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