Hold your breath now

There was so much beauty on that Arizona trip to Sedona that I think I took over 300 photos. I deleted a few, but the natural beauty of this harsh land lends itself to the most amateurish of us. The weather was variable and one day we even got caught in a light rain and I had an umbrella in my back pack which I used. It was exotic being in the desert during a light spring rain.

If I was a geologist I would point out that "Major depositional episodes occurred in the later Paleozoic, Paleocene, Miocene and Quaternary periods." According to the local tourist page this beauty was "formed from ancient deposits of limestone, mudstone and sandstone when this area was the west coast of a still emerging continent." Hey were are talking 2 billion years here folks. Think about that as you smoke your peace pipe and gaze out over the valley and watch the bluejays perform their mating swoops. We are such a little teeny tiny blip on the surface and in the grand scheme of things. And while we are quite lovely, we don't hold a sparkle to this beauty.



Sometimes you will see granite that formed from the volcanic explosions that has layered over the exposed red sandstone. The exotic presence of this violent geology seems to attract psychics and spiritualists from everywhere. They feel the overwhelming presence of locked time and try to grasp its meaning, share its energies, explain its strength, feel its vortexes. But we are too small and we try too hard (and the commercial exchange of money for this is most annoying).

I reduced the size of the pictures, so I apologize if the digital rendition is compromised. And where you may ask does the red come from?...iron oxides.

The next lesson is on botany and involves tree bark...yes more photos of tree bark that are like Monet or Pissaro paintings. I can hardly wait!