View from the Painted Desert Inn trailhead, Petrified Forest National Park
A little more than ten days after I first saw some backpackers headed into the Petrified Forest National Wilderness Area badlands I found myself setting off down the very same trail in search of silence and solitude. With wilderness permit in hand and carrying some thirty pounds of water and gear in my backpack I descended into a surreal world of rilled mudstone hills, dry sandy washes, and barren viewscapes littered with the remnants of a 220 million-year-old forest.
Lithodendron Wash
Almost immediately upon entering the wilderness area the trail I had been following divided and divided again into a plethora of intertwining paths, each less distinct than the previous. Finally my boots reached a point where the last set of footprints had vanished and I was left alone upon the landscape with only my topographic map and compass to guide me. They spoke of bearings and azimuths and elevations yet I found my confidence in their words waning: none of the contour lines added up and my compass sightings along the mirror-line made no sense. I pushed on, trusting that the land itself would guide me. After all, you are only lost if you are trying to get somewhere. And I had no set course and no specific goal, only wishing to lose myself in this rugged, surreal environment for two days.
Petrified Wood
I wandered aimlessly for hours among fossil trees and labyrinthine drainages, my course taking me into blind alleys between confusing mudstone hills, along the spines of ridges carpeted with white and brown gravel, and along precarious eroded sandstone overhangs.
Petrified Log
Everywhere I looked the raw, undeniable age of the Earth was laid out before me. I scrambled among boulders and shards of crystalline wood, burrowed brazenly through geologic time, and ascended to high mesa tops only to discover more mudstone hills on top of them and in turn more hills on top of them. The land and I laughed at those willfully ignorant men who insist that the planet is only six thousand years old. They have obviously never walked alone in a place such as this or tapped their fingers softly along the length of a petrified log.
Once, I laid flat on the ground and stared a Triassic river stone in the eye, trying to fathom the purpose behind its shape and location. It winked and shimmered knowingly in the late afternoon sunlight, intimating the very secrets of the Universe. But alas, between then and now I have forgotten its words...
The Barren Plain of the Second Step
I walked farther, my boots taking on a mind of their own, ferrying me towards a date with evening. I stopped occasionally to sip water and photograph the shifting landscape, recording the changing shapes and colors of the hills around me.
Mudstone Hill
After a long time I stopped in a bowl depression between encircling hills where the wind was less insistent and the eastern sky visible. I set camp, cooked my dinner, and waited while the orange light of the high grasslands faded to twinkling stars. Ravens, perched on the hills around me, watched the sun dip below the horizon and then flew off to some communal roost. Silence and stillness enveloped me and for a moment as I drifted off to sleep I thought I could hear the fading 200 million-year-old croaks of giant frogs and insects buzzing in the arrival of night.
The next day dawned clear and cold and as I stood shivering atop a knoll near my camp I noticed a solitary raven silently watching the sunrise, its chiseled bill pointed into the golden light. What was it doing up there? I wondered. Warming the cold from its bones? Or was it simply enjoying the sunrise, same as I was?
Raven Watching the Sunrise
Later, after breakfast and some of the best tasting backcountry instant coffee I've ever had, I packed up my camp and walked along a ridgeline deeper into the maze where the hills turned the color of golden brown bread dough.
Bread Dough Hills
The land shifted around me as I descended into another unnamed wash, its sands still wet from some raging flash flood. The damp sand whispered life to me and I understood that the place, barren as it appeared, could not be called inhospitable by any means. With a little digging and patience even this place would offer up water to the thirsty traveler. In fact, judging by the plentiful antelope, mule deer, and bobcat tracks in the sand there was ample evidence that it had recently done so.
The Invisible River
Sometime later I emerged from the invisible river and passed into a vast "dune field" of rounded red hills, contorted and piled up upon themselves, marching off to the horizon. After floundering around in the midst of them for an hour I clambered up an erosion channel to shoot a compass bearing across the expanse to Pilot Rock, three miles away in the ocean of red.
The "Dune Field" with Pilot Rock in the Background
I am astonished by the size of this place. Not the linear dimensions of it, which are only six or eight miles on a side, but rather the staggering sheer complexity of its interior. Miles upon miles upon miles of crumbling hills, drainages and erosion channels all folded in upon themselves, crumpled and contorted, all of it conspiring to hide the unimaginable fractal vastness of it all. It is the hugeness inside the small, as Craig Childs wrote in his book Soul of Nowhere.
The Hugeness within the Small
Sadly, the decreasing weight in my backpack told me my sojourn was almost over and it was time to turn back towards the trailhead and its gravel trail.
Within the "Dune Field"
On the way back to Lithodendron Wash I took a slightly different route, cutting between a series of flattop mesas and through a sandy drainage filled with logjam'ed petrified trees. Blocks of quartz crystal the size of two of my fists clenched together peeked from the white sand. It was hotter and for the first time since I arrived I broke a sweat. My three liter water bladder began to run dry and I was grateful that I'd brought along extra water.
The Logjam
Somewhere below the logjam I discovered an undercut shelf, a dry waterfall of sorts. Several noisy Cliff Swallows were nesting underneath in the cool shade. I wondered how many explorers had walked out to the ledge, looked down, and then realized they were standing Wile. E. Coyote-like in thin air, their life suspended by crumbling sandstone?
Undercut Sandstone Ledge
I shook my head and walked on, not wishing to disturb the Swallows any further. Finally, after a long time of sweating, I found myself back in Lithodendron Wash and crossing the wilderness boundary. Far above me, atop the mesa, I could see tourists standing at the rim of Kachina Point and I felt the sense of supreme solitude that I'd been suspended in for two days abruptly snap, making an almost audible sound. My wilderness adventure had ended but I knew that I would return someday.
