[I originally wrote this in October 2011, but never posted this series on the local geology. The pictures are still worth seeing.]
This afternoon I went back to the cone, determined not to be fooled again by its wiles. This time I took the simple path, the one from the near wash. As I walked up the easy grade, I realized the cone might just be the tip of the hill I live on, the one that had caused so many water problems in the past.
As soon as I got close I saw that it wasn’t bare because of erosion caused by the ATV rider. It was actually stone and not some soft soil. Daniel Koning had said it was tertiary, not the more recent quaternary. The two were there to see on the slope where the grass couldn’t hold its own.
I started climbing the cone. The more I climbed, the more the top receded into a face of gravel.
I felt no overwhelming urge to make it to the top and yodel. My knees were already making threats. The view of the black mesa was quite spectacular from where I stopped.
On the way back down I picked up some pieces of the grey, rough textured stone for the Rock Queen.
Hopefully she can tell me what it really is, something more useful than tertiary side of the geological change.
Daniel J. Koning. Preliminary Geologic Map of the Española Quadrangle, Rio Arriba and Santa Fe Counties, New Mexico, 2002, map and report.
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