Petrified Rushes

For the past week—and for this week, too—Rural Ways has been stuck indoors at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. (Everybody loves Flagstaff. I guess because it's a college town with nearby outdoor recreation. As might be expected, though, I can't stand it. Too crowded and noisy.) Finally, on Saturday, I got out of town and made it to the river by 9:30a. I crossed at Marble Canyon and went over the Kiabab. There, on a seldom used two track with a view that stretched from Fredonia to the Tushars, I stopped to walk in a wash. I could hear a couple of song-birds calling from a stunted pinyon as I threaded my way between the cacti. It was just a non-descript sort of place where no-one would ever go, but as I poked around along the rim of the wash through broken yellow sandstone, I discovered that it had once been the bed of a shallow lake. All through the stone's surface, and buried in its layers, were small grasses, snails, and clams, some now crystalized and others petrified. I ended up spending several hours there, looking at it all. The more I looked, the more I saw. What I found most interesting, though, were the rushes—some species of Equisetum?—petrified and laying on the surface.