concretions

It is great to see so many other people also taking great pictures of local wildlife in Corrales. Opening your eyes (and minds) to the world around us is a skill always worth fostering. But the challenge is how to develop this learning even further, into new areas. To bring some novelty to this blog I decided to drive into new territory (literally) and look at some local hoodoos about 45 minutes drive west of Corrales out in the Ro Rancho limits.

This was the day before cold weather and a storm was about to come in. Even the insects were hiding. Apart from a few birds and some off road-ers, there was nothing moving. The total silence was awesome. The landscape was just as Georgia O'Keefe painted it.

Like many places of solitude, the downside is that other people have gotten there first. Many hoodoos, signs, and glass bottles are damaged in the process of being used for target practise. But the illegal dumping, and off roading damage was pretty slight compared to other areas of the Westside.

there was some evidence of animals. Here is some fresh coyote scat full of juniper seeds. The reason they were in the area was obvious; as we left an off roader dumped out the remains of their Kentucky fried chicken on the side of the trail.

In the loose sand, these juniper bushes provide a lot more than shade and berries to the wildlife. The roots stabilze the sand and allow burrows for many critters to dig out, these holes are used by many species over many years..

The colors of the ground is mirrored in the plants, browns, yellows, greens, greys, and here...red? No idea what this plant might be. I'm looking into it. The things you can learn...

The tall Cholla cactus are common, but will disappear where an area is grazed. Like this area is. It is interesting to see a dark red on these plants too. Other species of the Opuntia genus can survive disturbed areas better. There is a lot more diversity to cactus than people would realize.

this young Cholla cactus still had the remains of flowers on it. Many cactus flowers are incredibly beautiful in bloom, especially in profusion.

the geology of New Mexico is nationally recognised, just like the hoodoos themselves (check out Tent Rocks Park sometime). The predominate soil is sand, from a long ago shallow sea that existed.....many lots of years ago. (Haven't been to the Natural history museum in a while and it shows.) The sand was deposited in layers over the eons. When fresh water mixes with clear seawater, it deposits iron and other minerals that color and harden some sand layers over others.

Sometimes mineral rich water seeps into the cracks between layers. When it evaporates you can see fine lines of color in rock and sometimes crystals, like rock salt.

The extreme heat and cold daytime temperatures subsequently fractue the soft rock along these fault lines. The occasional thunderous monsoon sculpt the rest into crazy statues of people, camels (Camel rock casino), and mythical scenes. Plaza Blanca has some fine examples of these.

The same process happens on a sphere and forms what looks a lot like an onion, with layers of many colors. 

these concretions have many colorful names, like "dinosaur eggs" or "pseudofossils". When I first found them in Jemez, I thought they were iron balls from cannon or muskets, stuck in the side of sanstone cliffs.

These apparently get mistaken for iron meteorites often. The hillside is littered with these colorful marbles in certain areas. Iron forms many colors depending on its oxidation state, from silver (no oxidation) to black and brown (partly oxidized), to the familiar red rust of full oxidation.

The hills are also littered with smooth hard stones left behind where a broad river once wound through the region. This is a piece of flint, one of the many types of rock that can be found in the sand.