[I originally wrote this in November 2011, but never posted this series on local geology. The pictures are still worth seeing.]
On the way back from the Barbarian’s Wash I noticed a hill that had grass growing at it’s base, but was bare at the top. Oddly it supported several junipers.
The slope wasn’t steep. Up I went.
The grass gave way to what looked like caked mud.
Only it wasn’t. I picked up a piece, and found it was thin rock of no particular distinction.
I continued to the top where the fragments began to take on the shape of some kind of flow over what must have once been soft mud.
If the washes were slowly revealing some previous landscape, this hill top represented how deep those sediments must have been. Presumably, the land was all at this height at some time, but the rock kept this from being eroded as completely.
The junipers had found their water beneath the slabs.
When I got home I discovered the nondescript rock wasn’t some piece of rough-textured sediment, but a slice of conglomerate, I assume from the Tertiary age. How they got atop the sediments is another mystery, if indeed the sediments are younger.
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