The snaggletoothed cowboy poet...

of Castleton, Utah, reciting some of his work as I shoot a test video this morning. I will be working with local poet Rory Tyler, shooting several hours of him reciting his poetry, and posting clips on YouTube. Stay tuned, it's wonderful stuff.

Rory Tyler, rock art guru and cowboy poet.

The view from Rory’s porch. Inspiring.

If you hang it...

they will come. Within hours of hanging the hummingbird feeder the air was filled with the high-pitched whirring sounds of the tiny birds zooming off the back deck.

Adult male Broad-tailed Hummingbird (Selasphorus platycercus).

Resembling upturned paintbrushes...

the brilliant Indian paintbrush is the dominant flash of color on the slow-to-awaken high desert this chilly and wet spring.

Vibrant Common Indian paintbrush (Castilleja chromosa) with the greening Round Mountain.

This spark of scarlet beauty is enhanced by the hemiparasitic nature of this perennial plant, robbing water and nutrients from nearby neighbors.

Shay Canyon is tributary to Indian Creek...

just a short distance from Newspaper Rock and it contains hundreds upon hundreds of petroglyphs distributed along the base of a varnished cliff for about a quarter mile (~400 meters). All of the glyphs here are heavily varnished, suggesting that they are older than most of the figures carved at Newspaper Rock.

A determined explorer can find this magnificent place quite easily, so I’ll leave it to you.

Deep in Davis Canyon...

in the Needles District of Canyonlands National Park lies an amazing pictograph panel and an array of ruins, but one needs a high clearance 4WD vehicle to access a remote campsite and the park boundary.

The stunning Five Faces pictograph panel.

Detailed contrast-enhanced image of two of the figures in the Five Faces panel. Note the smoothed and cleaned rock surface on each face.

This impressive desert varnish-draped alcove is more than 100 yards/meters wide and contains the so-called Log House Ruin high above the canyon bottom. Obvious structures are numbered.

The inaccessible Log House Ruin on a high ledge. Four structures are visible and note Ellen (in green) at the lower right.

Close view of several structures, including the “log house.” Note the hand print pictographs above the structures.

Hidden in Poison Spider Mesa...

above Potash Road is a stunning petroglyph panel featuring a parade of enormous animals, a walking human figure with a staff and the so-called “Polka Dot Man.” The rock-scrambling route through the maze of sandstone fins to the site is big fun and often used by local canyoneering tours.

View into the intensely jointed Behind the Rocks and the high snow-covered La Sal Mountains. A canyoneering group is preparing to rappel on the left.

Potholes are pregnant with rainwater from the recent deluge. The glyphs are on the high cliff in the distance, to the left of the arch-like alcove.

Scan horizontally across the center of this image to find the somewhat inaccessible glyphs, from the far left to the far right. (Click on image to enlarge.)

That-a-way outa here!

Analysis of pictographs...

is greatly assisted with DStretch software, allowing researchers to peer through centuries of weathering, fading and vandalism. The program uses a method called decorrelation stretch, which was originally used by NASA to improve remote sensing images of Mars, but DStretch optimizes it for rock art.

Image of a vandalized (chalked) pictograph in Black Dragon Canyon, Utah, taken under ordinary daylight (shaded) conditions.

The false color images below are screenshots from DStretch on my Samsung smartphone, illustrating several of the filters available in the software that are designed to highlight hidden details.

Learn more: DStretch website.

The Great Gallery in Horseshoe Canyon...

is clearly one of the most spectacular displays of Barrier Canyon Style pictographs on the Colorado Plateau. It takes some real effort to get to this special place in an outlying section of Canyonlands National Park but it’s well worth the experience.

The Great Gallery pictograph panel spans about 200 feet (60 meters) in length along a high ledge. (Click on image to enlarge.)

The huge and elaborate Holy Ghost pictograph, more than eight feet (2.4 meters) in height.

Great Gallery detail.

Distinctive trapezoidal Barrier Canyon Style icons in the Great Gallery.

The Alcove in Horseshoe Canyon.

The enigmatic Black Dragon pictograph...

has long been misinterpreted as a depiction of a flying phantasm, however, it actually consists of several individual pictographs as revealed by recent studies utilizing photographic and x-ray fluorescence techniques.

Screenshot of DStretch image of the Black Dragon pictograph captured on my Samsung smartphone that uses a decorrelation algorithm to reveal hidden details. Once the bias of the chalked outline on the pictograph is removed, separate elements are easily recognizable.

National Geographic is coming to town...

late next month to film the industrious globe mallow bee as it goes about its business pollinating the prolific globemallow flower. Documentary film producers caught my previous blog post with images (May 2021) showing their activities in Castle Valley and are sending a crew with a cinemagraphic camera to record their fascinating behaviors as a part of a series on the national parks. Very cool!

Here’s a nice article by local scribe Ron Drake who writes for the Moab Times-Independent that describes the upcoming project in Castle Valley.

The tiny mallow bee (Diadasia diminuta) specifically collects pollen from the desert globemallow plant (Sphaeralcea ambigua).

The mallow bee constructs hives underground, the entrances to which are tiny sedimentary towers, or turrets, only an inch (a couple centimeters) tall.

Mallow bee fully loaded with pollen entering hive through a turret.