Deserts and Forests

I'm losing my ability to think coherently. The desert is dazzling and endless; it fills my mind as much as my vision and as a consequence, words and thoughts I previously relied upon are leaking away.

This morning we took in the Petrified Forest National Park here in Arizona. It's a bit special. The desert is literally littered with semi-precious stones, like agate and jasper, quartz and amethyst. Most remarkably, these minerals lie about the place shaped like fallen tree trunks. The trees were part of a swampy tropical forest two hundred and twenty-five million years ago. They fell and became submerged in a mineral-rich sludge ejected from volcanoes. The trees sucked the silicate inside themselves where it crystalised. Eventually the tree trunk's living tissue became replaced by stone and slowly the landmass rose and became eroded, revealing the petrified trees. You really couldn't make this stuff up.

Eventually, when we have sufficient Internet, I'll post pictures. But for now you'll just have to believe me: it is hauntingly and gobsmackingly beautiful.

Then there were the views across 'The Painted Desert' -sweeping vistas of pink rock and dry green grass, as bright and colourful as any spring meadow. The air is the purest in America apparently and allowed us to see the tops of the San Francisco Peaks, a mere one hundred and twenty miles away.

Several hours later, having ignored the first signs for Los Angeles, we were climbing the shoulders of those mountains, driving up out of Flagstaff and into a living forest of silver birch and Ponderosa pine. At eight thousand feet (three thousand higher than the Petrified Forest) there was snow on the ground. The simplicity of green pine needles and white snow was restful after the colours of the desert, but we were soon heading back down again.

There was just time to arrive at the Grand Canyon itself and have a shufty at the rim before bed.

First impression? I'm terrified.