After visiting the dilapidated old hospital the other day, my visitor and I wandered over to a geologic oddity in our area, where a codgerish RV friend was camped. (And a high quality campsite it was.) Due to the sybaritic sleeping habits of a couple members of our conversational quartet, we arrived too late to get really good photographs of this interesting pile of giant boulders.
My first question at the visitor's center was: why here and not ten miles away? Well, cuz this is whar the rocks iz, the volunteer guide answered. (I rolled my eyes.) Let's try this again: what is so special about the local geology that spectacular rocks are found only here, and not over the entire local area?
Actually I'm just having some fun at the volunteer guide's expense. After a slow start he cranked up to give good explanations of how a local volcano deposited a layer of volcanic tuff over the area. Then they vertically cracked and eroded until most have disappeared; only in this one state park has the rock layer survived. Therefore all of this eye candy is just another example of decay, noble rot, dilapidation.
In a sense, these rocks are soul mates of the dilapidated fort of yesterday and of the Cliff Dwellings before that. One of the reasons that New Mexico is the Foremost of the Four Corner states is that we have more ruins of all kinds. Actually, my favorite ones are the most common: the century-old ranch houses, with rusted corrugated sheet metal roofs, and with adobe spalling off the walls.
There is an underlying theme to many of these disparate monuments of noble rot. Help me here, what was that famous quote by Tolstoy?; something about every happy family being happy in the same way, but miserable families being so in different ways. I was never really sure that I agreed with that proverb, but something like it applies to noble rot.
Every building or topographic feature that is modern is banal, mass-produced, sterile, and uninteresting. But when they age they become individualistic and beautiful in a quirky sort of way.
My first question at the visitor's center was: why here and not ten miles away? Well, cuz this is whar the rocks iz, the volunteer guide answered. (I rolled my eyes.) Let's try this again: what is so special about the local geology that spectacular rocks are found only here, and not over the entire local area?
Actually I'm just having some fun at the volunteer guide's expense. After a slow start he cranked up to give good explanations of how a local volcano deposited a layer of volcanic tuff over the area. Then they vertically cracked and eroded until most have disappeared; only in this one state park has the rock layer survived. Therefore all of this eye candy is just another example of decay, noble rot, dilapidation.
In a sense, these rocks are soul mates of the dilapidated fort of yesterday and of the Cliff Dwellings before that. One of the reasons that New Mexico is the Foremost of the Four Corner states is that we have more ruins of all kinds. Actually, my favorite ones are the most common: the century-old ranch houses, with rusted corrugated sheet metal roofs, and with adobe spalling off the walls.
There is an underlying theme to many of these disparate monuments of noble rot. Help me here, what was that famous quote by Tolstoy?; something about every happy family being happy in the same way, but miserable families being so in different ways. I was never really sure that I agreed with that proverb, but something like it applies to noble rot.
Every building or topographic feature that is modern is banal, mass-produced, sterile, and uninteresting. But when they age they become individualistic and beautiful in a quirky sort of way.
Comments
I thought you would be commenting about the sagging bridge. Actually that was near Silverton, CO, rather than New Mexico. But that's southern Colorado, so it still counts.