Ever wonder what a changing climate can do to a lush rainforest?
Petrified Forest National Park provides a stark answer.
At first, Petrified Forest appears barren, devoid of life– looking far more like a lifeless planet than the jungle it used to be. But that’s deceptive– the hard-edged piles of ‘rocks’ dotting a loose dirt surface are not what they seem to be.
They aren’t rocks per se, but are petrified wood. Rainforest trees that were quickly submerged into an ancient river system and covered so tightly by sediment and muck that they received little-to-no oxygen– perhaps during a flood or natural disaster. Rangers estimate that it took 200 million years for the fossilization process to take place, hardening along the same perfect patterns of bark and tree rings once occupied by organic material. And then all the water in the area… dried… out.
These petrified wood masses are partly remarkable because of their age, their clear resemblance to the trees they once were, but also the pockets of quartz that crystallized out of various minerals trapped inside the wood– which made the rocks nearly sparkle in the sunlight.
It was spring when we entered the park, and the wildflowers were blooming in and around the harsh environment. Mac kept sniffing the rocks as if they would reveal some ancient smell that got trapped for millennia. And then as if by magic, the landscape shifted from red to blue hues.
The blue came from the Blue Mesa Trail, a short hike that resembled the Badlands in South Dakota, except for the distinctive blue tint of the earth.
This made the few Petrified logs in this area stand out as even more alien– as below:
This was more of a walk than a hike, and Mac kept trying to find the shade by hiding behind the blue hills and ducking away from the already-fierce spring rays. Most of the hikes and walks being exposed, it had the capacity to be very uncomfortable in the summer months. Seeing Mac’s tongue droop low, I was glad we had chosen to visit just as the park began its thaw. And glad our van had a tank full of fresh water.
We were the only ones in this part of the park for a morning hike, and this added a hefty layer of near-silence to the desolate scenes. It felt like walking back in time, in which the actual layers of the past seemed to settle before us.
It was hard to imagine the kind of environment that preceded the fossilization– fertile scenes with impossibly tall and thick trees, tropical ferns, with rivers and reptiles (according to the visitor’s center). One of the unexpected lessons of every National Park seems to be the importance of water and the movement of it– and the extremes of feast-or-famine that come with or without its presence.
Petrified Forest National Park showed us the same– rainforest today, bone-dry desert tomorrow. This park may not be the first one to come to-mind, but it was well worth the trip.
Posted by Sun
