When someone says “National park” the first thing that usually comes to mind are the majestic views of the Grand Canyon or Yellow Stone. But there is smaller, humbler National park that in its own way offers just as much wonder but only to those who have the patience and vision to notice its quiet, subtle wonders. In North Eastern Arizona, about fifty miles away from the New Mexico border, located on Interstate 40 there is a world that time has forgotten. An entire lost world of color, history, and magic. I am referring to The Petrified Forest.
Petrified Forest National Park boast the largest concentration of petrified wood in the world. It’s an entire localized forest; a graveyard of fossilized trees and monsters. Millions of years ago during the Triassic period Arizona was much closer to the Earth’s equator. The heat and moisture allowed massive rivers to flow freely and for huge forests to grow up. Giant salamanders and crocodiles stalked the murky waters lying in wait for their prey of strange mammal-like reptiles and primitive dinosaurs to wander by. When a tree would fall it would sink into the mud and over time become covered in layers of sediment. As this occurred the content gradually shifted northward slowly increasing the heat and pressure on the plant material and peppering it every now and then with volcanic ash.
Fast forward to our day and the trees have since reemerged. Revealing piles of fossilized logs in a whole array of colors and sporting flashy deposits of quartz crystals. Surrounding these log jams are towering mounds of ash that are striped with shades of pink gray and red. Just north of the Petrified Forest is a sister national park named for these mounds, The Painted Desert.
This area also played host to centuries of human habitation. Paleo-Indians built entire settlements made from rock, adobe and yes petrified wood. They also left thousands of petroglyphs upon boulders that are perfectly aligned with the sun’s yearly positions. To this day these marking still meet up yearly with a single ray of sun that indicates the planting season. Spanish Conquistadores wandered through the area in search of gold it is them that first named the Painted Desert. With advent of the automobile, the Petrified Forest became a popular tourist destination and became a must-see attraction on the mother road of Route 66 earning status as a national park in 1962.
At first glance, the park may not appear that special especially when compared to something as grandiose as the Yosemite, or Zions. But if you look closely you can still see and feel the lines in the bark of the wood, if you only take a moment to be still and listen on one of the hiking trails you can feel pull of history harkening back billions and billions of years making your entire existence feel like a tiny speck in the story of the earth. When you look at the strange skeletons of the other worldly creatures that once inhabited the area you can’t help but be entranced that such things roamed the same ground that you do. And when you wander through the ruins of the pueblos or gaze at the newspaper rock you can’t help but feel a link with humanity and marvel at how far society has come. Don’t get to enchanted though, local legend tells of a curse that awaits anyone who steals even a fragment of the ancient trees.
These are only a few of the reasons I have a profound respect for the Petrified Forest. I still remember fondly when my grandparent would load me into their old Mercury and go in search of Dinosaurs at the park. For me it’s become a second home, no matter how old I get I always feel like a child whenever I visit this sacred sight. So if you’re ever in Northern Arizona be sure to take that detour along I. 40.
