My brother said 'every rock is a time machine' while we were hiking near Sedona and it clicked.

3 comments

3 Comments

My buddy Mike found a piece of petrified wood up there, and @ellis.leo's guide helped him figure out it was from a forest that's been gone for ages.

nancy8172mo ago

Ever think about how far back some of that rock actually goes? Like the red sandstone in Sedona tells a story from when that whole area was a huge sea floor. But then you find a piece of granite with shiny bits in it, and that stuff was cooked up under a mountain range that isn't even there anymore. Each layer or type is like a different chapter, and we're just walking on top of it all.

ellis.leo2mo ago

I keep a basic geology guide in my backpack for this. When you find a dark, bubbly rock, that's often basalt from a lava flow. The smooth, round river stones are way older, worn down over millions of years. It turns a hike into a scavenger hunt, trying to spot the different chapters. My nephew gets a kick out of finding the shiny mica in the granite pieces.