DV 2025 DVII: The Quickening

[Beardilocks]

I recently headed out to an unnamed part of Death Valley to explore further into an area that I had been in before that I knew held some signs of Native American habitation.  The last time I was out here I ran out of time and energy to explore further.  Not to mention a pair of dryfalls that I didn't want to try to conquer alone.  So I was back to see if I had found everything or if there was more to see.  As it turns out, I had barely scratched the surface. 


I follow many old Native American trails that wind up & down the benches here and make the hiking so much easier in the rough terrain.  Then this is the next trace of the old ones in the area:  What I believe is the remnants of a hunting blind placed on the shoulder of a bench over a tinaja.  There was another one nearby that I neglected to photograph.





Arriving at what I hoped was a habitation site after many hours of hiking. 



And it was!  The complex includes at least a dozen cave/alcoves surrounding a tinaja-filled wash.  Worked chips were found in a few of the caves as well as the remnants of a few walls.  And one other very special thing that we'll get to in due time. 



Caves on top of caves!








No grinding stones were found at this location, but due to the poor quality of the local rock for making grinding stones, I am betting they utilized smaller morteros of harder rock that they carried with them. 













With no other loose rocks anywhere nearby, I would assume that this is possibly another hunting blind. 



It's really quite the complex. 



When I rounded the corner here I yelped for joy.  I had only ever found one of these items before and, at least in my personal experience, it is one of the rarest items that I've ever found, this being only the second. 



A stick (or previously a bundle of sticks, hard to say for sure) wedged into a very obviously man-made pile of rocks.  I found a similar stick wedged in a crack in the back of a cave last year, wedged very purposefully by jamming 4 rocks into the crevice to hold the stick firm. 



These are very exceptional to me because they are so ethereal, so ephemeral.  Human hands pulled the bark off, imbued the item with some kind of thought or wish or prayer or magic, and then firmly wedged it in place.  And no human hand has touched it since. 



I have found very little information on these sticks.  I stumbled onto one mention that I only caught by luck while researching something else entirely.  In a paper on the Coville Rock Shelter, the author noted a stick found purposefully wedged into the back wall of that cave.  He goes on to mention that his only reference for it was from a 1931 paper by someone called Campbell.  So down the rabbit hole I went.  Campbell was doing a study in the Twenty Nine Palms area and apparently these features are more prevalent in that area.  She refers to them as “spirit sticks” and suggests that they may have been employed to protect a seasonal abode while the occupant was away, or some other form of protection 'magic'.  As a rule they all are forked on the protruding end and wedged in cracks or braced upright.  She dubbed them “spirit sticks” out of a lack of any other name that they could glean from local tribes, who respected the message of the sticks and would not enter caves that held them.  Other items of 'magic' or spiritual significance are sometimes found with the sticks: particular sacred feathers or polished & cupped river stones from very far away.  She talked to one living Native American on a reservation at the time who simultaneously told them that the sticks were merely meaningless sticks, nothing more, but then continued by saying that only the medicine man could place the feathers or stones under the sticks and that only the Chief of the tribe could place the forked stick in the cave on behalf of the inhabitant.  The Chief of the tribe was also the only one who could remove the stick in the event of the death of the person, and no one knew where or how he took them after.  Definitely intriguing. 



If anyone has any more info or leads please message me!








Another cave.








More caves.



Cave with a collapsed rock wall. 



View of the “spirit stick” cave. 



A very small broken arrowhead that I found nearby. 



Overall this site offered a lot to absorb on very little physical evidence.  There is virtually nothing left behind to tell the story of the people that lived here other than the faintest traces and a single symbol that was likely meant to keep people out or to protect the area.  I had absolutely not imagined that I would find such a rich site in this odd corner of Death Valley. 


I have actually debated for weeks whether or not to actually share this site at all.  I would be devastated if the “spirit stick” location was vandalized or removed.  But I also wanted the chance to educate one or two of my like 9 followers:  It would be so easy to thoughtlessly (and completely without malice or meaning to) just pull the stick out or pull the rocks apart to see if anything is under there.  After all, it's just a stick right?  Just a pile of rocks?  So this is a reminder that some things that you might stumble upon, that seem completely ordinary or useless to you, might actually have a much larger meaning to someone.  Not to mention historical significance and spiritual meaning.  Please take a beat before you kick down a rock pile or pull a stick out of a wall and look at the bigger picture.  Look for the ancient magic that may be present even in the most ordinary things, the life that was breathed into them and the meaning imbued.


But absolutely feel free to kick down cairns that tourons build out of boredom.  Always kick those down.  Just take a half second to make sure they're touron cairns first, that's all I'm asking.