Carlsbad canyons

No, the title isn’t a typo or thinko: I meant Carlsbad canyons. While almost everyone goes to Carlsbad Caverns National Park to see the caverns, the road in from the highway passes through some scenic canyons whose grand scale makes them worth stopping for in their own right, as we found out on June 14th. It’s a harsh land of little rain, where many plants have a hard time making a go of it.

One plant that thrives there is Dasylirion wheeleri, known even in English by the name that the Spaniards took from the Aztecs: sotol. Below you see a sotol flower stalk (which people joke is so tall).

© 2017 Steven Schwartzman

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A balanced look at Kasha-Katuwe

Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks in northern New Mexico is such an intriguing place that I feel I owe you another look at it from our June 12th visit. In particular, the place is known for its many balanced rocks, as shown above and then a little more closely below at a different location. The undulating strata of the rocks have a charm of their own as well.

© 2017 Steven Schwartzman

 

Kasha-Katuwe

On a day like today, which is to say one in which the date (12) was twice the number of the month (6), we visited a place I’d never heard of till this trip. It’s known in Keresan as Kasha-Katuwe, meaning ‘white rocks,’ and in English as Tent Rocks. The picture above makes sense of both descriptions, while the one below emphasizes the tapering shapes of the prominent “tents.”

© 2017 Steven Schwartman

Bandelier National Monument

On June 11th we spent a few hours at a place in Northern New Mexico that I’d visited only once before, way back in 1981: Bandelier National Monument. Below is a closer view of some of the Swiss-cheese-like rocks that make the site holey.

© 2017 Steven Schwartzman

Red Rock Canyon Open Space

Just a mile south of Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs is Red Rock Canyon Open Space. While its formations aren’t nearly as well known nor as extensive or impressive, the rocks do offer up some pleasant colors and intricate patterns. Here are two panels of stone that caught my attention on June 7th. As far as I know, the hole in the center of the second picture is natural.

© 2017 Steven Schwartzman

Two henges

I didn’t see it then and there, which was June 2nd in Custer State Park in South Dakota’s Black Hills. Now, back in Austin almost two months later, this ring of trees near boulders strikes me as Pinehenge. And maybe I’m a bit unhinged, but when it comes to the more contrasty view below from Mt. Rushmore three days earlier that also included pine trees and boulders, I’m inclined to call it Shadowscragglehenge.

Now surely, I thought to myself, that’s a unique name. And guess what? Google the Omniscient agrees:

Your search – Shadowscragglehenge – did not match any documents.

Suggestions:

Make sure all words are spelled correctly.

Try different keywords.

Try more general keywords.

Hooray for uniquity!

© 2017 Steven Schwartzman

More resemblances from Mt. Rushmore

In a post a couple of weeks ago you saw the naturally sculpted remains of a tree that had resonances of the carved rocks at Mt. Rushmore. Elsewhere at the national monument the resemblance went the other way. As I see it, this photograph of rocks could be a close-up of a tree trunk:

In the pareidolia department, does this other formation seem to any of you, as it does to me, like the blunted image of a face?

And in the back-to-reality department, notice the two sapling pine trees growing out of the rocks, one on each side of the “head” (the sapling on the right is hard to see at this size).

© 2017 Steven Schwartzman