of the more faded petroglyphs tend to be abstract collections of lines, curves, and shapes. Others are anthropomorphic; human figures with elongated, intricately-patterned bodies. And for some reason, there are thousands of etchings of bighorn sheep.
It's mind-boggling to consider the immense timespan that this rock art represents. Some of these etchings were already thousands of years old when construction on the pyramids began. Others are only a couple hundred years old.
As you walk through the canyon, you feel less and less connected to the present. You start to imagine prehistoric scenes. There, a man clings to the rocks high above the canyon floor, laboring over an etching for hours. There, children play in the puddles while their mother watches over them, weaving a basket. There, a bighorn sheep clambers up the cliff, wary of hunters. Rain falls, the river flows.
The tour is almost over; I try my best to soak it all in. We're almost at the end of the canyon now. Here, the petroglyphs look particularly ancient and faded. As I lean in for a closer look at one of the etchings, something catches my eye at the northern end of the canyon.
There, a pair of wild horses.
They stand side by side, staring. I stare back. Minutes pass. Their presence echoes through the canyon. My focus narrows, I can hear the sound of my breath.
Slowly, I raise the camera to my eye. Something compels me to capture the scene, to prolong the ephemera, if only for a while.
Footnotes:
Rock art sites are sacred places. Please respect any rock art you encounter, do not touch, do not share unpublished locations, and leave no trace.