The latest entry in my ever-growing catalog of kayak-accessible petroglyphs brought me back to Chuckanut Bay, north Puget Sound, for the first time since 2019. My earlier visit to Chuckanut Bay involved a search for fossils. This time, I paddled farther north, beneath the railroad causeway at the far end of the bay, and entered a shallow mud bay to look for a petroglyph.
Route map. The launch at Wildcove Cove south of Chuckanut Bay affords better viewings of sandstone formations than do the launches north of Chuckanut Bay in Bellingham.
Most paddlers in Chuckanut Bay are not interested in fossils or petroglyphs, but no paddler can fail to notice the astonishing honeycomb sandstone formations. All around the arms of the bay, low sandstone cliffs plunge into the water. The wave action and the erosive force of groundwater have moulded the cliffs into grotesque, natural gargoyles.
Chuckanut Bay’s other main attraction for paddlers is the small, undeveloped island in the middle of the bay. Chuckanut Island is the private property of the Nature Conservancy. Day visitors are allowed, although there is no camping. The island is reminiscent of a miniature version of one of the San Juan Islands, with a sparse forest of Douglas-fir, Pacific madrone, and grand fir, and an understory of oceanspray, snowberry, Indian plum, Oregon grape, and salal.
Kayaking off Wildcat Cove. Saltwater weathering of permeable sandstone can create a honeycomb pattern known as tafoni.
Tafoni sculpture north of Wildcat Cove. Patterns like this remind me of a giant, alien brain.
Sandstone bluff south of Governors Point. High tide is the prettiest time to visit.
Kayaking to Chuckanut Island. At high tide, there is only a narrow pocket of shell-midden beach available to land.
Pine siskin, Governors Point. This close relative of the goldfinch was drinking freshwater seeping from the rocks above the tideline.
Male northern flicker, Governors Point. Washington State lies squarely within the intergrade zone between the red-shafted and yellow-shafted northern flicker, but the majority of the flickers one encounters in Washington are decidedly red-shafted, like this individual.
Common loons off Chuckanut Island. By late September, most of the loons were deep into their winter plumages, although some traces of breeding plumage could be detected on some individuals.
Cormorants on Chuckanut Rock. All three Pacific Northwest species appear in this photograph: Brandt’s, pelagic, and double-crested.
Harbor seals, Chuckanut Rock. The seals in Chuckanut Bay are all but inured to the passage of sea kayakers.
American mink outside Wildcat Cove. In classic mink fashion, this individual was foraging both on the rocks and in the water.
Many visitors to Chuckanut Bay are convinced they’ve discovered fossils in the rocks at Clarks Point. Some believe the fossils are the trunks of ancient palm trees. Others believe they are the vertebrae of Ice Age mammals or perhaps even dinosaurs. Even the otherwise reliable guidebook author Rob Casey allows himself to be carried away in the excitement. Across multiple editions, spanning multiple decades in print, his guidebook promises kayakers they can view fossils right from their boats.
It is with a heavy heart that I must report none of this is correct. Although the Chuckanut Formation in general is fossiliferous, the rocks at Clarks Point are not fossils. They are pseudofossils, ordinary rocks deformed by geological action and weathering. In the words of the scientific killjoys at the Washington State Department of Natural Resources, Division of Geology and Earth Resources, “These vertebra-like pseudofossils in Padden Member strata at Clark Point appear to have formed when an elongate zone of sediment became cemented with calcium carbonate. Later deformation caused this concretion to fracture at regular intervals, while the enclosing sandstone was plastically deformed.”
North of the pseudofossils, I passed beneath a trestle in the railroad causeway of the Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway. BNSF is the scourge of Puget Sound. Its railroad occupies strips of prime coastline around Bellingham, Seattle, and Tacoma, blocking public access to dozens of miles of beaches. The trains pollute the water and air and ruin the tranquility of the sound with their screeching wheels and blasting horns.
Construction of the BNSF causeway at the northern end of Chuckanut Bay in the 1920s added a fresh insult to the environment. The causeway’s century-long interference with natural water circulation has led to the siltation of the northern end of the bay, such that the locals now refer to the northern end as “Mud Bay.” I timed my entry into Mud Bay for high tide, lest even my shallow-drafted kayak run aground before I could get to the petroglyph.
Pseudofossil at Clarks Point, Chuckanut Bay. It may look like the vertebra of some prehistoric animal, but it is only a rock.
Pseudofossil at Clarks Point, Chuckanut Bay. It may look like the trunk of some long-extinct species of palm tree, but it is only a rock.
Kayaking beneath railroad trestle, northern end of Chuckanut Bay. Two boys in a motorskiff were diving for clams in the silted-up shallows of Mud Bay.
BNSF 4,400-horsepower diesel locomotive, General Electric model ES44C4. This northbound train was on its way back to Canada to pick up a fresh cargo of crude oil and wood products.
Rail tunnel at western end of Chuckanut Bay causeway. The decrepit, gaping mouth of the tunnel projected a vaguely authoritarian presence, as if something frightful might await on the tunnel’s far side.
The petroglyph at Chuckanut Bay is not some relic of an ancient, lost civilization—or at least, not the one we think of when we usually think of petroglyphs. The Chuckanut petroglyph was carved in 1967 by art students from the nearby Western Washington State College. The design consists of a lizard crawling up a cliff, its tail entwined with a peace sign.
Hilariously, the art students’ peace petroglyph somehow found its way into the state’s archaeological catalogs, where it was assigned the Smithsonian Institution Trinomial System site number 45WH77. As a result, any major land development project in the vicinity of the petroglyph that might conceivably affect cultural resources has to take account of the petroglyph’s existence, pursuant to the State Environmental Policy Act. More than half a century after some blissful hippies from the local art school carved a far-out picture at their favorite sun-bathing spot, government agencies and private corporations are required by law to pay homage to their work.
Finding the petroglyph should have been easy. The petroglyph is more than a meter long. I had a map of its location, a sketch of its surroundings, a written description of its relationship to the landscape, and multiple photographs of it. Unfortunately, I just don’t have the eye for petroglyphs. Even armed as I was with such thorough information about the petroglyph, I still paddled past it at a distance of twenty feet without seeing a thing.
Even the locals of Mud Bay seem to overlook the petroglyph. I asked one resident who had just arrived home by motorboat if he knew where it was. I figured he, as a boater, must have seen it many times in his perambulations around the bay. The resident replied that he had “heard of it” but did not know where it was—although his head did turn in a telltale direction when he heard me say the word “petroglyph.” After my first, unsuccessful pass along the shoreline, I returned to find the petroglyph in the very spot where he had glanced.
Sandstone boulders, northern Chuckanut Bay. Somewhere in the shallow northern pocket of the bay is a petroglyph.
Licorice ferns, northern Chuckanut Bay. Ferns and moss covered the shady north faces of the rocks.
Chuckanut Bay petroglyph. On an eight-foot tide, the petroglyph itself was above water, but about a foot and a half of water lapped around the base of the rock.
Petroglyph peace sign and intertwining tail. The bottom half of the peace sign has been eroded by tidal action, obliterating some of the art students’ intricate handiwork.
Petroglyph lizard. None of the lizard species native to western Washington have a tail as proportionately long as the petroglyph lizard’s, so it’s possible these hippie art students may have been using their imaginations.
I loved the Chuckanut Bay petroglyph. I loved it as much as I have any of the many indigenous petroglyphs I’ve visited by kayak over the years. I don’t normally approve of rock-art graffiti, but I do not see the Chuckanut Bay petroglyph as graffiti. I see it as a true cultural relic, fully worthy of incorporation into the state’s archeological catalogs.
The purposes of most of the indigenous petroglyphs on our coast have been lost. All we can say about most of them is that they express some mysterious, inner thoughts from a culture that has long since evolved into something very different from what it was when the petroglyphs were carved. We’ll never recover the original meanings of the authors, nor the ways of living that informed their meanings.
All of that is equally true of the Chuckanut Bay petroglyph. The peace sign was the quintessential symbol of the art-loving, nature-loving hippies of 1967. Some of these people believed humanity was on the cusp of a spiritual revolution that would fundamentally transform our relationships toward one another and the natural world. The details of the revolutionary dream were hazy, perhaps even to the dreamers themselves, but the anticipation was real.
No such revolution arrived. The movement receded, the hippies shrank into jobhood, and no one today is making peace-sign petroglyphs. Western Washington State College ballooned into Western Washington University, and its art department now promises students it will “prepare them for successful careers and global citizenship.” Whatever radical dream the art students of 1967 had on the shores of Chuckanut Bay, subsequent generations had different ones. The petroglyph they carved stands as a relic of a culture that once flourished, made art, and then faded. The revolutionary message of the lizard-peace petroglyph can now only dimly be guessed at. Thus does it take an honorable place among the petroglyphs of the Pacific Northwest.
With such wistful thoughts swirling through my head, I paddled slowly back across the bay as the sun sank toward the western horizon.
Kayaking across Chuckanut Bay. From left to right: Governors Point, Samish Island, Guemes Island, Vendovi Island, Cypress Island, Eliza Island.
Hugging the shore toward Wildcat Cove. Migrating geese flew overhead, southbound like me.
It takes a kayak to appreciate a petroglyph. By itself, a petroglyph is not much to look at: just a few faint lines crudely chiseled into a rock. The satisfaction of looking at a petroglyph comes from stretching forth to meet the mind of the long-ago author who left this particular design in this particular spot. A kayak slows down the paddler and immerses him in the landscape of the petroglyph and the same sights, sounds, and smells the original author must have encountered.
I’m not sure a kayaker comes any closer to understanding the original meaning of a petroglyph than any other kind of visitor would, but I do think a kayaker makes a stronger and deeper effort to understand, an effort which yields its own rewards even if it cannot ultimately succeed.
—Alex Sidles