Blast from the Past

View of the mesa along the road in Mesa Verde NP. It's amazing the elevation that you gain from the highway up to the dwellings.

I need to mention the 5th and 6th National Parks that I visited on my journey, Mesa Verde and the Petrified Forest respecively, together since they were different than all the other Parks I visited, yet extremely similar to each other. (One similarity is that neither were on my initial list of places to visit on this road trip, it just worked out!) The management of both had a focus on history and preservation of the past. This is due in part to not being able to blow visitors away with stunning vistas, majestic mountains, or giant trees. I have to admit that their offerings wouldn't normally appeal to me. In all the hustle and bustle of my life I want access to mountains and trails not historic information. However, it was important for me to pause and appreciate the past, getting out of myself, and experiencing a place that I might only ever see in pictures on the internet.

A distant view of the Cliff Palace.

I have been to Mesa Verde NP before, when I was a young whipper-snapper, and have some vague memories of the visit but wanted to experience it again. I was on my way from Moab, Utah to Stillwater, OK trying to cover some ground the evening of Wednesday so Thursday wouldn't be such a long drive. Thus I arrived at the entrance in the late afternoon and rushed to get to the ruins before closing time. Alas, I didn't make the drive across the mesa to the Cliff Palace of the Anasazis before they closed the area. You can't hike down into the ruins without the supervision of a Ranger, and I just missed the last available group tour. They are extremely protective of the ruins and I can understand why when it's the nature of so many people to be disrespectful, messy, and even destructive when presented with wonders in an outside setting. It was however incredible just to stand on the edge of the canyon and look down across the way to the adobe city believed to have been built in the 12th-13th centuries. Not to mention the view of the surrounding area from such a high "island" of the mesa was stunning both on the drive in and out.

Me in front of a large log of petrified wood. The picture doesn't do justice to the incredible colors contained in the chunk of old wood. You could even see the tree's rings in various colors of the minerals!

The Petrified Forest is located directly on Interstate 40 and I couldn't help but stop when driving by on my way to see the Grand Canyon (this put me a little behind on my itinerary, see the GC Post, but well worth it). As a part of the "painted desert" the Park had spectacular views of beautifully colored sandstone layers now visible due to erosion of the stone. In addition, the stream beds and washes which were dry when I arrived were able to sustain human inhabitants long ago and evidence of their dwellings and rock art were visible all over. As I understand it the minerals in the exposed sandstone undergo a chemical process (I don't remember if it was oxidizing or not...) and the surface gains a hard, varnished shell. This shell is what historical peoples chipped away to create the petroglyphs, creating pictures from tiny chipped-out dots. Unknown and separate to the artists of the time, they could be considered the first users of Pointillism, a branch of Impressionistic art in the late 1800's. My favorite painting is of a giant bird with a long curved beak that becomes the arm of a tiny human stick figure. I am humorously surmising that the artist of the bird got "pranked." Can you picture someone coming back to their picture and finding that someone had added a person making it look like he was being eaten by the bird? Modern pranksters would probably include some kind of speech balloon for the person being eaten...

Some of the petroglyphs I saw. Notice the "Bird and the Man" in the center?

The park gets its name from the petrified wood that is found in abundance in the area. Supposedly in the age of dinosaurs this area was a large wetland sort of like river delta and a giant forest was located upstream. Huge trees were washed down a river, similar to what happens today in rivers during spring run-off, and collected in the wetland. Over time the trees were covered by sediment, the living cells being replaced by minerals like gypsum, and Voila! were petrified. Now they are being uncovered as the soil is being removed by various forces of weathering. I was pretty cool to witness. Yet another excuse to "geek out" about rocks this adventure!

A gypsum bridge: the log was suspended when a stream eroded the softer rock above and below it. There is a concrete beam and pillars supporting the log added many years ago in an effort to preserve the phenomenon.