Tenacity – Part I: Sunset Crater National Monument and its History

Sunset Crater National Monument

The cinder-strewn slope of Sunset Crater sweeps up a thousand feet into the blue sky.

Vincent Randall. He introduces himself in his native Apache language…my given adult Apache name means “Old Man Hunter.”

Randall, a Tonto Apache elder, has been coming here since the 1940s. He first came with his father in a 38 Chevy pickup… His people roamed the high country of this part of northern Arizona before they were confined to a tiny piece of land in the Verde Valley. But he says Sunset Crater remains a holy place:

“This is my people’s old homeland, you may have a piece of paper that gives you the deed which is a piece of paper that gives you the right to say you own this place, but in my heart, it’s still my land, it’s was given to us by God himself.

“One of the first things is when you enter a place like this you pray. Even today, I prayed this morning coming here.”

…from the transcript of Ken Burns’ The National Parks

Sunset Crater National Monument

Today Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument protects the Colorado Plateau’s most recent volcanic eruption.

It is the least-eroded cinder cone in the San Francisco Volcanic Field. The park is just a few miles north of Flagstaff, Arizona.

Sunset Crater National Monument

Part of what restricts us seeing things is that we have an expectation about what we will see, and we are actually perceptually restricted by that expectation. In a sense, expectation is the lost cousin of attention: both serve to reduce what we need to process of the world “out there.” Attention is the more charismatic member, packaged and sold more effectively, but expectation is also a crucial part of what we see. ~ Alexandra Horowitz, in The Art of Looking

Sunset Crater National Monument

Lava flows and twisted Ponderosa Pines © 2014 Bo Mackison

Most of the lava in this region is black, bubbly basalt, called a’a.

A’a starts as hot lava that erupts from the Earth’s surface. Contact with the atmosphere or water immediately cools the hot lava and begins a rapid hardening process.

See the dark horizontal cave? It is a called a vesicle.

When flowing lava was still hot and fluid, gas bubbles formed. Once the lava flow surface cooled,  then hardened, the gasses were trapped beneath the crust and formed a bubble. The lava hardened around the gases and a cave (or vesicle) was born.

Sunset Crater National Monument

“Much of the ground surface is covered by lava flows or deep volcanic cinder deposits; at first glance, the landscape still appears stark and inhospitable. But look again – within the dramatic geologic features are small islands of pine and aspen trees, desert shrubs, and wildflowers. These provide small but unique habitats for wildlife as well. Slowly but surely, life returns.”~ from Sunset Crater National Park publication

Sunset Crater National Monument

Cinder trail scattered with Ponderosa pine litter — nature’s litter – layers upon the ashy earth.

To walk this trail is to walk in a sacred space. Nature left to its own. Both the struggle and the survival.

Sunset Crater National Monument

Sunset Crater is one of the younger volcanoes in the contiguous United States and was named for its brilliantly colored frothy textures on the cone.

The last eruption took place sometime between about 1080 and 1150 AD, only 900 or so years ago.

Sunset Crater National Monument

Searing basalt lava and hot gases erupted from Sunset Crater Volcano.

The cinders on the rim of the cinder cone, bathed in these vapors, chemically reacted with them to form iron oxide, sulfur compounds, and gypsum The result — red, yellow, and purple basalt cinders which still color the Sunset Crater Volcano’s summit.

Chemical interactions, gases, fire and heat, a crust of ash and a’a. And still, the trees and plants grow. Life.

That’s the history and geology.

Next post is Part II. A different take on tenacity.

 

Sun Burst through an Old Oak Tree

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Sun Burst Oak Tree © 2014 Bo Mackison

“Here comes the sun, here comes the sun
And I say it’s all right…

Sun, sun, sun, here it comes
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes…

~ George Harrison, lyrics

Coneflowers in the Tallgrass Prairie

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Purple Coneflowers © 2014 Bo Mackison

“What we do see depends mainly on what we look for. … In the same field the farmer will notice the crop, the geologists the fossils, botanists the flowers, artists the colouring, sportmen the cover for the game. Though we may all look at the same things, it does not all follow that we should see them.” ~ John Lubbock

Purple coneflowers. One of my favorites. Since it will bloom from June through September, there are usually pockets of these purple beauties in the prairie during any summer visit. My favorite part is the spiny center, that red rusty cone.

The species is even named for its distinctive center – Echinacea means hedgehog in Greek. Evidently the center disk looked like a hedgehog to the plant naming folks way back when.

 

Twilight and Transition – Shadows Deepen Upon the Earth

Prairie Twilight

Wisconsin Twilight © 2014 Bo Mackison

“I love that the morning’s sunrise does not define itself by last night’s sunset.” ~ Steve Maraboli

Last evening, twilight was not a fiery, orange blaze sunset, filling the sky with colors indescribable.

It was instead of red ball burning through the haze of clouds, dropping off the horizon in grays with streaks of pinks. A quiet affair, as sunsets go. Still awe-inspiring. Always awe-inspiring.

I watch every sunrise and sunset, weather permitting. It is ritual for me.

They mark the beginning and the end of each day cycle for me, not only their beauty, but deeply in my consciousness. Beginnings. Endings.

Tonight ends and so ends this day, and I have done all I can.

Morning comes and I begin yet another day. What opportunities will this day offer? What opportunities will I accept? No comparisons required, no “this sunset was better than yesterday’s sunset”.

Each sunset – magnificent. Every sunrise – a blessing and a gift.

Endings and beginnings.

It is a lesson repeated daily. It’s easy to grasp on to what is, resistant to what is yet to come. And still sunrise follows sunset, endlessly throughout our brief time on this earth.

Always an ending, always a beginning.

Overflowing with Color, There is Nothing Planned or Tidy about the Prairie

July Prairie Flowers

July Prairie Flowers © 2014 Bo Mackison

…In early stages of its growth, the grass is interspersed with little flowers, the violet, the strawberry blossom and others of the most delicate structure. When the grass grows higher, these disappear, and taller flowers displaying more lively colors, take their place; and still later, a series of still higher but less delicately formed flowers appear on the surface.” Captain Basil Hall, 1827

Thimbleweed, milkweed, tickseed, spiderwort, rattlesnake master, yellow coneflower, black-eyed susan, butterfly weed, bergamot, rosinweed, compass plant…

Nothing fancy about most of these names – common household names. Tick, milk, thimble, cone, black eye, compass, butterfly, seed, weed.

But there is everything wild and fancy about the prairie itself.

The tall grass prairies of the eastern range are far different from the short grass prairies of the plains. I seldom think prairie when I drive through the plains in Oklahoma, Kansas, eastern Colorado — I think grasslands when I see shortgrass prairie — hard to find, nearly extinguished, maybe 3% of the grasslands from the 1800s remain.

But those that have survived, mostly in the Flint Hills of Kansas, those are the wide undulating grasses of which the poets once wrote with eloquence, and the land that sent despair through European settlers who spoke of the eerie sounds of the relentless winds.

The eastern range of prairie – the tallgrass prairies which receive the most rainfall of all prairie types – are those I know.

Prairie - Pope Farms Conservatory

Wisconsin Tallgrass Prairie  © 2014 Bo Mackison

Replete with thick stands of grasses and flowers, these prairies are nearly impossible to wade through in July and August when the tallest of both are in full bloom. Matted thick, no space left untouched. It takes perseverance and a disregard for claustrophobia to walk in the midst of tall prairie.

And never mind that you are trampling plants and grasses as you step  if this is a remnant or one of the first restorations from the 1930s/40s and long established — this is one of the very factors that made the prairie what it is, the constant trampling by animals. These are plants that rebound, no matter if the visitor is man, animal, wind, or fire.

These plants continue to thrive — as long as you don’t cultivate the earth itself, and destroy their roots.

Without a complex knowledge of one’s place, and without the faithfulness to one’s place on which such knowledge depends, it is inevitable that the place will be used carelessly and eventually destroyed.  ~ Wendell Berry (1972)

The undisturbed prairies are bountiful. A third to a half of all the plants are forbs, the flower producing plants, and attract vast numbers of pollinators. New species of flowers – perhaps as many as 17 new plants each week from mid July through mid August – come into bloom.

This is the tall grass prairie, and what a wild and precious habitat it is…