I've always wanted to see a flash flood in the southwest, but never have. But in a way I did experience a flash flood while watching Coffee Girl tear down the arroyo. Why didn't she trip over the football-sized rocks?
There was a den for a large animal dug into the bottom of the vertical sidewall of this dry wash. I was afraid to get up close for a good photo. There were some imposing claw marks outside the den. What kind of beast lived there?
Since I almost lost the poodle a month ago, I am sensitive to living things wanting to survive. Consider this grass:
There were mesquite trees showing that same Love of Life.
Diluvial evidence was everywhere, but of course, not a drop to drink. Plants, large rocks, or red dirt were ever so close to falling into the "drink." Here is a red rock in the center of the photo, balanced on a red dirt pedestal. The "delicate balance of nature," indeed!
It is strange how a "river bank" can have sidewalls almost perfectly vertical. How could that happen unless the lower levels were a little more erodible than the top? Normally ground gets tougher, lower.
At one spot the vertical "river bank" was the height of a kitchen table. I put the little poodle on it and asked him for one of his chiseled poses:
He is looking off to the high mesas, built or carved by some of the same geologic processes that made this little riverbank of his. Whenever I let my little dog play with geology, the dry technical jargon of geology no longer bothers me. There's something about bringing the 'grand' down to earth that helps me to appreciate it better.
Standing in this waterless river you can really appreciate that everything around you has some connection with fluids and solids and transmutations between the two.
When you think of southwestern geology it is easy to think of the big stuff that gets manufactured into national parks and postcards. I have seen red rock arches and shapes no bigger than my little poodle, which a good photographer could use to fool you into thinking that they were hundreds of feet high, and were photographed in Arches national park.
But why must natural beauty be big, when the human-sized features can actually affect us more? Perhaps this explains the appeal of rockhounding. In a similar way, perhaps, birders have learned to appreciate a large and lush boscage by looking at a single bird.
The human brain just can't appreciate everything at once--but it can appreciate one fine thing at a time. If we carry this thought to its limit we would end up with William Blake's,
"To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower;
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour."
