Where are the rocks?

When you grow up in the Southwest, you spend a lot of time looking at rocks.

Now the rocks we have are admittedly pretty cool (in a baking hot sort of way). Arches, Garden of the Gods, City of Rocks, Goblin Valley, Shiprock, Rockhound State Park, even White Sands if you want to count very small rocks. On the long drive from Albuquerque to Provo, the only thing to watch is the changing rocks, from the pink and yellow stone in central New Mexico, past the desolate stretches of plains broken abruptly by crumbling stone streambeds, alongside the bookshelf mesas, between the smooth stone mounds that start with the giant turtle, into the rich red rock cliffs of bizarre formations of southern Utah, and finally into the powerful gray mountains of central Utah.

But, much as I admire all the stone, I’ve often wondered we don’t look at the rocks simply because there’s nothing else to look at. The whole world is made of rocks, right? So what if everywhere else in the world has great rocks, too, but you can’t tell because there’s trees and stuff covering it up?

A quick trip to western Massachusetts to see the glacial potholes has confirmed my theory.

There, granite boulders rolling in the stone streambed under the force of a churning waterfall have worn deep cylindrical wells into the stone. The granite is gray swirled with pink and warm browns, and it looks entirely surreal. There aren’t many cooler rocks than that.

And why did we get to see them? Because they have rerouted the river to expose the site.

So the question is, should we go around tearing out forests, moving waterfalls, and melting ice packs so we can admire the rocks underneath? Or should we bring in water, plant trees, and scatter flowers so that the poor people who’ve spent their whole lives thinking rocks are interesting will have attractions like everyone else in the world has? I’m rather tempted by both.