Weird And Wonderful Arizona

If you've never been to Arizona, you're missing one of the wonders of the world. Plenty of other places are beautiful. Plenty of other places have history, or political power, or cultural significance. But Arizona is a unique collection of oddities and wonders that you won't find anywhere else.

This isn't something you would necessarily believe if you only visited Phoenix. Not if you've never been to the Desert Botanical Garden, or the Heard Museum – not if you feel beauty is only solid green and humid. I admit, it's easier to appreciate Arizona if you like geology, lightning, birds, and giant, columnar cacti. You may think you'll only see desert vistas here if you don't know that our highest peak is around 12,600 feet and that we have snowy, forested mountains as well as deep, dry basins.

But I admit our reputation as a desert state is well-earned. All four of the great deserts of North America dangle their toes into Arizona. To the North is the Great Basin Desert, spilling over our border from Utah and Nevada – it's a rain-shadow desert full of scrubby sage-brush. In the North-West is the Mojave, whose most famous feature is Death Valley, another Wonder of the World – its signature plant is the Joshua Tree. From the South-East, the Chihuahuan Desert spills into Texas, New Mexico, and the South-Eastern basins of Arizona – it harbors shrubs and small, tough cacti. But the biggest desert in Arizona is the Sonoran, in the South and South-West. It's the only place in the world that has two rainy seasons. And the Sonoran is the American desert with the warmest winter. That's why we're the only place in the world where the Saguaro grows.

Stand alone in the open desert among a group of saguaros, and you won't feel alone. They live between 100 and 200 years, and they have a presence. Think of them as the Ents of the desert. They can be a scruffy lot, and they often make faces at people. Some of them look more dead than alive. But some of them top 50 feet, and one famous guy has over 100 arms.

Arizona is Geology Heaven, a place where the rocks aren't “haired over” by vegetation. We have a long, varied volcanic history, starting about 1.7 billion years ago when our chunk of North America plowed into the ancient Canadian Shield. The Grand Canyon is unparalleled in its ability to represent millions of years of sediment laid down by shallow seas and by lakes, rivers, and even sand dunes. But Arizona is one, giant erosion feature – we have many other canyons. Oak Creek Canyon is an enchanted place with deep red sandstone. Walnut Canyon is carved from the same cross-bedded Coconino sandstone and Kaibab limestone found at the top of the Grand Canyon.

Despite decades of plundering by fools and yahoos, the Petrified Forest features the best examples of petrified wood in the world. You can see petroglyphs on Newspaper Rock and near one of the preserved archaeological sites in the park. But my favorite thing about Petrified Forest is its bizarre Chinle layer, which doesn't quite look like any other sedimentary group I've ever seen. It's made up of shale, silt, mudstone, a little sand, and silica from volcanic ash. It's colors range from blue to red, pink, brown, green, yellow, tan – based on whatever trace elements are present.

We have a meteor crater. We have a volcano that last erupted about 1000 years ago. We have more bird species than any other state in the union. We have thunderstorms that sound like atomic explosions. We have snowstorms AND sandstorms. We have the best Mexican food in the southwest (stop squawking, Texas and New Mexico – you know it's true). Navajos and Hopis own most of the North-East part of our state – a place that looks a lot like Mars. The Spaniards never successfully colonized us, thanks to the Apaches and their original Homeland Security. The coldest winter temperature on record for Phoenix was 16 degrees Fahrenheit – the hottest summer temperature was 123 degrees Fahrenheit.

And we're good-looking, too. Though we can be a scruffy lot. And some of us make faces at people.

If you're thinking of visiting, try all of those places I mentioned. You'll be amazed. But you'll barely scratch the surface of what's here. I've lived here over 50 years, and I'm still exploring. Sometimes I dream of visiting other places. Sometimes I even go. But I'm like the saguaro. This is the only place I can live.

Maybe if I live another 50 years, I'll even grow some more arms . . .

Visit Tonto Natural Bridge, Arizona

We all have wonders in our back yard that we never had the time to visit -- mostly because we didn’t make the time. Last year I resolved to stop running the rat race so hard and visit those places. Since then I’ve hiked in some ancient mountains near Phoenix: Piestewa Peak, South Mountain, McDowell Mountains, and The Superstitions. I’ve driven highways 60, 77, 87, and 17 past amazing roadcuts that reveal sedimentary layers -- twisted, intruded by volcanic sills and dikes, metamorphosed by a landscape that was accreted, uplifted, compressed, and/or stretched.

I’ve seen schist and igneous rocks that formed when terranes were sutured to North America about 1.7 billion years ago. They are topped by layers of limestone, sandstone, and shale that formed in the Paleozoic Era, when Arizona was covered by an inland sea. I’ve seen footprints of dinosaurs who walked in muddy riverbanks of rare streams that cut through a desert dominated by dunes. I’ve hiked through floodplains and basins full of sediment and conglomerates -- and ash from volcanoes. And now I’ve seen something everyone in Arizona should visit: Tonto Natural Bridge. Better visit soon, because it may close because of funding problems before you get the chance.

The oldest visible rocks under the natural bridge are the deep red rocks that look like solid play-dough.

They are actually a volcanic rock known as rhyolite, a mixture with a lot of silica in it, stained red by hematite. They are generally thought to have formed about 1.7 billion years ago. A sandstone layer formed on top of this parent rock -- then the beds were faulted and tilted. Limestone formed up against that tilted ridge during the Paleozoic Era when a shallow sea covered parts of North America. You can find fossils from this era in the Payson area and below the Moggollon Rim. Finally, basaltic flows capped the whole shebang when Arizona moved over a hot spot in the mantle, about 30 million years ago.

A fault in the area broke the basaltic cap and allowed it to be eroded, forming a valley. Water from rain and melting glaciers percolated through the limestone and formed a travertine dam in the valley. The trapped water from a creek bored a hole through the travertine, and the bridge formed.

We hiked the Waterfall Trail to a spot where a spring tunneled through the side of the canyon and built new travertine structures with the aid of some moss.

Then we walked around to the Anna Mae Trail and hiked down to the bed of Pine Creek. From there you have to pick your way through and over rocks, but it’s totally worth it. I went ahead of my hiking buddies (who were busily taking pictures), and had the good fortune to see the bridge in what seemed like complete solitude. A waterfall poured over the other side. The sight brought tears to my eyes.

Eventually, hikers from both sides of the bridge caught up with me -- we advised each other about which paths were the least treacherous. We made our way under the bridge and hiked out to the Gowen Trail side of the bridge, then out of the canyon. A storm was building on the horizon as we drove home again, reminding us of the erosional forces that helped form the bridge in the first place.

Arizona is struggling with the some poisonous politics these days -- it’s possible to forget the amazing beauty that surrounds us, and how incredibly lucky we are to live in a state that hasn’t been completely carved up and turned into piles of ash and rubble. State funds to maintain our parks have been raided recently, reduced to almost nothing. If we want to keep these sacred places, we need to craft legislation that won’t allow politicians to raid those funds again. But we also need to visit those places -- pay our fees, buy our year passes, shop in their gift shops, place donations in their boxes, sign up for their classes and events, volunteer for them .

Tonto Natural Bridge only costs $5 to enter! You can drive up out of the heat of Phoenix in about 1 1/2 hours and have the experience of a lifetime.

Whether you live in Arizona or you’re just visiting -- take the time to see Tonto Natural Bridge. You’ll never forget it.

Geology Lessons From A Miner

Enlightenment is a humbling experience.

And so it was that when I began my trip to Southern Arizona with Ernie and my mother, I felt both excited and intimidated. I had never been south of Tucson. I had a feeling this would be the first of many trips. but I also had a feeling that Southern Arizona would challenge my ability to identify rocks.

Yeah, I know -- it’s not the biggest problem you can have in your life. But I want to be a geologist, not just a hobbyist, not a rockhound (no insult to rockhounds intended). Liking rocks and pondering what they are and how they got there is just the beginning of the process. Sooner or later you’ve got to commit, and then it gets hairy. You find yourself eyeball to eyeball with a roadcut that defies easy classification, and you feel like a total dope.

Highway 90 winds through Tombstone Canyon, past the Queen Mine in Bisbee, down through layers of grey limestone, red hematite, yellow limonite. If you go into one of the antique shops at street level and it features a bargain basement, you can see rooms carved out of natural cement. Now that I’ve been there, and I’ve taken the tour, and I’ve read the wall plaques in the mining museum, I have a good idea what the various minerals and rock forms were in Bisbee.

But as we drove in for the first time, I felt flummoxed. I had only seen light-colored limestone, and I didn’t have any acid with me (I shall remedy that, next time). I also had geology exams to study for, so my textbooks were the first things I unpacked. I had to keep reminding myself -- this is a VACATION. Have FUN !

Fortunately, curiosity rescued my mood. That and the well-stocked coffee station downstairs at the B & B where we stayed (aptly named THE SCHOOLHOUSE). If you’re planning a trip to Bisbee, I highly recommend this place. And a restaurant called SANTIAGO’S. And another eatery (for lunch) called CAFE CORNUCOPIA. And the Queen Mine tour, which (at the very least) will give you some idea what a miner’s job is like.

I found out (by cheating and reading info on the walls of the mining museum) that the geology of Bisbee was shaped by repeated marine transgressions that laid down layers of limestone, followed by volcanic activity that sent lava and superheated gasses into cracks and faults in the sedimentary layers. It was in these faults that the useful ores collected. As we progressed (mostly vertically) into the mine, I gazed at the walls of the tunnel and wondered if I was looking at rhyolite or limestone (probably I saw both).

My epiphany came when somebody asked the miner who was guiding the tour an innocent (yet foolish) question. This fellow worked in the mine for 21 years, and had become an expert in setting explosive charges. He had taken us into a large chamber that had been thoroughly mined of its useful ores. A fellow asked him, “Did you have a geologist to show you what ores to look for?”

The miner didn’t laugh. He said, “No sir. See that red material up there? That’s hematite. That’s the iron ore. That green material? that’s malachite, copper ore. That grey stuff halfway up that wall? That’s lead ore. And that vein over there is silver ore. I didn’t need a geologist to tell me that, it was my job.”

He never worried whether he could identify the rocks. He learned to recognize what he was looking for. And so will I.

Doh!

It was raining when we came out of the mine. The rain rapidly turned to snow. I was oblivious to the discomfort, I felt way educated. That miner didn’t like his job, he did it because he needed to make a living. All he had to prove was that he could do his work well. I can do mine, too (especially if I have acid).

The next day we left Bisbee, land of winding, narrow, windy streets (I got rocks blown up my nose at one point), and drove to the Whetstone Mountains, home of the glorious Kartchner Caverns (where I saw a sample of limestone that was mostly black -- I’m SO confused). Ernie’s blog about that stop is way better than mine, so I linked it. I’m back home now, took those tests, and I’m getting ready to take two more. Gotta do the school thing before I can get out into the field with my bottle of weak acid. But I’ll get there. And I think I'll like my job just fine.

Mysteries beckon, and my curiosity is stronger than ever.

Segues And Roadcuts

One life ended, another was beginning, and the best way to start it was with a roadtrip. So one Sunday in January, We drove East on Arizona Hwy 60, past the Superstitions, toward Globe and Miami. We couldn't see the Superstitions very clearly, because the morning mist obscured them like Shangri-La, but once we got near Superior we entered some of the most interesting highway scenery I’ve ever seen. We zoomed past the Boyce Thompson Arboretum before I could think about it -- otherwise we would have stopped there. But it’s so close to Phoenix, we made a mental note to visit it soon, and often.

The road cuts and terrain near Hwy 60 reveal the same fascinating and complicated geologic history you can observe in the Superstitions: millions of years of ocean, lake, river and stream, and/or swamp sediment, volcanic activity (including pyroclastic flows and clouds of ash), magma that cooled slowly underground before it was exposed, magma that cooled quickly while it still had gas bubbles in it. Many of these layers have been pushed vertical by magma chambers that formed beneath them as our part of the continent moved slowly over a super-hot spot in the mantle. As the older stuff fractured and faulted, more molten stuff was forced up into the cracks, forming the veins, rich with copper, that attracted the mining companies in the first place.

Erosion from snow, rain, sun, running water, and wind-blown sand have eroded fractured columns along that highway into a fantastical, mad-tea-party sort of landscape. Hwy 60 winds straight into a hoodoo-paradise called Devil’s Canyon. There are no scenic pullouts on that stretch of the road, or I would have taken at least 100 pictures of that canyon (I promise, ultimately I WILL find a way, hopefully one that doesn’t get me splattered like a bug on the grill of a big rig).

The gorgeous display continues until you suddenly see the gigantic open pit mine on the North side of the Hwy, near Globe/Miami. My husband Ernie says it's like driving through Middle Earth and suddenly finding Mordor. The mine isn’t pretty, but it is fascinating -- I'd love to tour it some day. You can definitely see the decline of the mining industry when you enter Miami and Globe -- they’re boom towns gone bust, though they still have some interesting corners. I contemplated renting a place in Globe, possibly even settling there some day -- though it might be like settling at the edge of the world the day before Armageddon. (Armageddon would be a great name for a ghost town . . .)

From Globe, Hwy 60 turns North and merges with Hwy 77, continuing to wind through spectacular geological terrain. I give the roadcuts on this leg of the journey an A+, and I became a bit of a hazard. Geologists are notoriously distracted when roads wind through interesting cuts. It’s a very good thing the speed limit declines to 35mph, or we might have gone over a cliff. The highway descends into the beautiful Salt River Canyon, called the “Little Grand Canyon” because the salt river has eroded it 2000 feet down, exposing layers that formed millions of years ago. This area of the highway has plenty of scenic pullouts, and I used just about every one of them. We crossed the salt river and began to climb again. At one point we encountered a roadcut that exposed a huge, thick layer of limestone. All of these layers have been bent and twisted, and the roadcuts reveal just how much valley fill has settled over the deeper spots.

Eventually our highway climbed up onto the Mogollon Rim at Show Low, a nifty little town that, happily, featured a JB’s coffee shop that served a good omelette with smokey tabasco sauce. In Show Low, Hwy 60 continues East toward New Mexico, Hwy 77 marches North, through geologically unspectacular terrain (except for the roadcuts, which reveal that wonderful stuff is hiding beneath the surface). North was our destination. This is a short drive, through Taylor and Snowflake, to Holbrook, where we checked into the BEST WESTERN ADOBE INN, a comfortable, inexpensive motel. Our room was big and attractive, and the hotel sits next door to a great restaurant, The Butterfield Stage Company. The food is good and the decor gets an A+. We also visited Jim Gray’s Petrified Wood Co., a big rock shop that also sells fossils. It’s a treasure house on the inside, and is surrounded by a giant yard where rocks of all kind are sold by the pound.

Holbrook seems to have a rock shop on every corner -- and they all feature dinosaurs. Why not? Up the road is the Petrified Forest National Park, Arizona's postcard from the Triassic.

MONDAY we headed to Petrified Forest from the South, HWY 180. We stopped at the Park Gift shop and watched the informational video, which quickly traces the history of the park from the Triassic Period to the present.

The impact of early tourists makes me wince -- it was a free-for-all, with rockhounds doing terrible damage. Rockhounds are still doing damage. Hard to believe people can call themselves good, honest, will stand up in church and sing with the choir, but they steal rocks from the park, in staggering numbers. One thing I didn’t know -- Park personnel receive numerous packages from remorseful bandits, stolen rocks enclosed, with letters of apology.

While eavesdropping in the gift shop I learned that Jim Gray, whose spectacular rock shop sits on the corners of Hwy 77 and Hwy 180, is not beloved to the park rangers. He has plundered adjoining lands with a backhoe, rendering them useless as natural settings. The Petrified Forest National Park recently acquired new lands, but declined to buy the ones he has stripped. It occurs to me that scientists require the same “chain of custody” for artifacts and samples that police investigators do. If an object’s context can’t be reliably documented, it becomes irrelevant.

I hate to think about the damage that has been done. But I love the park without reservation. Tons of petrified wood have “migrated,” but a lot of specimens are still buried in the mudstone and sandstone. And, despite its beauty, the petrified wood is just a part of the attraction. I love the melting mounds of mudstone, sandstone, siltstone, clay, and conglomerate, colored by iron, manganese, and carbon. You can also see chunks of basalt in the mix. The vistas seem to go on forever, and it’s almost completely silent.

We couldn’t do the Blue Mesa hike because of ice on the trail, but we’ll try to come back in the spring or fall to try it again. I REALLY want to walk down there.

We were lucky to have photo-gray lenses on our glasses -- the sunlight on the snow was dazzlingly bright, more blinding than the brightest light in summer. This is something warm-climate people can’t know until they experience it.

We saw more wildlife than I’ve ever seen before, friendly ravens (as big as cats) who seemed to be at every turnout, a fearless bunny who was determined to finish breakfast, despite the presence of tourists, and some deer with really big ears. Ernie is the one who spotted the four-footed creatures -- he’s got an eye for that kind of thing.

It’s actually pretty easy to believe this area was a giant swamp/floodplain at one time. It’s a bit harder to imagine the giant conifers that grew to 200 feet in height, and the tropical climate that created them. Bought cool, nerdy t-shirts at the gift shops and posters depicting geology, petroglyphs, and the Geologic Timeline.

We stopped at every site, then returned to the hotel at 4:00p.m. and ate once again at the Butterfield Stage Company restaurant, this time trying the steaks, which were perfect.

Sometimes, you just need to wallow in an experience. Ernie is the guy I can do that with. That’s why I married him.

Two days into our trip -- and it just got better from there . . .

On The Road

You don’t need to read Jack Kerouac to know that road trips can change your life. In August 2008, a road trip changed mine.

But here’s the thing, I’m not sure you can plan a thing like that. You can hope for it, and ever since the movie Easy Rider was released, plenty of people have. But me? I just needed a vacation. It had been years since I had gone out and actually seen a place, other than Disneyland. Not that I don’t love Disneyland, in fact I love that place as much as I did when I was a child, for no rational reason whatsoever. I love visiting Ernie’s family, too; they’re wonderful people, way better than I deserve. It’s just that when I was a kid, I used to visit wild places. And even as a kid, my soul responded to those places, my heart pined for them (even if they didn’t have pines). You know the religious feelings some people get when they’re in church, or looking at sacred art, or listening to the Mormon Tabernacle choir singing Hallelujah? I only get those feelings when I’m looking at a canyon.


When I was a kid my mom took us to Yellowstone, Bryce, Zion, the Grand Canyon, and let’s not forget good old Oak Creek Canyon. But as an adult, I found it a lot harder to travel to those places. Or any places. Or to buy groceries and pay rent, for that matter, because I was a writer. Writers don’t have any money, so I had to get a day job. After that I was too busy working, and the years flew by.

Finally 2008 rolled around, and I noticed that WorldCon was in Denver. "Say," I remarked to Ernie, "wouldn’t it be neat if we drove to WorldCon via Utah and saw some national parks on the way?"

He agreed it would be nifty. And we managed to talk two friends into taking the trip with us, Chris and Nora. They were even willing to share a room when the rates were too expensive. So we picked our dates, and we plotted our course, and Nora called all the hotels to make reservations. Ernie and I began to take morning walks so we would be in shape to explore canyons, and finally the first day of the trip dawned. Chris and Nora drove up in a rented SUV Chris dubbed "The Battlestar Ridiculi," and we all piled in.

I should have had some clue what this was going to mean to me when I was almost too excited to sleep the night before. Jeez, how desperate for a vacation can you get! That morning I was in a daze, so happy I hardly recognized the emotion. And as we drove North on I-17 in the Battlestar, I thought, This is really happening! It wasn’t just something we talked about doing some day. We were On The Road.

As we turned onto Route 89, we began to pass some of the formations of Vermillion Cliffs, and the music from Ralph Vaughan William’s Double Piano Concerto started to play in my head. Yeah, I know, most people think of the Grand Canyon Suite when they see Arizona, and I don’t blame them. But Vaughan Williams wrote music that evokes beautiful desolation, and I think that sums up Arizona and Utah perfectly. We skirted those formations for miles and miles, rank after rank of them, and I didn’t need to read a book, didn’t need to play an album to be entertained.

When we crossed the Colorado River, we stopped at a convenience store to buy sun hats, and then we went onto the bridge to look down at spooky bubbles rising from the depths of the river, which moved very slowly there. The sun was just beginning to drop behind some mountains, and it shone on the Eastern stretch of the river. For me, standing on that bridge was like standing in a temple. I felt awed by the silence of the place, by the sense of incomprehensible age. I was also scared of the height, and fascinated by the massive, concrete bridge with its steel struts.

As we drove toward Kanab, Utah, I watched the light dying in the sky and wished the sun were coming up instead of going down. I haven’t felt that way since I was 10. And frankly, it’s a little nuts, because I really need my sleep these days. But that night, I just savored it. Pure happiness. And – dare I say it? Even better than Disneyland.

From that point forward, I knew my soul had just gotten a gigantic jolt, a charge that will last for the rest of my life. That first day we hiked in Zion, we visited Coral Pink Sand Dunes, we read all the roadside markers at the viewpoints and collected free literature. And I bought geeky t-shirts. The next day we drove to Bryce, possibly my favorite National park in the whole universe, and we hiked in the Queen’s Garden, Hoodoo Heaven. It was just outside Bryce that I was shooting pictures of clouds and captured the Cosmic Question photo I featured in a previous blog.

And even when Routes 12 & 24 ended up taking twice as long as we thought they would, I didn’t care. They took us through the Northern region of the newest national park, The Grand Staircase / Escalante. Once again, I was happy to just look out the window. I wish we could have seen Capitol Reef – we’re planning to go there in May 2010, but that night we hauled ass all the way to Moab, the wonderful town perched between Arches National Park and Canyonlands. What I saw in those wild places made me feel like a pilgrim in Mecca.

So I felt more than a little let down when we finally rolled into Denver for the convention. Though my buddies were so happy, I had to stop moping and enjoy nifty downtown Denver. And for a consolation prize, I got to see the rain going sideways because of a small tornado outside my hotel window. Cool!

By the time we left Zion, I already had the beginnings of a new novel in my head. By the time we left Bryce, I had begun to write a treatment for it. Every night in Denver I added more, and I had 100 pages done by the time we got back to Phoenix. I’m still working on the novel, but I have something important to do before I can feel confident that I can write it as well as it can be written.

I have to become a geologist.

I don’t mean a working geologist, but I have to study geology, both in college and out of it. I want to learn everything I can about the subject, because I love it. And I want to keep going back to those places that inspired me, and see new places, and see old places with new eyes. Ernie and I have started hiking in and around Phoenix now, we’ve hiked the magical Piestewa peak, right in the middle of town, a place where the world seems to go away. We’ve hiked Peralta Canyon Trail and we’ve seen Belly Button Rock (and I fell in some horse poop, but it was totally worth it).

That road trip changed my life. It revived a passion in me that doesn’t war with my other passions, that adds to them instead of distracting me from them. And maybe most importantly, it allowed me to realize my own version of religion. Call it Canyon Religion if you want. Not a woo-woo, New Age kind of Canyon, but something very, very old. Something you feel when you stand on that bridge looking down at the Colorado River, something strong enough to overcome vertigo and fear of spooky bubbles.

Hallelujah!