Integrative Natural History of Old Ore Road, Part 8: The Blessed Day I Stood There | Big Bend National Park, Texas, USA
Special philosophic-briar-patch alert: If you're here for the geology or natural history only, stop reading after the first unitalicized paragraph to avoid a toxic dose of authorial introspection.
Taken in the same place as Part 7 of this set, but from a slightly different angle. And still looking southwestward at a small canyon of a Tornillo Creek tributary. Here at Carlota Tinaja we're about 6.9 road mi / 11.1 road km north of the intersection of Old Ore Road and Park Road 12.
To briefly review what I mentioned in the previous post, the artfully stratified stone belongs to the Upper Cretaceous Boquillas Formation. It's composed of alternating beds of limestone and various kinds of mudstone, each representing a separate pulse of sedimentation near a margin of the Western Interior Seaway. In those days, that great body of saltwater bisected North America from the Arctic all the way to what will always be known to the non-idiotic as the Gulf of Mexico.
And now I'm going to do something unforgiveable by speaking primarily to myself about my own reaction to this photo: it has always triggered in me particularly intense associations with the blessed day I stood in this spot and took it.
I remember feeling a flood of awe and curiosity and calmness that cannot possibly be related, in word or image, to any other person. I was standing in the midst of so much sheer geologic beauty, so much monumental stillness, so much rock carefully arranged by unconscious processes. No human-derived landscape has ever been half so uncontrived or perfect.
There is that experience of four-dimensional immersion in the real that only deserts offer. In that stark and arid world there is the overwhelming impression that the only way to avoid delusion is to sense the legendary nature of everything.
At least that's what this kind of place, and this kind of picture, do for me. But as noted before, it's a lesson that can't be imprinted on others. Still, in the heart of this old agnostic Gnostic the memory of having been there, at Carlota Tinaja, says something like this:
Rejoice evermore.
Pray without ceasing.
In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.
Quench not the Spirit.
Lest I get slapped with a plagiarism suit from the Heavenly Choir, let me note that this is 1 Thessalonians 5:16-19, straight up. I was raised on the King James Version, so there you have it, in good Jacobean prose.
To see the other photos and descriptions in this set, visit my my Integrative Natural History of Old Ore Road album.
Integrative Natural History of Old Ore Road, Part 8: The Blessed Day I Stood There | Big Bend National Park, Texas, USA
Special philosophic-briar-patch alert: If you're here for the geology or natural history only, stop reading after the first unitalicized paragraph to avoid a toxic dose of authorial introspection.
Taken in the same place as Part 7 of this set, but from a slightly different angle. And still looking southwestward at a small canyon of a Tornillo Creek tributary. Here at Carlota Tinaja we're about 6.9 road mi / 11.1 road km north of the intersection of Old Ore Road and Park Road 12.
To briefly review what I mentioned in the previous post, the artfully stratified stone belongs to the Upper Cretaceous Boquillas Formation. It's composed of alternating beds of limestone and various kinds of mudstone, each representing a separate pulse of sedimentation near a margin of the Western Interior Seaway. In those days, that great body of saltwater bisected North America from the Arctic all the way to what will always be known to the non-idiotic as the Gulf of Mexico.
And now I'm going to do something unforgiveable by speaking primarily to myself about my own reaction to this photo: it has always triggered in me particularly intense associations with the blessed day I stood in this spot and took it.
I remember feeling a flood of awe and curiosity and calmness that cannot possibly be related, in word or image, to any other person. I was standing in the midst of so much sheer geologic beauty, so much monumental stillness, so much rock carefully arranged by unconscious processes. No human-derived landscape has ever been half so uncontrived or perfect.
There is that experience of four-dimensional immersion in the real that only deserts offer. In that stark and arid world there is the overwhelming impression that the only way to avoid delusion is to sense the legendary nature of everything.
At least that's what this kind of place, and this kind of picture, do for me. But as noted before, it's a lesson that can't be imprinted on others. Still, in the heart of this old agnostic Gnostic the memory of having been there, at Carlota Tinaja, says something like this:
Rejoice evermore.
Pray without ceasing.
In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.
Quench not the Spirit.
Lest I get slapped with a plagiarism suit from the Heavenly Choir, let me note that this is 1 Thessalonians 5:16-19, straight up. I was raised on the King James Version, so there you have it, in good Jacobean prose.
To see the other photos and descriptions in this set, visit my my Integrative Natural History of Old Ore Road album.