San Rafael Swell Rock Art

About This Experience

This panel in the San Rafael Swell felt very different from the petroglyph sites we had been exploring. Instead of figures pecked deeply into dark desert varnish, these images were painted directly onto the sandstone in beautiful shades of red and yellow. At first the wall seemed almost empty. The pigments had faded so much that they blended naturally with the warm colours and mineral stains of the rock. Only after standing there for a while did the first human-like form become clear. Then another appeared beside it, followed by smaller shapes that we had completely overlooked at first. Gradually the sandstone began to reveal what looked like a small gathering of anthropomorphic figures. The largest figures had elongated bodies, small heads and simplified limbs, while nearby were smaller forms painted in similar colours. Seen together, it was tempting to imagine that the group might represent a family. Perhaps the larger anthropomorphs were adults and the smaller figures children. One particularly unusual form even reminded us of a cradleboard, the traditional portable carrier used to secure and carry an infant. If that interpretation were correct, the panel might preserve something surprisingly intimate: not supernatural beings or a ceremonial procession, but perhaps a family group including a baby carried in a cradleboard. Of course, there is no way to know whether this was actually what the artists intended, and the resemblance may simply reflect the way modern eyes organize unfamiliar shapes. Still, once we saw the figures together, the possibility was difficult to ignore. The arrangement seemed somehow more personal than many of the other panels we had encountered. The yellow pigment made several of the figures especially intriguing. In some areas it appeared almost golden against the sandstone, while elsewhere it was so faint that it disappeared entirely when viewed from the wrong angle. Red and yellow sometimes seemed to occur within the same figure or in closely associated forms, giving the group a more complex appearance than a simple monochrome painting. We moved from side to side, trying different angles and photographing the figures as individual details appeared and disappeared with the changing light. That was when our peaceful examination of the panel suddenly became far more dramatic than expected. My wife was concentrating on taking pictures of these beautiful and amazing pictographs when the rock beneath her foot suddenly broke away. In an instant she lost her balance and fell backwards. Behind her was not simply another patch of sandstone but the edge of the deep canyon. For one terrifying moment it looked as though she might continue falling straight over the edge. Fortunately she landed on her back before sliding any farther, but the impact was hard and she immediately felt severe pain in her left leg. She had apparently pulled a muscle during the fall, and once the initial shock had passed it became clear that walking was going to be painful. A few seconds earlier we had been completely absorbed in the ancient paintings; suddenly we were staring at the canyon below and realizing just how close the situation had come to ending very differently. She had quite literally almost risked her neck for a photograph. After making sure that she could stand and that nothing seemed seriously broken, we returned our attention to the panel, although from that moment on every step was taken with considerably more caution. The possible cradleboard was particularly subtle. From one angle it looked like little more than an elongated painted form, but from another it seemed almost like a small person enclosed within or attached to a larger structure. Cradleboards were an ingenious way of carrying and protecting infants while allowing adults to travel and work, and the possibility that such an everyday aspect of family life might have been represented on this canyon wall made the panel feel unusually human. We began imagining a family moving through the San Rafael landscape centuries ago: adults travelling between water sources or seasonal camps, children walking beside them and an infant carried securely against a parent's back. It was only an imagined scene, but it connected naturally with the environment around us. This was not an empty desert to the people who created these paintings. It was home, a landscape of familiar routes, resources, shelters and important places. Perhaps this alcove marked one of those places. Perhaps the figures represented particular people, ancestors or something much more symbolic. The truth remains unknown. The anthropomorphs themselves were highly stylized, which made any literal interpretation uncertain. Bodies were stretched, heads reduced to small rounded forms and anatomical details were minimal. Some figures might easily be interpreted as human, while others seemed to occupy a space between human representation and symbolic imagery. Yet the relative sizes of the forms continued to suggest relationships among them. The large figures beside much smaller ones naturally evoked adults and children, even if that was not necessarily their original meaning. We spent a long time studying the grouping because the paintings rewarded patience. A faint patch of red that initially looked like natural staining gradually became the torso of another figure. A yellow line revealed the edge of a body. A small rounded form that we had overlooked began to resemble a head. The longer we stayed, the more the panel seemed populated. It was almost as if a group hidden inside the sandstone slowly stepped forward one person at a time. We wondered how vivid the scene must once have been. Fresh red and yellow pigment would have contrasted strongly with the lighter rock. The figures that now appeared ghostlike may once have been immediately visible from across the shelter. Centuries of wind, moisture, sunlight and mineral change had softened them, gradually blending the paintings back into the canyon wall. That fading gave the panel a fragile quality. Unlike deeply carved petroglyphs, these figures survived only as thin traces of pigment. Some portions were already barely visible, and it was easy to imagine them disappearing completely in the future. That made standing there feel like observing a moment in a much longer process. The artists had created the figures long ago, the desert had slowly altered them, and we happened to encounter them while enough still remained to suggest their forms. Perhaps future visitors would see even less. Eventually we stepped farther back to look at the entire group. The resemblance to a family seemed strongest from this distance. Larger human-like figures stood close to smaller ones, and the possible cradleboard occupied its place among them. It was impossible not to invent a story: parents, children and a baby represented together on a protected sandstone wall. Maybe it commemorated a real family. Maybe it expressed ancestry or kinship. Maybe the apparent cradleboard represented something entirely different. We could not know, but the possibility gave the panel a warmth that contrasted with some of the more mysterious and supernatural-looking rock art we had seen elsewhere. As we finally left the panel, however, the consequences of the fall became increasingly obvious. The severe pain in my wife's left leg did not ease, and every step placed new strain on the pulled muscle. There was no easy way out and certainly no vehicle waiting nearby. She had to walk the entire way back through the rugged canyon to the car, limping over uneven sandstone, loose rocks and rough desert terrain while trying not to aggravate the injury. What had been an adventurous hike on the way in became a long and painful return. Each obstacle that had seemed entertaining earlier now demanded extra care, and the distance back to the car suddenly felt much greater than it had before. Still, step by painful step, she kept going until we finally reached the vehicle. Only then, with the canyon safely behind us, could we fully appreciate how fortunate we had been. The photographs were beautiful, the pictographs unforgettable, but they had come much closer to costing us dearly than we could ever have imagined. As we moved farther away, the yellow pigment disappeared first. Then the smaller figures dissolved into the sandstone, followed by portions of the larger red anthropomorphs. Within a surprisingly short distance, the family we thought we could see was gone again, replaced by an apparently ordinary canyon wall. That was perhaps the most memorable aspect of the panel. For a brief time, careful observation had allowed us to see a small gathering of human-like forms painted centuries ago. Whether they truly represented a family and a child in a cradleboard will probably never be known. But standing there in the silence of the San Rafael Swell, after one broken foothold had almost sent my wife into the canyon and left her facing a painful walk all the way back to the car, it was easy to imagine that these fading red and yellow figures preserved not only mysterious symbolism, but perhaps something as universal and familiar as a family.