Mockingbird Cave

There is painted beauty hidden deep in the heart of Riverside County. I had to go see this for myself because I don't normally associate Riverside with the word "beauty".

This site is located in a spring fed gulch amid a moat of fancy horse properties. Scrubby oak trees and tall stands of  cat tails frame the tepid stream from the spring. A scattering of granitic boulders and several larger formations dot the slopes on each side of the spring. One such formation is a collection of ground level boulders crowned by two large capstones, and beneath these are two very colorful panels of polychrome art.

Large circles or shields accompany a number of crosshatch designs. Several elements here appear (at least to me) to have a celestial connotation. The work is bright and colorful, rendered in red, white, and a blue/black.

On the opposite side of the creek is a flat granite slab with four bedrock mortars. This slab, just feet from the spring, has been described as a "birthing rock. A short pillar beside the the slab has two faded red pictographs of diamond chains on golden water streaks.  A short distance away is an additional BRM.

I was impressed with this site. The colors remain bright and crisp. Obviously any site with a consistent water source would have been an invaluable commodity in this desert region, and the depth and development of the BRMs speak it's prolonged use.

Native American Rock Art: Terese Habitation Site, El Paso Mountains

An interesting and unusual site, this one. Parked next to what at one time must have been a reliable spring one finds classical Coso style petroglyphs, stone rings where dwellings once stood, obsidian flakes and shards, bedrock mortars, metates and manos and grindings slicks (a metate is a smoothed stone worn by the grinding of food, usually portable and flat or concave from use, the mano being a stone used to pound or grind these ingredients). The site dates back to 600-1300 A.D. which correlates to other Coso dwelling sites in the deserts around Ridgecrest, a time frame known in this context as the Haiwee period. So stark is the surrounding desert that it is difficult to imagine an ecology which would support a population of natives such as this site indicates. But the signs are clear, this site was a village. 

A common theme in Coso style art is the pecked representation of the bighorn sheep. As most rock art is widely acknowledged to be shamanistic in its symbolism, and ritual in nature, the recurrence of the bighorn sheep in Coso rock art indicates the significance of this animal in both the religious sphere and as a food source. At the Terese site there are numerous examples of the bighorn, as well as anthropomorphics, cosmological symbols, and other animistic representations. 

There are no large slabs or vertical rock formations here, just a scattering of small boulders, few of which stand above waist level. Many of these rocks are marked on multiple sides, some being absolutely overrun with scrawling symbology. Some of these rocks have distinctly worn aspects, indications that the surface was used for grinding. An adjacent flat seems to have at one time been cleared of larger stones. The ground has been tamped to such a degree that few plants have taken root, and stone rings measuring 6-12ft in diameter indicate where dwellings were placed. A careful eye can identify several metates and manos. Interestingly, several of these stones are fractured, most likely due to the inherent fragility of laval rock and the recurrent pounding these took. Shards of black obsidian and stone flakes of other strains of glass-like rock are scattered throughout the site, signs of tool and point knapping. In all, this site is a rich window into the daily existence of a vanished hunter-gatherer society.

Stone ring with central bedrock mortar.

Grinding slick.

I don't know what the worn holes might have been used for. I'm theorizing that they may have been used to hone wooden or bone points.

A fractured metate and on top, a worn mano.

These rock rings indicate dwelling placements.

These dishes are larger than cupules, yet smaller than mortars.

A metate and mano, and just a handful of the thousands of shards and flakes which litter this site.

Native American Rock Art: Chimney Meadows, Lamont Meadows

Chimney Meadows.

Here are photos from two stops on an eventful day ranging from desolate deserts to mountain meadows. I went back to Jawbone Canyon and ruled out a hunch, and drove out to Walt Bickel's mining camp in the El Paso Range, but what I really wanted to see were a pair of rock art sites which can be accessed via the Chimney Peak Byway.

Hidden away near Chimney Meadows is a small rock art site. The paintings cling to the underside of a granite shelf which overhangs the paintings. The art is old and fading, much of it essentially gone. The photo below shows hints of a fading orange, though the other elements are strictly monochrome red. It's a neat site that offers deluxe views of the meadow and immediate access to Chimney Creek.

The second site is fairly well known. It is located in Lamont Meadows which lies below and downstream of Chimney Meadows. The art is displayed on the roof of a large granite overhang which is difficult and dangerous to get to (see caption below). There are about 20 individual monochrome red elements on this roof, all of them bearing a resemblance to other Kern County sites. I was intrigued by the art, the overhang, and it's inaccessibility. I am unused to being unable to climb up to a place so this circumstance left me a bit peeved. With a belay and rock shoes it would have been a breeze, but without the rope... too dicey for me.

The meadow complex up here was pretty, and made for a pleasant drive through towering peaks and piney forests. I'd like to complete the backcountry drive which continues from Chimney Meadows all the way down to and through Kennedy Meadows. That'd make for a really cool day behind the wheel.

Chimney Meadows.

The pictographs at Lamont Meadows. What sets these apart from many rock art sites is the inaccessibility. 

I was able to get up to the ledge just below the overhang with the paint, but beyond that I could not overcome my better judgement. A couple of very exposed 5th Class moves would have gotten me there but they were awkward, barn door moves with poor feet and a sloper top out, 30ft off the deck. There was another option, one which I think the natives used, but that was a sketchy series of no-hands traversing moves which today are obstructed by a complicating plant. Too risky. In the photos above and below you can see the pictographs on the roof of the overhang.

Native American Rock Art: Jawbone Canyon

A month ago I made it a goal to find the only pictograph site in all of Jawbone Canyon, surprising given Jawbone's location smack between the Tehachapi Range and the Coso complex. I'm sure there's probably a petroglyph site a la Coso style in there, maybe more. Some of Jawbone is off-limits. Nevertheless, here's paint on a rock and I'm glad to have found it. Took me two different missions and a lot of research to pin this one down.

The trick with these desert sites is to try to follow the water. Reliable water sources were well known to the natives. Knowledge of the locations of springs, seasonal creeks, tanks and tinajas, was critically valuable to these nomadic people. Many of these places, wether they were stop-overs or habitation sites, were marked in some way. That is the case with this site in Jawbone. I had some vague clues to follow--aluvial fan, near a wash, black granite cliff wall. No mention of a spring. Not a word said about shaded tanks of cool and clear spring water. The third frying pan of a canyon I'd been up that morning closed into a steep sided black granite gorge. And then I heard the birds. Chirping, chattering little birds. I spent enough time living in various deserts to know that you don't hear little birds unless there's water nearby. And, I thought with a little electric connect-the-goddamn-dots! charge, if there's water nearby then there's a pretty good chance I've found the art! I got my reward moments later.

On a vertical black granite wall 25 feet above the spring glowed a striking bull's eye of red and white concentric rings. Above that was a tall and slim figure of a man with a black head dress. Off to either side were ladders of red bars, more circles, and a faded monochrome red pictograph theorized by experts to represent an animal pelt. 

Now if only I could locate that petroglyph site in the Antelope Valley that's skunked me twice...

Indian Wells Canyon

These photos were taken on two separate half-day visits to Indian Wells Canyon. The reason for a second visit was that on the first trip I had been unable to locate two rock art sites at the very top of the canyon. Armed with better intelligence I returned to this alpine desert at the margins of the Southeastern Sierra.

On our first trip Jack and I had been taken aback by the sheer vistalicious beauty of the upper canyon which came as a complete surprise when judged, as we had, by the surrounding desert of the Ridgecrest area. Neither of us had expected the canyon to climb deep into that fragile zone of wildflowers, wind-twisted pines, rabbit bush and joshua trees. The cloud scudded skies cast roving shadows over the dips and swales of the foothills. Jagged stubs of coarse granite scraped the sky and in the distance loomed Owens Peak. It is a stark and stunning kind of place. I knew I had to return.

I could have picked a better day. A low pressure system was gushing into Southern California, bringing fierce gusts of cold wind to the desert. I set out from the Owens Peak trailhead, head down, buffeted by bursts of wind which pushed me around. Brief spits of rain and one or two pellets of hail hit me, and the gale roared in my ears. Clouds ripped across the peaks above me. I zipped up my collar and hunched into my pack. Setting out cross country brought me through fields filled with thousands of multicolored flowers, each species uniquely suited to the harsh vagaries of this environment. My feet clawed at granite and sand as I pushed uphill toward the gargantuan boulders scattered across the slope like icebergs which had calved off the peaks above. Eventually I reached a chunk of grey granite twice the size of my house. Tucked in a large overhang beneath the boulder were vibrant pictographs in red, white, yellow and orange. Humanoids and bulls eyes, and a large ladder in red and white kept company with two riders on horseback. A very rich panel, this one. 

Back out into the wind. Head down, eyes tearing and snot running in the cold alpine hurricane. Genuine rain and hail fell as I hacked my way through the tempest over the mile of cross country to the next site. Two particularly fierce gusts knocked me to the ground just a minute apart. I was grinning ear to ear. Love this shit as I may, I was real grateful to crawl into the painted overhang of another gargantuan hulk of fallen granite. 

This alcove boasted several of the same elements I'd seen at the other site including horsemen, but also had big 

horn sheep in white, sunbursts around bulls eye wheels, and a large flower shaped mandala which is theorized to have a representative connection to the ghost dance most often associated with Plains Indians and tribes of the Southwest. Both sites were remarkable, and beautiful. I feel lucky to have seen these.

After getting shoved around by the wind some more I reached the truck and headed down canyon to another point of interest, a mining camp tucked up a side canyon. Several acres of tilted canyon are occupied by rusting equipment, rusting trucks, shaky outbuildings and a dilapidated two story "house".  A half mile further revealed a couple collapsed mine shafts. All in all I was very happy with my explorations in Indian Wells.

I moved down the 14 toward Mojave and pulled out at Jawbone Canyon. I drove up to the top of the canyon while trying to identify landmarks for trying to pin down another site somewhere in there. I know that place a little better now though I still have a lot of questions about where exactly that site might be. I also need to check out the next big canyon south of Jawbone, Lone Tree.

I got buffeted by that same wind all the way back to Mojave and through the Antelope Valley. Though it wasn't exactly the day for it, I took time to pull out for the fields of gold, the Califonia Poppies which are blooming by the millions right now. That, my friends, is a site worth seeing. Take a drive out to the Poppy Preserve this week and you won't regret it.

Horsemen, Bulls Eyes, Anthropomorphs

Bighorns and Sunbursts

Bighorn Sheep

A mandala theorized to represent a ghost dance.

Horsemen

An air compressor for a drill, Nadeau-Magnolia Gold Mine

Nadeau-Magnolia Mine

The Siebert Family's Mining Camp

A look down Indian Wells Canyon

California Poppies gone nuts