Whenever I’m driving south on Old Woman Springs Road it usually means I’m coming home from a trip. Maybe a short one up to the Mojave Preserve or if I’m lucky – I’m coming back from a longer trip up to the 395 and the magic of California’s Sierra Nevada mountains. Either way, HWY 247 means I’m returning to the place I love the most: a place full of strange plants, dry weather, and endless rocks to scramble and explore.
Rocks are one of the reasons I was out on the highway last Thursday to meet up with Michelle Zumstein and her husband Daren. We were there that afternoon to look at rocks, and the trash strewn around the rocks, and the most striking feature of those rocks, which could easily be mistaken for Hidden Valley Campground or the Hall of Horrors in Joshua Tree National Park, except for one big difference:
Michelle: “…all of the graffiti, and all of the trash. We want to get it cleaned up and not look like this and hopefully make it better so that people don’t do this.”
It is a mess out here.
This big batch of boulders sits just north of Ghost Road in Johnson Valley. You’ve probably seen the graffiti on the rocks on the east side of the road as you come into the Morongo Basin.. Looking at it right off the highway… the bright tags look purposeful, colorful, and striking – like art. Except this art is on BLM land and on natural features that look beautiful on their own. It’s why Michelle and Daren moved out here in 2017… to get closer to nature and away from the city as they both work toward retirement. But on top of Michelle’s full-time job, she’s taking on another colossal task and she could use the community’s help with it:
Michelle: “Get this back to nature, get it back to what it should be looking like. There are areas that people can go and tag where it’s fine and legal to do that. Go there. Don’t come here… this is our home here.”
Driving by the rocks – you may not know that just on the other side of them is a sea of trash. Contractor bags broken open full of crumbled drywall, children’s books, toys, clothes and other household garbage dumped by unscrupulous litterbugs who take advantage of the isolation the desert provides.
The trash on the ground can be picked up but the tags on the rocks have to be cleaned off. The sheer amount of tags is impressive. There has to be hundreds just visible from the highway, many of which are sitting on countless layers of paint from 40 years of tagging.
That’s not even counting the tags you can’t see from the highway, which get more crude as you climb back into the rocks. It doesn’t matter if they are big painted murals or simple tags, it’s all litter to Michelle. And to the BLM as well who will be installing signage to let people know that graffiti and dumping on the land is illegal. But before all that is done, Michelle and a team of volunteers will be coming out here on November 2nd to start cleaning things up, working from the most visible tags and trash on the highway side and moving their way back into the rocks.
Michelle: “.. but you got to start somewhere. Baby steps, you know? Doing a little here, a little there. It will eventually get cleaned up. It’s just going to take time and a lot of volunteers.”
Michelle has been talking and working with the organizers from the Giant Rock cleanup. They just finished their annual cleanup event at the freestanding rock that is famous for its paranormal parties that can draw visitors from all over… and some arrive with spray paint.
In the hour we spent out at the rocks on Thursday afternoon, there were plenty of visitors stopping by the rocks and snapping pictures. You can’t blame them – it’s an odd thing to see a landscape taken over by art more commonly seen in urban areas. But where billboards, street signs, buses and buildings are tagged in the city, these rocks already hold a natural beauty that is worth admiring on its own.
Michelle knows cleaning up the rocks and the area is going to be a big task. 40 years of paint on an ever expanding canvas, trash and construction materials spread over rocks with so much broken glass that the ground sparkles in the raking afternoon light.
She hopes that the attention that the rocks already get from people snapping pictures for social will help deliver the message that starting November 2nd – there will be less tags and less trash there.
If you want to help – you don’t have to wait until November 2nd to get out there and pick up some trash. As for graffiti removal – Michelle has some tools, and some talent – along with some elephant snot – but what she really needs is elbow grease and folks who are interested in turning the tide against the graffiti that is slowly moving its way south.
If you want to be a part of the graffiti cleanup – you can contact Michelle on Facebook at the JV Community Neighborhood Watch group. You can also show up on November 2nd out at the Graffiti rocks. There are three different groups of rocks, but they will be starting on the group furthest North on HWY 247.
You can contact Michelle at [email protected] or text her at (714)329-2027
