Friends of the Forest Volunteers Clean Grafitti
It is hard to believe that — amid the remarkable beauty and wonder of Sedona’s natural setting — there are people who intentionally deface and otherwise damage rock formations and other parts of the landscape. Perhaps you have noticed such acts of graffiti when on a hike. The most common form of disfigurement comes from scratches made in the red rock cliff faces and boulders, but people also use paint, charcoal, markers, and stickers. Working tirelessly to remediate these negative impacts is a team of trained volunteers with Friends of the Forest’s Graffiti Removal Committee. Friends of the Forest is a nonprofit, nonpolitical organization that supports the Red Rock Ranger District of the Coconino National Forest. The committee works closely with the National Forest’s archaeological staff, especially as, in some cases, graffiti is found at archaeologically sensitive sites and needs to be overseen by experts.
In a typical year, over 1,000 occurrences of graffiti are cleaned up by members of the team, with over 600 hours of volunteer time logged so far this year. The team takes group outings about once a month to visit sites that experience considerable amounts of graffiti vandalism, including Devil’s Bridge, Cathedral Rock, the West Fork Trail, and Bell Rock Pathway. It also travels beyond Coconino National Forest, including to areas within the Prescott National Forest and Slide Rock State Park. Most incidents of graffiti do not require supervision to correct. Team members are trained to work independently to clean up in these cases.
Methods for remediating graffiti have been developed and improved over time. Scratches in rock take on all kinds of permutations, from hearts to tic-tac-toe grids to names and expressions such as “Joanie Loves Chachi.” Most scratches can be cleaned up with the use of water spray bottles and plastic scrub pads. Paint removal requires the supervised use of special, environmentally friendly chemicals. Often showing up on trail signs are stickers, which are removed with a simple razor blade scraper. The adhesive is taken off with a chemical developed specifically for graffiti removal.
Another form of graffiti found within the National Forest is paint on concrete bridge abutments and culverts. These usually cover an area too large for removal techniques; graffiti is instead painted over with recycled exterior paint from the Coconino County Recycle Center. Sometimes graffiti is found on rocks which have a patina or desert varnish surface. Scrubbing in this case would damage the patina and make it worse. Local artist Nori Thorne has developed a method to paint over or camouflage the graffiti using egg yolks as a binder and metal oxides as pigments, matching the color of the patina. Proper application makes the graffiti disappear and has lasted for years in areas where utilized. Another human mark occasionally found on trails is a collection of “love padlocks,” which are considered litter and removed.
The team’s ultimate goal is to clean up graffiti as quickly as possible, lessening the temptation for copycats to expand upon it. An example of this are those little stacks of stones or cairns, which can quickly multiply into dozens. Anything that does not occur naturally is graffiti, including those little stacks of stones.
Please do not attempt to clean up graffiti yourself; it takes special training and tools. Also, the graffiti team uses a customized cell-phone app to identify sensitive areas so that the proper Forest Service employees are notified. This is very important, including because uninformed individuals trying to help have damaged archaeological sites on several occasions just over the last year. The adage “take nothing but pictures and leave nothing but footprints” has even stronger meaning when it comes to graffiti, the effects of which, sadly, cannot always be remedied. Readers are encouraged to report any graffiti occurrences to the Friends of the Forest. Simply email photos, descriptions, and location (including GPS coordinates if possible) to graffiti@fofsedona.org. Anyone interested in becoming a team member can join Friends of the Forest and express an interest in Graffiti Removal. Training and materials are provided by the Friends. See: www.friendsoftheforestsedona.org.
Serving Sedona, written this week by Jim White, Friends of the Forest, appears Wednesday in the Sedona Red Rock News.
