Just got back from majestic Sedona, Arizona, where my family and I spent Thanksgiving. Sedona is a charming and crazy amalgam of spectacular geology, amazing autumn foliage, exciting restaurants, and an eclectic mix of new age shops and centers. Believers of aura photos, energy vortices, and natural healing flock from all over the country to the countless psychic and supernatural shops in this beautiful town. Sedona may be infamous for its fortunetellers but deservedly famous for its amazing rock formations, which provided the backdrop for many Western movies, with stars from John Wayne to Clark Gable filming there.
Sedona’s rocks are also exciting for anyone interested in Earth’s past as they provide spectacular and rare insights into the Permian period (299 to 251 million years ago) when the Pangea supercontinent converged. At the time of Pangea, all continents on Earth joined together: one could have walked from the Northern American plate to the Australian, African, or even to the Antarctic plates.
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Today, the rock formations cut across about 2,000 feet of Permian deposits: they consist of beautifully exposed wind-deposited (eolian) and coastal deposits. The amazing dark red rock layers that surround Sedona are part of the Supai Group: these interbedded layers have been deposited in the early Permian, when the Colorado plateau has been partly covered by an inland sea and a large desert. The inland sea has extended and receded many times during the early Permian; every time it receded the desert expanded and giant sand dunes covered the region that once was occupied by the sea. The shallow sea and the dunes left deposits that are different in color and deposit grain size; these layers of alternating colors make up the Supai group (seen as the mostly reddish, layered rocks in the photos). On top of the Supai group is the whitish/grayish Coconino Formation – a younger, thick sandstone layer, deposited in the mid-Permian, in giant wind-blown dune fields (such locations are also known as erg, Arabic for sea of sand).
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The soft red sandstone Supai group is easily sculpted by wind and rain erosion; harder sections of the Coconino formation on top of the red sandstone can protect somewhat the underlying the softer rocks, leading to the characteristic columns and spires typical to Sedona.
Although I have been to Sedona many times in the past, I somehow missed the Slide Rock State Park. This is a great location where flash floods have cut across the soft Supai sandstone and the creek now hosts a fast stream with beautiful pools — in the summer crowded with bathing families, but pleasantly serene in the Fall.
I may have missed the opportunity to have my aura photograph taken or to learn about my future from a Sedona fortuneteller, I can certainly understand the sense of magic this spectacular and serene scenery invokes in visitor – although for me, the true magic is not the mist in the crystal ball but knowing a bit about the incredible and distant past these majestic rock formation witnessed.
Sources:
[1] A Guide to the Geology of the Sedona and Oak Creek Area
[2] Ancient Landscapes of the Colorado Plateau
Source: https://t-tees.com
Category: WHY
