IT'S A HARD LIFE — THEY NEVER LEAVE YOU ALONE[If you look just right at the large rock, you can see my face (long nose, small mouth).]
200 million ago I was a happy, comfy sediment on the floor of a warm inland sea with all sorts of weird creatures splashing about overhead. Then when you would least expect it, up comes this hot melted rock from below—boy was it hot! It was so hot I was metamorphosed into meta-sedimentary rock.
Then came the up-lifting part: those teutonic plates started pushing me up. Meanwhile there was this incessant jiggling and push on me toward the Northwest; it was that hyper-active San Andreas fault—hormones, I guess. Now look at me! 500 miles from where I began in Mexico (I wonder if I'm legal.), over a thousand feet up, and exposed to all kinds of gases, freezing from the cold, cooking in the heat, irritated by the sharp thorns, and all the while tilted at this crazy angle. (Some of the rocks in this canyon are as much as 450 million years old.)
Each desert canyon seems to have its special charm. This canyon at The Narrows on our way out toward the Salton Sea had these outstanding Agave, Century Plants, which bloom only once and then die. I am told that their “century” is only 25 to 50 years long.
The reference to the Fountain of Youth can be explained this way. On the shore of the Salton Sea there is a resort with hot mineral and mud baths that are said to produce results like a Fountain of Youth. So, of course, feeling our 80 years a little, we went for it, but when we got to the Salton Sea shore, we had trouble with our "here after"—we couldn't remember what we were there for! So we headed for El Centro, CA.
