One of the more densely packed areas of balanced rocks in Makoshika.]]>
2 thoughts on “POTD: Makoshika #21”
Steve
Don’t tell the Utah Boy Scout leaders about this area! They’d be in there knocking down all those dangerous boulders. Just back from my annual week at Lake Powell. Amazing how precarious rocks continue to rest on impossible perches through our lifetime. You highlighted relative size scale in two of your previous images in this series. Waiting for the rocks to fall, that’s a time construct to ponder. Relative scale of different measures are often presented to us in these landscapes.
Steve, I’m glad I visited Goblin Valley years ago before those Boy Scouts got after it. Didn’t know I was living that dangerously by being there. In regards to waiting for the rocks to fall, when we moved to Bozeman in 1982, there was a rock on the lip of Tower Falls in Yellowstone that looked like it was going to fall any second. At the over look there was a display titled “When Will the Rock Fall” with a photograph from the late 1800s of that very rock to show that it had been about to fall for at least 100 years. The discussion included a comment about exactly that same time construct you mentioned. It ended with an unanswered question to the effect “When will rock fall? In your lifetime? In your childrens’ lifetimes? That question was answered maybe ten years later when the rock in fact did finally fall. Now the rock and the sign are both gone. I thought perhaps there was a lesson to be had by leaving the original sign and adding a second one indicating the year it fell with some more discussion.
Makoshika #21
Makoshika State Park, Montana
2014
Don’t tell the Utah Boy Scout leaders about this area! They’d be in there knocking down all those dangerous boulders. Just back from my annual week at Lake Powell. Amazing how precarious rocks continue to rest on impossible perches through our lifetime. You highlighted relative size scale in two of your previous images in this series. Waiting for the rocks to fall, that’s a time construct to ponder. Relative scale of different measures are often presented to us in these landscapes.
Steve, I’m glad I visited Goblin Valley years ago before those Boy Scouts got after it. Didn’t know I was living that dangerously by being there. In regards to waiting for the rocks to fall, when we moved to Bozeman in 1982, there was a rock on the lip of Tower Falls in Yellowstone that looked like it was going to fall any second. At the over look there was a display titled “When Will the Rock Fall” with a photograph from the late 1800s of that very rock to show that it had been about to fall for at least 100 years. The discussion included a comment about exactly that same time construct you mentioned. It ended with an unanswered question to the effect “When will rock fall? In your lifetime? In your childrens’ lifetimes? That question was answered maybe ten years later when the rock in fact did finally fall. Now the rock and the sign are both gone. I thought perhaps there was a lesson to be had by leaving the original sign and adding a second one indicating the year it fell with some more discussion.