Hoodoo Hunts

HOODOO VOODOO Bizarre Shapes of Fused Ash Inspire Geologists and Storytellers This is a story of rock and stone.

In the manner of rock, it enfolds other things-in this case another story, one that is very old, so old that its origins may lie far in the Hohokam past. One day, years and years ago, it began to rain, and rain, and rain, so hard that the world began to flood and the People climbed high into the Superstition Mountains, hoping to outrun the rising waters. They did not; they might have known they were doomed when a dog spoke to them and said, “The water has come.” If you are ever on the southeast side of the Superstitions, the story concludes, you can look up and see those people, turned to stone. Here is another story, one from our own time. In this story, those “people” are the outcome of an inexorable, unending process of changes: lava spews up from below the world's surface, cools, and solidifies in the form of igneous (that is, fireborn) rock. With the passage of much time, this rock can be bent and warped like so much clay. Water, too, can break it down into tiny flecks of sand, which will someday be compressed and turn into stone, ready to be melted down into lava-and so the process begins anew, an endless cycle of transformations.

Rock begins with rock, the second story tells us. Rock has been there always, since the creation, both stories agree. The first story is literature, the second-no less dramatic-science. Both have the same purpose, though: to explain why things

And the Thunder Rolls

Vermilion Cliffs National Monument: With hoodoos formed over millions of years by nature, and bearing names like Bowling Giants, Red Rolling Hoodoos and Gnome Hoodoo, the formations evoke science and superstition, legend and lore. Petrified sand dunes forming stark white contours are dotted by isolated piñon pines and a small glassy pool under a stormy afternoon sky.

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Vermilion Cliffs: Hoodoo rock is reflected in the potholes filled with rainwater at dawn. Experts are particular about what may be called a hoodoo-only tall, totemlike spires technically qualify. Formations such as those shown here earn the name hoodoo rock, while the columnar shapes found elsewhere in the monument and around the state, formed through differential erosion, are "true" hoodoos.

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Continued from page 23) are as they are, to puzzle out why the world looks as it does.

From every vantage point, Arizona looks to be a rocky place. It is a land of cacti and forests and rivers, to be sure, but Arizona is pre-eminently a land of stone, with mountains on every horizon and pebbles beneath every footstep.

The stone can take peculiar shapes that require peculiar names. Hoodoos, for instance-which old-timers also called "goblins"-are, in formal geological terms, columns of stone protected by a hard caprock that keeps the softer material beneath it from eroding away. The different layers are marked by different degrees of hardness, but none is hard enough to withstand the forces of geological change. Water, ice, wind, tree roots, blades of grass, all conspire to bring stone down, and the softer layers are the first to go, so that the stone comes, over time, to take odd wavering forms. Thus hoodoos, a strange word of uncertain origin, and one that seems just right for the job.

One hoodoo of which I'm particularly fond, a weathered sandstone column-well, more like a blob, really-in the Santa Catalina Mountains north of Tucson, bears a remarkable resemblance to the late Richard Nixon. Another, nearby, looks quite a bit like Donald Duck, sailor cap and all, at least from a certain viewpoint. Whole fields of hoodoos greet visitors to the Colorado Plateau, where soft sandstone formations are quite amenable to the work of the elements in carving forms that look like-well, goblins, or the stone heads of the Polynesian divinities of Easter Island, or dozens of other fanciful, fantastic resemblances.

Hoodoos and goblins: The suggestion of ghosts is a very old one, and many Native American stories find human forms in the rocks. One variant on the theme, told by an Apache storyteller, has it that the hoodoos lining many ridges in the Superstition Mountains mark the places where strong people who refused to help their weaker fellows escape the flood were transformed into stone and forever condemned to watch silently over the land, as if to say, this is the price of discourtesy.

Hoodoos can take many forms, though some geologists insist that only a tall column of rock properly qualifies for the term. "Tall" is a loose term, of course, and somewhere within it lies a dividing line between hoodoo, column and spire.(Text continued on page 30)

In the Spotlight

Vermilion Cliffs: The setting sun lays a final ray of gold light on eroded sandstone. The area evokes biology as well as fable-neighboring hoodoos (not shown) include Elephant Rock, bearing a prominent trunk; Snail (or Brain) Rock, a redorange globular dome on a thick "pool" of base rock; Toadstool Rock, which seems almost ripe for picking, and Thin Hoodoo, a slender spire topped with an "eye" of rock.

HOODOO HUNTING

HoodooS, pillars of eroded rock, stand in silence throughout Arizona, sharing rocky slopes with Indians, pioneers, animals and tourists. Here are a few places to spot the spires.

BABY ROCKS MESA 15 miles east of Kayenta on U.S. Route 160

Near Kayenta, the silty, twisted sandstone of Baby Rocks Mesa gives way to a small clique of hoodoos. A Navajo legend tells of a girl who refused to share bread with her sister, upon which she was changed to one of Baby Rocks' standing sentinels. Information: (928) 697-8451; www. kayentatownship.com.

RED MOUNTAIN Coconino National Forest. 25 miles northwest of Flagstaff

The Red Mountain hoodoos protrude like the fingers of a giant hand poking up through the ground. Red Mountain, a volcanic cinder cone that rises 1,000 feet above the surrounding landscape, has a large "amphitheater" on its northeast flank. Tapering hoodoos 10 to 20 feet tall stud the region. Information: (928) 527-3600; www.fs.fed.us/r3/coconino.

SUPERSTITION MOUNTAINS

Outside of Apache Junction, 20 miles east of Phoenix If you're driving east along U.S. Route 60, they might just appear as stubble along the ridges and peaks of the Superstition Mountains. But the region's famous hoodoos loom larger in person. Try the craggy Siphon Draw Trail 53 climbing the front range of Superstition Mountain for some good hoodoo sights. As you climb the increasingly steep, rocky trail to the summit, passing through mesquite, jojoba, prickly pear, saguaro and other upper-Sonoran treasures, hoodoos roll into view. Information: (480) 610-3300; www. fs.fed.us/r3/tonto/home.shtml.

BOYNTON CANYON Red RockSecret Mountain Wilderness, adjacent to Sedona and Oak Creek Canyon

With lush riparian vegetation, towering red sandstone formations, hoodoo rock spires and ancient Sinagua cliff dwellings dating back to A.D. 1200, Boynton Canyon's most popular hoodoos are the "wedding couple," embracing Vermilion Cliffs: Light filters through holes eroded over time in multihued sandstone. In Arizona during the Pleistocene period, cold lakes covered much of the state, which was lusher than it is today. With more water in the Ice Age lakes to move and deposit sediment, as well as more rainfall percolating through crevices and cracks, conditions were ripe for the weathering and creation of all kinds of whimsical shapes.

red pillars near Cathedral Rock. Information: (928) 282-7722; www. visitsedona.com.

SUPERIOR

Viewable from the car on a drive through Superior, hundreds of hoodoos and saguaros stand together in a maze in Devil's Canyon in the Pinal Mountains. Wildlife, from golden eagles and rattlesnakes to javelina and Gila monsters, frequents area. Information: (480) 610-3300; www. fs.fed.us/r3/tonto/home.shtml.

SANTA CATALINA MOUNTAINS

Northeast of Tucson It's a little like cloudwatching. You may or may not see faces in the weathered sandstone columns-Donald Duck and Richard Nixon keep company here, according to some; petrified ne'er-do-wells of the past, according to others-but either way it should make for some fun viewing. Information: (520) 388-8300; www. fs.fed.us/r3/coronado/index.shtml.

NORTHERN SIGHTS

Page, Lee's Ferry, Vermilion Cliffs National Monument Monoliths just south of Page greet viewers with undulating waves and mounds of peach-tinted sandstone, culminating in protruding pinnacles. East of Page, near Marble Canyon and Lee's Ferry along U.S. Route 89, "mushroom hoodoos" resemble towering fungi and "balanced rocks," formed by the wind eroding the soft rock below, look deceptively fragile. A few more hoodoos hide in the House Rock area of the Vermilion Cliffs National Monument, reached by House Rock Valley Road off U.S. 89, south of the Vermilion Cliffs. Information: (928) 660-3405; www. blm.gov/az/vermilion/vermilion.htm; www.nps.gov/glca/lferry.htm.

CHIRICAHUA NATIONAL MONUMENT

Southeast of Willcox via State Route 186 Nature's hand drew the intricate outline of Arizona's premier hoodoo haven. About 27 million years ago, the Turkey Creek Caldera erupted in a spectacle 1,000 times greater than the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens, spewing volcanic ash and pumice in a layer nearly 2,000 feet thick. The viscous ash blanket cooled, contracted and welded together, forming rhyolite tuff. When the ground beneath the caldera began to rise again, the rising pressure cracked the ground like dry pizza dough pressed from beneath, forming ringshaped cracks and radial fractures. When water, salt crystals, ice, dust and temperature changes wore along the cracks over millions of years, the result was a forest of hoodoos in a circle-and-spoke pattern. Called The Land of the Standing-up Rocks by the Chiricahua Apaches, the area's oldest hoodoos are hundreds of feet tall and 2.4 million years old. The visitors center features displays and literature about the hoodoos along the area's Heart of Rocks and Rhyolite Canyon trails. Information: (520) 824-3560; www. nps.gov/chir.

Stony Spires

Chiricahua National Monument is popular for birding and hiking as well as its diverse plants and animals, but is known chiefly for hrongs of hoodoos, rising in pillars or whimsical twisting and totem formations, formed when ash laid down in an explosive eruption welded and eroded over time.

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Petrified Patterns

Vermilion Cliffs: The monument, created in the year 2000, protects myriad treasures, from early rock art to a geologic palette in the monument's northwest region, where crossbeds of Navajo sandstone display banding in

yellows, oranges, pinks

and reds, caused by the

precipitation of

manganese, iron and

Other oxides. Above,

Sandstone climbs in ranks of polygonal joints to rolling pale mounds, while red rock cliffs on the horizon gleam in the Setting sun.

Another story from the Earth's ancient past: A volcano spews out a field of lava, which cools atop layers of sedimentary rock that lie below it. In time, the surrounding sandstone without that protective cap wears away, leaving a plateau called a mesa—a landscape feature that, like hoodoos, is near and dear to the hearts of Roadrunner cartoon fans, and characteristic of just about every part of Arizona. In time, mesas, like everything else, wear away, leaving behind fingers of rock that stand tall in the sky. Those fingers are spires, a fittingly grand term, for, like cathedrals and skyscrapers, they are wonders to behold. Visitors to Monument Valley, in the far northeastern part of the state, can see plenty of examples of mesas and their eroded off-spring and kin, such as the 7,096-foot-tall rise called Agathla Peak, the root of an ancient volcano. One classically grand, imposing spire, 4,553-foot

Quiet Comrades

-Lukachukai Mountains: A sandstone pinnacle keeps company with an eroded boulder in far northeastern Arizona on the Navajo Indian Reservation. The Lukachukai range, Navajo for “mountain-which-lies-elevated,” contains exposed rocks from the Triassic, Jurassic and Tertiary periods.

In few places on Earth are the forces of geology on such extravagant display as in the Chiricahua Mountains...

Weaver's Needle in the Superstition Mountains, alternates layers of volcanic basalt and ash, mate-rials of different hardness-so that, perhaps, in millions of years rain and ice will wear it, too, into a hoodoo, bearing resemblance to some icon of the future-if not Donald Duck, then perhaps Duck Dodgers.

To the south of Monument Valley, in Canyon de Chelly, stands one of the greatest spires of them all: 800-foot-tall Spider Rock. The sandstone pillar, which forks into two above the canyon floor as if split by a mighty thunderclap, seems to be a magnet for wondrous weather, marked by lightning flashes and threatening clouds. Indeed, a Navajo origin story tells that a huge storm once passed through a gentle valley, tearing off the soil and grass and aspen trees; in the wake of the storm, tall single pillars of rock stood on the valley floor, flanked by steep canyon walls of red rock, the Canyon de Chelly we know today. Such tempestuous weather, and such a dra-matic story, is just as it should be for a divine abode-for, in Navajo belief, the great rock is the home of Spider Woman, a protector who, among other things, taught the People how to spin. The ancient Greeks told much the same story about the unfortunate Arachne, who taught humans her craft but then spun her life away in a cave, despised by everyone. Spider Woman, a beloved if sometimes scary presence, had the better lot on her windswept, lightning-lashed rock, one of the most beautiful places on Earth.

When spires, canyons, finger rocks and mountains grow tired and old, they fall. Where they do, they leave behind pieces of their former selves. These can be grains of sand, cobbles in streambeds. Or they can take the form of great boulders, stones that attest to the power of water to reshape everything it touches.

The Granite Dells of Prescott, for instance, are unfathomably old; the Grand Canyon is a baby by comparison. Here, millions of years ago, an outcrop of Precambrian granite was exposed to the elements when the younger rocks atop it eroded away. And over those millions of years, the action of water and ice pocked that hard rock, bit by bit, until it split into great angular blocks and slender fingers of stone. With the passage of still more time, water and wind and sun weathered them away, rounding off their sharp corners and giving them the pleasant appearance of old elephants resting at a water hole.

Another fine boulder field lies in Arizona's southeast, above the San Pedro River valley between Tucson and Willcox. Texas Canyon is very much younger than the Granite Dells, and, though it looks somewhat the same, its rocks are not granite but quartz monzonite, another product of ancient volcanic action. Tough and laced with hard miner-als, the rocks of Texas Canyon have nonetheless spent their time in the elements, too; water has broken them up along their joints, so that one rock balances improbably atop another, looking very much as if it could come crashing down at any moment. Geologists call this process of boulder forma-tion "exfoliation," as if the Earth's skin were being peeled. In a sense that is so, and the process is ongoing. In a few million years, we can guess, the boulders of Texas Canyon will be rounder, a little lower, softer to the eye. But they will still be there.

In few places on Earth are the forces of geology on such extravagant display as in the Chiricahua Mountains, in the southeastern corner of the state. There old walls of granite are overlain by younger layers of tilted sandstone and shot through with weird dikes, intrusions and lava flows, signs of what geologist Halka Chronic calls "a wild orgy of volcanic eruptions 30 to 25 million years ago." Here, deep within the mountains, whose name means "standing rock" in the Apache spoken there, visitors can see just about every kind of curious formation that Arizona has to offer, from spooky hoodoos to finger rocks, from boulder fields to rank after rank of spectacular spires and impossibly balanced rocks and, as a bonus, the rare finds called volcanic hailstones, bits of mud and rock thrown up by ancient eruptions and cooled into strange lichen-covered forms, the mess left over after that orgy of fire. It must have been quite a party. But that's another story.

Gregory McNamee of Tucson is the author of several books about Arizona's human and natural history. He dabbled in rock-climbing as a young man, before deciding that it was safer to study geology from below.

Twisted Totems

Vermilion Cliffs: A lavender sky and setting moon illuminate gnarled red formations at dawn. Surprisingly, geologists say the more-whimsical shapes are stronger when it comes to hoodoos. Straight, blocky, columnar hoodoos bear forces of nature throughout the structures, while more eccentric, spindly shapes or hourglass figures refocus stresses into the narrower regions, where it is counterbalanced.

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