God at Work in the Rocks

Rocks of the Texas Canyon formation

Rocks show spalling caused by freezing and thawing

Rocks. Mountain size, or miniaturized to a grain of sand, they’re everywhere. Especially here in the American Southwest, where there’s not much soil or plant life to hide them from view.

Recently, we pulled off Interstate 10 into Arizona’s Texas Canyon, in search of the private, non-profit Amerind Foundation museum. We found ourselves near an upthrust range of mountains intriguingly named the Dragoons. (A dragoon was a calvary soldier outfitted with the heavier armaments of a foot soldier.) It was to the vertical labyrinths of the Dragoon Mountains that the Apache warrior Cochise fled from the Confederate calvary that eventually defeated him.

But it was the nearer rocks that caught our attention. Stacked, balanced, and weirdly-sculptured, they looked like the abandoned playthings of some colossal child. What caused them to look like that?

In the museum, we found a brochure that gave the answer.

The formations in these photographs are part of a body of igneous rock called Texas Canyon quartz monzonite. It’s a granite, and it looks as it does because it was once magma (molten rock) that rose slowly without reaching the surface. It cooled beneath the earth’s crust, forming large crystals of the potassium-rich mineral, feldspar. Between the large crystals, other minerals crystalized: quartz, biotite, and plagioclase. Once the rocks that covered the blocks of quartz monzonite eroded away, they were exposed to natural weathering processes that rounded them at exposed surfaces and along the joints.

Tiny cracks formed between the larger crystals, allowing water and oxygen to invade and weaken the granite, prying the mineral grains apart. Sheets of rock spall off the outer surfaces of boulders along curved cracks or joints when water invades the spaces, then freezes. This helps round the blocks. As the rock around the boulders of quartz monzonite disintegrate, the pedestals, spires, and balanced boulders that form the Texas Canyon outcrop appear.

What a reminder of our creative God at work!

Only 40 miles to the east of Texas Canyon, a similar magma intrusion reached all the way to the earth’s surface. It caused a gigantic eruption that spread a thick deposit of lava and ash and left a tremendous crater. Today, in Chiricahua National Monument, one sees oddly-shaped columns and spires, the remnants of that almost 27 million year old ash blanket. The difference between one landscape and the other is all in how the rock reached the surface. 

Chiricahua National Monument, Photo courtesy of National Park Service

Texas Canyon quartz monzonite formations

A Love Affair with Arizona

A desert sunrise

In the Saguaro National Monument

When I was young, the gorgeous desert and canyon photographs in Arizona Highways magazine enticed me. I was also fascinated by the lovely art of the indigenous peoples of the desert. If only I could leave behind the drab, wet Northwest winters to experience for myself the light and warmth of exotic Arizona!

God loves to give his children the desires of their hearts. When we’re young, we may find that hard to believe. Sometimes we want things badly. Not getting them leads to disappointment. We don’t realize that what we want may be bad for us, or that we must learn to wait for what we want.  Sometimes, getting what we think we want turns into disillusionment.  But often, God delights us by eventually giving us what we desire, and more.

An opportunity to fulfill my desert wish came after I had graduated from college and taught school for four years in Washington State. I sent resumes to various Southwest cities, eager to experience life in the land I dreamed about. My sister and I set out for Arizona, stopping for an interview in California. There I learned that, due to a misunderstanding, I had not been released from my previous job.

Major disappointment!  We turned around and drove back to Washington, never even seeing Arizona, and I went back to my former position. A few weeks after school started, I met Bob Biggar, a young man from Alaska. Six months later, we married. We moved to Alaska. I’d never thought of living there, but I loved it. While we raised our family, I started a writing career, and we made lifelong friends. (More heart’s desires fulfilled!)

When my husband’s health began to fail, doctors told him he needed a warmer climate. We returned to Washington, and one winter we decided to take our travel trailer to Arizona. We enjoyed a month of exploring fascinating places while I did research for a young adult book set in Arizona. Then our insurance company cancelled our auto coverage. The only way to resolve the problem was to return to Washington. I did finish my research, though I still wanted to experience more of the Grand Canyon State.

A while later, Bob died. After six years, I married Hank (a good gift from God which is another story.) My daughter, Lenora, received her heart’s desire when she married Steve.  Then she and Steve moved from Seattle to live in Arizona year-round.

I missed Lenora terribly, but now we had an excuse to travel to Arizona every winter. This year we’ve rented a vacation apartment, and we’re staying a month. I’ve come to realize through my daughter’s experience that I’m wimpy about hot weather. I really don’t want to live here year around. But God has given me the chance to enjoy the desert and its denizens up close and personal during the best time of year, and also to spend time with loved ones. All because God knows our heart's desires and he loves to fulfill them.

Lenora, Steve and Bella with Hank, after an evening walk in the desert

Somewhere the Sun is Shining. . .

Shore crab defending his crevice in the rocks

 At home in Washington, the snowstorm moved on, leaving rain, rain, rain it its wake. San Diego also had rain, but yesterday the sun came out. Low tides drew crowds of people to the tide pools at Cabrillo National Monument at Point Loma, and we went, too.

Cormorants and pelicans

Tide Pools and eroded sandstone cliffs at Point Loma

Fascination for all ages

Up close and personal

Enjoying the sunshine at the Point Loma tide pools

Snowy Owls Come to Stanwood

    This has been one of those unpredictable winters with no snow, not much rain,  and occasional glorious sun breaks that make us feel lucky just to be alive.

    Late one sunny afternoon this week, Hank came upstairs from his windowless office and said, “Let’s go up in the mountains to enjoy the sunshine.”

    I glanced at the clock. “When we get there, it will be dark. Why don’t we go someplace close and look for birds?”

    We grabbed our coats and the camera and headed toward Camano Island. By the time we reached the new Mark Clark Bridge a few miles from our home, the sun was already dipping toward the island. At the end of the bridge, Hank swung left onto Eide Road. We’d passed this spot hundreds of times but never ventured down to Leque Island, which lies between Port Susan and Skagit Bays.

    The Eide family farmed there for nearly a century. Prior to settlement, the island had been entirely salt marsh. It now consists of wetlands and diked fields where contract farmers plant grain every year as food for wintering waterfowl. About 100 acres of Leque Island’s 325 acres is being restored to an intertidal estuary. This will provide habitat for juvenile salmon and also benefit other fish and wildlife.

 We passed the bare spot where the Eide house had stood and continued beside the dike to a small parking area.  Almost immediately we spotted a juvenile eagle in a gnarled old cottonwood that once shaded the homestead. Birds flitted from branch to branch in smaller trees that may once have been an orchard.

     Already the light was fading. We were out of sight of the highway. The dike hid the river and the town beyond. In the stillness, we heard the gabbling of snow geese. Soon loose skeins of hundreds of birds passed overhead, hurrying toward the tide flats to spend the night.

     Rounding a bend in the road, we met a couple of men walking back to their vehicle. From the looks of their equipment, they were serious birdwatchers. They told us they’d seen a snowy owl. Our ears perked up. Snowy owls belong in northern Canada and Alaska. But this winter many are being spotted in our area and across the United States, some as far south as Kansas.

    Ahead of us, huge bags of sand backed a wall of concrete blocks where storms, combined with high tides, had washed away the dike. A small, energetic woman with binoculars, camera, and a big spotting scope had established herself atop the barrier. We learned she’s a research ecologist, but she and her dog often come to this spot at sunset or early morning to watch the birds. (The dog was more interested in getting us to toss his ball than he was in the birds.)

    She pointed out the dark female northern harriers and the smaller, lighter males swooping over the field, hunting for voles. Short-eared owls made soundless sorties of their own. Our new acquaintance offered to move her scope to an easier-to-reach spot on the dike, so we could see the snowy owl she’d been watching.

    She focused the instrument and let us peer through it. Sure enough, far across the river we could see the fluffy, pale form of a female snowy owl sitting on a stump. Snowies are among the largest of the owls, with wingspans that can reach almost five feet. Since they’re native to the tundra, they seldom perch in trees but rest on driftwood or fence posts instead. They live on lemmings and other small mammals in the Arctic, but when the lemming population crashes or when there’s a bumper crop of juvenile owls, some are forced further south. That’s why happy birders in our area are getting a look at this sudden population increase, or irruption, of snowy owls.

    We thanked our new  friend for showing us the rare visitor and walked back through the twilight to our car. Harriers and owls still ghosted low over the abandoned fields of Eide’s farm. Who knew what adventure waited when we dropped everything to answer the call of a sun break and the out-of-doors?

   
Photo courtesy of: http://animal-wallpaper-free.blogspot.com/2010/04/best-snowy-owl-pictures.html