On Saturday (Sept. 24), dozens of local volunteers descended on Giant Rock in Landers to help clean the popular landmark in honor of National Public Lands Day.
Armed with industrial trash bags and gloves, over fifty local volunteers met at Giant Rock last Saturday to pick up glass, nails, bottle caps, and other insidious debris littering the beloved landmark. Starting bright and early at 9am, the event brought a diverse age range, ages 5 to 55, giving the rugged act of solidarity a family-oriented atmosphere.
This was 7th annual clean-up of Giant Rock, led by Positional Projects and their branch entity Blightsights in collaboration with Mojave Desert Land Trust, High Desert Keepers, The Landers Community Association, and Big Horn Desert View Water Agency. Positional Projects also held their annual Stories and Stewardship as part of the effort.
Besides cleaning garbage off the desert floor, a large focus was spent removing graffiti off the Giant Rock itself, as well as the rocks on the mountain. These volunteers took their commitment one-step further, camping out the night before to apply a caustic brand adhesive called Elephant Snot to the stony surfaces, left overnight to penetrate, then pressure-washed the next morning with 2000-gallons of water from Big Horn Desert View Water Agency, who also provided fresh drinking water for volunteers.
The event was also interactive, with Blightsights and sister organization Positional Projects posting QR coded signs around the area for their 7th annual Stories and Stewardship.
“Blightsights is an artist-led project that maps dump sites for creative reuse. For Positional Projects, I steward this site and a hundred-year old socialist colony in the Antelope Valley. I do the Stories and Stewardship events to combine the public humanities part of history presentations with the clean-up. We feel tying conservation to history and civic memory is really important,” said Karyl Newman, founder of Blightsites.
