Wonders and marvels, marvels and wonders

The time flies here. We've been here two months already and it seems we just pulled in. What I came back to do was clean up the park's servers. Just like anyone, including me I'm sorry to say, when they get a new server, it's a matter of migrating everything on the old one to the new one, junk included. This is not helpful. One of the problems they face is that employees label folders with their own names; what the Admin officer here calls "the Tommy, Susie, Billy files," which is also not helpful when Tommy, Susie, and Billy leave and two generations of employees later on have no idea who they were.

Well, when I got back at the beginning of February the new server wasn't here yet, but there was plenty of other work to do, work I didn't have time for before I left last year. So I fiddled around with that for a while until the Chief of Interpretation, Richard, asked me if I'd clean up the Interp files, preparatory to the move to the new server. Interpretation, as it relates to parks, was a term completely unknown to me before I came here but they're the people who make sense of what you're looking at when you gaze over the Painted Desert or hike the Blue Forest Trail. They're the folks who staff the visitor services desk, answering questions about what's good to see; the ones who use the scientific knowledge of the paleontologist and archeologist and head off to Newspaper Rock or Puerco Pueblo to explain the importance of the petroglyphs and Pueblo IV era ruins; they're the permanent and seasonal Rangers who lead hikes along old Route 66, into the badlands, or to the solstice markers in June, impressing on visitors why this place has meaning. They prepare the newspaper, design and publish fliers and the signs (called Waysides) at the stops along the road, build the website, map out new hikes, develop programs for school groups, and are the face of the park. They also have lots of files spread out over two drives with a plethora of duplicates everywhere. My mission: clean it up. It amounts to a lot of sitting. Hours can go by before I know it, which makes getting out into the park and stretching my legs more and more necessary, so Sunday I headed to the Tepees to see what I could see.

I've parked at Tepees before but have always headed in the other direction, to the Tepees-Blue Mesa Trail, also known as the Blue Forest Trail. This time I headed west into the badlands.

This chunk of rock caught my eye right away. I don't know any answers to the important questions of what, why, how, or when, but it's darned interesting.
 
 











I've been spending way too much time on Pinterest lately. If you know what I mean, you have my oh-so-knowledgable sympathy. If you don't know what I mean, save yourself and don't find out. Anyway, one of the topics I follow on that he-devil website is knitting patterns. I'm not actually going to make any of them but that doesn't stop me from looking, and this eroding Tepee-side looks very much like feather knitting patterns I've pinned.

Once I'd climbed up and over the hills and made my way down narrow gullies, I came to a fairly wide wash. By this time I'd lost my bearings but had the idea I was going in more or less the right direction. Plus, I figured I'd have to find one end of the wash or the other, so being the fearless adventurer I am (and having the GPS the hitchhiker gave me safely carabined to my pack with the directions to my wheels plugged in) I just walked. This part of the park doesn't have the spectacular formations and deep ravines I've seen in the Painted Desert, but it was still good. What was wonderful about the wash was the line of bobcat or coyote tracks that I followed from one end to the other. Sigh. I love this place.

See? Lesser formations, different, but interesting. I see these things and always wonder, why? Why are these small lumps still here? Why aren't they scoured to the ground like everything around them?

Here are a couple more oddities. The difference in color and rhythmic shapes are so at odds with the surrounding terrain.

Mud patterns continue to fascinate me. I thought this would be leathery but it broke in my hand when I tried to see how much flex there was.

What's interesting to me about this is the sudden change in texture about a third of the way down. When the hill continues to erode, will there be a hoodoo of loose, jagged rock left standing, or will the bottom third remain relatively smooth as it is now? I feel like the father in My Big Fat Greek Wedding: I don't know, I don't know, I don't know!

I love these scrappers. How they hold on against the odds is a lesson to me. It really is.

Make note of the fissures in the earth. More about them in a bit.

Another treat was the critter tracks and other evidence of two-to-eight-legged life. When I left the wash I got into an area of sand that held onto lots of prints. Nearly every Tuesday the hitchhiker and I ask the Chief of Interp, Richard, and recently the Chief of Maintenance, Kevin, to come for dinner. These are two married guys who wives work elsewhere. I feel really bad for them when coming to our place is the highlight of the workweek, but that's the way it is. I was subjecting them to some of these photos when this next one came up and immediately one of them said, "spider." Could very well be.

I'm not sure about this but it could be a porcupine getting into an ant hill.

This is definitely something going after the ants, but there weren't any prints here.

This is from a trip I took into the Painted Desert a few weeks ago. I showed this photo to the museum's Collections Manager, who has a degree in Zoology, to get an ID - porcupine. The large, smooth footpad and long, curved claws that touch the ground only at their tips make it distinctive. This is what probably dined on the ants.

I'm thinking a lizard, with a little drag to its tail. They were darting everywhere. How do they live?

Maybe a bird? I love this one. Look how the tracks come in from the upper left, get all confused and jumbled up, and make a sharp veer off to the lower left. That is, if I read them correctly.

This is one of my favorite views from the day. The color, the shape, the texture, everything.

It never fails to amaze me.

 More, impossibly balanced.

And more.

There's not a lot of petrified wood in this area, but what I found was pretty.

This patterning is unusual to me; I just haven't seen a much of this.

And then I came across this. I was so immediately smitten, unreasonably charmed, with this anomaly. I texted the hitchhiker to get shoes, hat, and water ready, I was on my way to pick him up. I had something to show off.

I have never, ever, seen anything like this. Remember the fissures I said to take note of? This is what was coming out of many of them - gypsum shards. Delicate, fragile, lovely minerals eroding from the earth. How gorgeous is this?

 The sun shining through.

When I saw one line, I saw them everywhere. Straight lines, like an arrow, splitting the mud.

Except when it breaks to go around obstacles or, as Kevin theorized, the obstacles here took advantage of a break in the surface crust to put down roots.

Isn't it just amazing?

How do they erupt from the dry, hard crust without breaking into crumbs?

I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. But they do.

I'd come full circle at the Tepees. It was such a lovely day, rich with discoveries. Y'all need to come to Petrified Forest and spend time on the ground. There are wonders and marvels everywhere.

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Thought of the day:

Being creative makes you a weird little beast, because everything is so bloody interesting for some strange reason. - via Pinterest, of course.