An Afternoon Chat

Sitting around is usually reserved for warm sunny days or warmer evenings. I don't think we have ever spent even an hour sitting out in these patio chairs. The next day, the snow was even deeper. Welcome to the Frozen North.

Waiting for the Spring

Well, the snow finally arrived here in the Frozen North. We woke up to a major snow event and ended up shoveling the snow twice in one day. As I was out shoveling the snow, I was grateful for the opportunity. It was satisfying to be out doing something that had a beginning and an end. To celebrate the snow we took a walk up the hill in the snow and made a snow angel. Because we moved from Mesa, Arizona to Utah, the first question we are asked is how we like the snow. My answer is it is very nice and we love to watch it, walk in it and I even like to shovel it. We don't particularly like to drive in it however.

The Long View

The vast Colorado Plateau is a study in understatement. This ridge is probably two or more miles away from the spot where the photo was taken. There is nothing except the sage brush in the foreground that can provide an insight into the scale. The cliffs on the face of the ridge (or butte, as they are sometimes called) are probably about 300 feet high. It would likely take me almost an hour to walk over to the bottom of these cliffs. This photo was taken at Cathedral Valley in the Capitol Reef National Park. Part of the land in the photo is inside the Park and some is not.

Vertical Canyons

Because of the softness of underlying strata, erosional forces create almost vertical canyons in the fact of this formation. Deeper canyons are created when the overlying rock is fragmented or missing. I have seen the same type of formations with steep almost vertical canyons on a very small scale when I dig in sand that has been alternatively watered by rain and then dried. The particles of sand form the same types of layers and as you dig away the sand, miniature cliffs form that look very similar to these formations.

Red Stripe

These hills are unusual because of the stripes of colorful minerals in the various levels or strata. Bentonite is an absorbent aluminium phyllosilicate clay consisting mostly of montmorillonite. The absorbent clay was given the name "bentonite" by Wilbur C. Knight in 1898, after the Cretaceous Benton Shale near Rock River, Wyoming. The different types of bentonite are each named after the respective dominant element, such as potassium (K), sodium (Na), calcium (Ca), and aluminium. See Wikipedia: Bentonite. Some of my early memories are of playing on just sort of a hill in Eastern Arizona.

Hanging Canyon

This is a hanging canyon. The canyon on the side of this cliff with the trees ends in an undercut cliff. If for some reason you happened to be trying to walk down this canyon, you would have a very complicated situation. It looks like you could continue to walk along the edge of the drop off but there might not a be a way down without backtracking up the canyon. This image dramatically illustrates the difficulty in traveling in this sandstone labyrinth called the Colorado Plateau. This photo was taken in the Capital Reef National Park in Central Utah.

Erosion

The soft Bentonite clay soil of the Colorado Plateau erodes into some of the most complex formations. The design made by this hill could be used as an example of fractals. It is hard to capture the essence of the country when your photo is limited to a small sample of what you can see when you standing there looking at the scenery. The solution would seem to be taking a 360 degree virtual image but each photographic format has its own advantages and limitations.