In my element

Deep in the Wonderland of Rocks, JTNP

It was near this spot that a friend discovered something rare indeed ~

Some pictographs unknown to backcountry Park Ranger Gary Garrett.

Gary hiked the backcountry virtually every day for years, and did such things as use a GPS to more accurately record the known sites of Indian Rrock art, or other signs of pre-historic significance. Stlll, every once in a while, my friends and I would get to add some little bit of knowledge to the Park's massive base of information.

If, when you are hiking the backcountry, you come across such a site, I recommend backing away and carefully leaving the site untouched. In general, I'd say don't bother reporting such places to Park Headquarters...they pretty much know it all. If, however, you come across some site that is, say, excessively remote, or situated in a very unusual location, such as up a cliff side and down a narrow slot, you might report that. It's just such unusually situated sites that turn out to be some of the most significant, because such locations were chosen because of cast beams of sunlight marking such things as the Spring Equinox. Often a sun symbol accompanies such sites, as well as other pictographs or petroglyphs.

Backcountry Ranger Garrett's situation is strange indeed. Without doubt he knows the pre-historic sites better than anyone else.....far better. Yet Gary is color blind, to the exact orange color favored by the Indians for painting pictographs! Although Gary can see the more deeply colored pictographs, often someone can be pointing right at such rock art, and Gary sees only blank rock. To find out just what is there, Gary has to take a photograph....(perhaps then even take the photograph, put it into Photoshop, and tweak the colors?), to make the rock art visable.