Petrified Forest

Posted on October 9, 2007 in Photos Vacation Fall 2007

Our stop at Walnut Canyon National Monument was brief. We walked the Rim Trail where I spied a fine patch of paintbrush. We reserved the day for Petrified Forest National Park but a pack of thickening [[Cumulus_cloud|cumuli]] brought the makings of a storm.

We began our visit by driving past our turnoff and heading about eighteen miles towards the town of Snowflake, high on the plains of eastern Arizona. When the park road did not materialize, I pulled out a map, realized my error, and reversed our course until we found the large petrified wood yard that had distracted me from seeing the brown sign pointing to the park. The entrance was flanked by a pair of tacky souvenir stores and “museums” that we paid the briefest of visits as the first drops of rain came down. I announced to Lynn that we were abandoning our plans to walk the Long Logs and Agate House trails — I wasn’t going to get caught in the downpour which actually did come later.

The park describes itself as two parks: the fossilized trees in the south and the [[Painted_Desert%2C_Arizona|Painted Desert]] in the north. Or to put it another way: heaps of colorful, crystalline stone versus vivid mudpiles. I got down on my hands and knees to enjoy the silicates, lying on my side to get the best closeups. The NPS thoughtfully provided paved paths through Giant Logs and the Crystal Forest, so I did not muddy myself.

The insensitivity of tourists never ceases to amaze me. At Agate Bridge, a troupe of Australians ignored warning signs and went for a gander on the wet mud, leaving their footprints behind. I nearly remarked that it was a lot easier to disobey the rules when it is not your own country’s heritage being trashed but my mood stabilizers were working and I held my tongue.

Far more tolerable were the Filipinos who we met at Newspaper Rock. I set up my telephoto lens so I could get decent views of the petroglyphs from which the Park Service kept us by means of steep cliffs. I helped them find the chippings and let them look through my camera so they could find the hard to see outline of [[Kokopelli]]. We kept following them and they kept following us for the rest of the afternoon, exchanging quips at every stop and smiling broadly.

Here is the album in my gallery (30 pics).

Click on more to see important notes.

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Wupatki

Posted on October 8, 2007 in Photos Vacation Fall 2007

The speck attached itself to the ramparts of the red sandstone pueblo and stayed there. I stood in the parking lot, waiting for the good picture moment, when the cerulean dot would move behind the ruin. But it darted about, an icefly intent on destroying the mood of desolation and isolation that I was trying to convey. Ruins must do that. It is not proper to have someone hanging from them or otherwise obstructing the view as this senior citizen insisted on doing. She was as in my face as a frat boy on Spring Break. Had she drunk deep of brewed spirits and burped loudly, I don’t think she would have annoyed me more.

In the end I had to wait her out. I got the shot and then put up with a brash fellow from who knows where with a butt that waggled and begged to fill my frame. He moved only when his wife climbed down from the ruin and discussed the image he’d just taken. I photographed his white and black-striped butt as possible future revenge.

I don’t know why they’ve never combined Wupatki National Monument with Sunset Crater as a big national park devoted to the impact of geology on human society. As laid out since the 1950s, the two government tracts lie within nineteen miles of each other, separated by empty juniper forests and sage prairie.

We roamed all the “name” ruins, me trying to find the eye I thought I had lost with the death of my old camera and Lynn patiently coming along. She read every word of the trail guide to the main ruin as I fiddled with angles and cursed the midday light that faded the intense red of the rocks to a fizzled bloody pink. It wasn’t until we got to the third pullover of the day — at the fortification called The Citadel that I began getting a feel for the land. Most extraordinarilly, I realized that we were surrounded by miles and miles of open prairie with not a tree in sight. The sky, too, held nothing other than the blue of filtered space. I captured this landscape from the rim of the butte and called it the best and truest of the day.

Here is the album in my gallery (9 pics).

Click on more to see important notes.

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Sunset Crater

Posted on October 8, 2007 in Photos Vacation Fall 2007

Sunset Crater is hardly active: it blew up somewhere between [[1040]] and [[1100]] AD. So we were in no danger when we explored the [[lava]] beds that spewed forth to the southeast and the southwest of it. It was our first day of cool weather and there was no sign of the rain which haunted us the next day when we went to Petrified Forest National Park.

We hiked two trails, one up a cinder cone called Lenox Crater and the other around the lava beds. The crater on Lenox Crater has been filled in: it’s more of a flat-topped butte. Big round pieces of cinder cover the slopes which made the short climb a bit tricky. I steered so that there was always a tree or a stump to catch me should I fall. The trail opened up to a fabulous view of the San Francisco Peaks to the west and miles of ponderosa and aspen forests that spilled off the cinder cone and into a wide valley.

Despite signs forbidding off-trail travel, I caught a long-haired, young Native American acting as if he could ignore both NPS protection and Hopi reverence of the area. He climbed a cinder slope just off the Lava Beds Trail, set up a camera, and then scurried off when I gave him a dirty look.

I photographed the plants above growing out of the lava flow. I have no idea what they are, but they seem to show that fire has been replaced by the slower combustion of Life.

Here’s the album at my gallery site (8 pics).

Click on more to see important notes.

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