MYSTICAL MESSAGES THRU TIME?

AMERICAN CAVE PAINTINGS

ON THE CARRIZO PLAIN

      Extraordinary occurrences have taken place here in Painted Rock on the exotic Carrizo plain in San Luis Obispo County. Some look at this formation and see lizards or turtles.

          Pictographs, like the frame above fill the inner chamber of what is a sacred site for Chumash and Yokut Indians.

      The Carrizo Plain is a ten mile wide and almost 50 mile long valley in the eastern portion of San Luis Obispo County between the Temblor and Caliente mountain ranges.  In the 
middle of the northern plain lays Soda Lake, the remains of a prehistoric sea.

      In the rare rainy season the lake becomes 3000 acres of water and a winter home for Sandhill Cranes, but most of the year it is a salt bed.
      Nestled on the western edge of plain is Painted Rock, a curved bowl, not unlike an amphitheater. It is a religious site.  

      It is inside the Painted Rock that shamans and holy men 
of Chumash and Yokut people and perhaps other tribes, have held rituals and left traces of visions.

      The walls are rich with pictographs that are some of the most valuable and rare native paintings in the world.  These
are said to have been made 500 to 2000 years ago.

      The red pigments were made with ochre, the white by shale and gypsum and the black by charcoal.

      Look carefully and you see layers of history and earlier ages speaking through time. 

     Earlier visitors desecrated the ancient paintings, so now
the Painted Rock is open only by appointment.

   

      Imagine the time when a native shaman conducted sacred ritual or activity amidst these stones that were said to resemble specific shapes or powers.

    Ancient California history is visible on the Carrizo Plain national monument, just 90 minutes from Cambria.

     See you down the trail.

FLYING ROCK(s) & ROLL BY THE VOLCANO

EXPLOSIVE POWER

       The explosive history of Mt. Lassen has changed the earth.  Now the center of Lassen Volcanic National Park, the volcano, one of the Pacific Ring of Fire in the Cascade Range,

has left a legacy that displays the power of a still cooking earth.

       Areas of the national park are testament to what happens when a volcano begins

reshaping the contour of the land.

       400 to 600 thousand years ago, ancestral Brokeoff Volcano erupted. It changed the mountain range profile.  In May of 1914 one of the vent mountains near Brokeoff, Lassen Peak, began three years of sporadic eruptions.  President Teddy Roosevelt and the US Congress made the area a national monument and then National Park in 1916.  

       This is Hot Rock-a 300 ton rock that was part of a 110 mile per hour avalanche that followed the May 1915 eruption.  This rock rolled 5 miles after the explosion. 

      This is in an area called Chaos Jumbles.  These rocks and stones were also blown or scattered by avalanche.  The peak is a plugged dome volcano.  As magma pressure welled up, the crater was plugged, so pent up gas shattered the lava cap and sent mountain, rock and debris flying in an extraordinary explosion.  Ash and debris reach 30,000 feet into the California sky.

       After almost 100 years, you can see that here in Chaos Jumbles, some life is returning.

     Pictured below is an area on the mountain side at a lower elevation called The Devastated Area, miles of devastation. In some of the lower areas also life is coming back.

     But much of the peak is still barren.

     Elsewhere you see other large boulders that were moved by force.

       The BF Loomis Museum and Visitors Center is a beautiful construction of local

rock.

     The stones and rocks are just one more resource and bit of wonderment available

at Lassen Volcanic National Park.

See you down the trail.