If you were exposed, if your protective cover was to erode, what would be left?
The 200 million-year-old trees, who are now exposed, are a sculpted expression of eons of soil conditions, weather patterns and time. Evidence of the yellow and red lichen and rings of the ages are cast into these solid as a rock logs. Had the erosion not occurred we would not have been able to witness this natural wonder; a treasure that attracts millions of visitors. In the case of the trees the process probably didn’t look like much but the
Erosion, an eroding away of something that was built up over a lifetime can be boring to watch. And now the miles and miles of painted hills at the showcase for these Petrified Logs.
That made me think about our own treasures and how they seem to be hidden. So many of the lovely people that come to my office for help with hypnosis rarely are aware of their hidden treasures. It is through an erosion process that we can expose who they really are.
Nature is our teacher. Consider making a trip to a state or national park to witness the lessons.
From the pamphlet National Park Service US Department of the Interior
Stories of Climate and Culture Told in Stone
Valerie Grimes loves how nature is her teacher.
This high, dry grassland was once a vast floodplain crossed by many streams. Tall, stately conifer trees grew along the banks. Crocodile-like reptiles, giant amphibians, and small dinosaurs lived among a variety of ferns, cycads, and other plants and animals known only as fossils today. The trees fell and swollen streams washed them into adjacent floodplains. A mix of silt, mud and volcanic ash from distant volcanoes buried the logs. The sediment cut off oxygen and slowed the logs’ decay. Then silica-laden groundwater seeped through the logs, replacing the original wood tissues with silica and petrifying the logs.
The trees lived over 200 million years ago. Since then, continents moved to today’s positions, the region was uplifted, and climate changed. What had been tropical environment became today’s semi-arid grassland. Over time, wind and water wore away the rocks layer and exposed fossilized ancient plants and animals. The hills will yield more fossils as weathering sculpts the Painted Desert’s soft sedimentary rock.
