Time and Erosion - Some Realizations
All along this trip while viewing these beautiful places, I have wondered how these monuments, canyons, mesas, buttes and other natural wonders could possibly have been created. We all know about erosion of course and it's easy to just say "erosion" and move on. However, in a landscape like southern Utah, the magnitude of the erosion that had to have taken place hits you like a sledge hammer and you begin to doubt it could have possibly happened. My brain reels when I see Monument Valley with it majestic buttes rising 800 to 1000 feet above the landscape and I realize that those tiny monuments are all that remains of what was a vast plateau as high as the tops of the buttes and all that rock between them is now missing, eroded away!
Today on a drive along Highway 128 Scenic Byway, I was given a glimpse of the process. We had a moderate level of rain and wind the day before and it was windy again this morning. As we drove up Hwy 128 we saw places where red soil had washed down from the walls of the canyon into small piles along the edge of the road and sitting on the edge of the lane with it was a small rock about 3 inches square. To our left was the strong Colorado River running fast with red muddy waters. It didn’t hit me then, but has since, that that combination of rain, wind and running water was the answer I was seeking! I just wasn't factoring in the power of TIME.
The rain washed loose dirt down the slope with some of it making it to the river causing the red, muddy color of the water. Small loose stones washed slowly down the mountainside until, inexorably, they wound up by the river or in this case on the road. The wind blowing dust and sand up and down the canyon would scour out other particles of dust and sand from the sandstone sides like mild sandpaper. In the winter's freezing temperatures, water would seep into cracks in larger stones, freeze and eventually break it down into smaller stones. I thought, “now, multiply those effects across the entire square footage of the long tall canyon walls and add in the tons of silt being carried away by the river hourly and multiply that across 100’s of millions of years” and there was the answer right at my feet represented by that little pile of dirt and a small rock!
The processes that God set in motion so many years ago are still at work making the canyon even more spectacular every day millimeter by millimeter! Our lives are so short and erosion is so slow, that we don't often realize just how enormous the impact is over time. Time and erosion are powerful forces to behold and this region of the country lays it bare before you and you can't help but come to terms with it!
Now, let's think even bigger and longer and realize that the canyon walls here are all sandstone made from layers of soil that eroded from somewhere else. They had been carried here and laid down to form these layers of sandstone rocks and that as these erode, their remains are carried down stream and will become sediment that forms the new rocks of some future ground that then erodes … and the cycle continues for millennia. What an amazing planet we live on! We are so blessed to have the opportunity to travel and see these amazing places! I hope you all take some time to travel this beautiful country and enjoy God's great gifts to us all!
