Layers.
Time.
This place is all about unimaginable spans of time.
I am spending the month of November at Petrified Forest National Park as their artist-in-residence.
From a distance, the huge trees look very much like they fell and were cut by a chainsaw quite recently. Up close, they are miracles of color and form in stone. Because, of course, these trees have not been trees for at least 216 million years. All of their tree-ness was replaced by minerals and became hard stone so long ago—just now eroded out of their hiding place in the Chinle formation.
The time span represented is staggering. On a day where I feel the pain of a nation that has just stepped into a place I thought it would never go, looking through the lens of geologic time seems helpful.
Here are some images. I don’t have words for the rest yet except to say this:
Love wins. Love each other no matter what. Be kind. Listen. And then go make something.
