My Painted Heart

 The Painted Desert has my heart, truly. When I'm there, I feel like I am the land. Most often, my trips up to the Petrified Forest are in September, when everything is in bloom (which also makes it the worst time to go if you have allergies, which I do not). This year I was too antsy, though, to wait and also wanted to mix it up. I had never been in August before and the land looks different depending on each season. 

It's quite healing to be outdoors, too. This is a great destination for a solo visit because you're within the safety of a national park (versus the anonymity of a random trail) but it can feel very wide open, too. I sat at lunch in the empty picnic area with just a raven for company--and the blowing, blowing wind. (Yes, the park was emptier than normal currently, but the picnic area has always been empty in my past experience, too. Maybe everyone grabs fast food on the road?)

I tried to make this trip a little bit different than the usual. The park contains a 28 mile road that you drive along, with various look out points and stops along the way and a few trails. You can spend a short time or a very full day or any amount of time in between. Given that I still had quite a drive home, I skipped some of the look out points that I've ogled at before to save time. I'll see them again another time. The Blue Mesa trail is one of my favorites, so I had to walk that one. I skipped the Agate Bridge and Puerco Pueblo. But I walked the Crystal Forest, which is one and a half minutes and gets you close to some lovely petrified wood, some dark and some sparkling. 

Then I made my way up to the Long Logs and Agate House trails. Now, they are only about two miles when combined. But you can no longer drive up to the trailheads, so you have to walk from the visitor center parking lot. And that's I think a mile and a half or so. So this is a long walk through plain, grassy land that is quite beautiful but also quite long if you've already been out in the heat for a while. I can see why most people end up skipping this one (it's also kind of hard to spot now, unless you're specifically trying to get to it). 

But it was a lovely cap to my day. I passed a pair of people when I was going in and saw another pair at one point. Otherwise, for the hour or so that I walked along I was completely alone. The wind had settled somewhat, but there was a storm gathering to the southeast as per usual in summer. That made for lovely views. The grasses spoke silence around me. My skin was growing tired from the heat (the low 90's were fairly comfortable but were starting to get exhausting at the end of the day), but I welcomed the chance to feel tired from sun and slopes. I've been indoors too much this year.

The Agate House is the ruins of a building from a thousand years ago. It was partially reconstructed in the 1930's, which the sign made sure to mention isn't something that would be done today. But it certainly makes it more fascinating to look at. Big chunks of petrified wood used like stones in the construction create a style like the river rock buildings in Cottonwood, though formed together more like the structures at Wupatki. I was so thrilled at the little house on the hill that I got to admire all on my own.

Walking through the Desert Painted

I believe in storms. Storms come and we either pass through them or the storms pass on. The storms will continue to come, but sometimes we can seek things beyond the storms, too.

September has become my favorite time to visit the Painted Desert/Petrified Forest. It began when I went there one year for my birthday since it was a place I'd always wanted to visit. Turns out that September tends to be the best time to go, too. This year I went just a little early, at the very end of August. The difference? A tad fewer wildflowers and I drove through a storm to get there and through a storm to get back home--though the destination itself was free of the storm, save for a few raindrops towards the end of the day.

The clouds were great, though. Cloud coverage (and probably moisture, too) make the colors in certain sections much more vivid. The Blue Mesa Loop Trail, for instance, takes on an otherworldly look on a cloudy day but appears slightly more common on a sunny day.

I have taken to adventuring on my own these days. The long drives give me time for self-refection and contemplation, which I have a lot of to do lately. And I'm the type of person that can enjoy something just as well by myself as with others. I won't go out hiking by myself, but excursions and adventures I can do.

The Blue Mesa trail I mentioned is probably my favorite part of the Painted Desert. It's a one mile loop trail, perfect for a solo traveler. I happened to literally be the only person on the trail that afternoon, so I could walk around and smile to myself and enjoy it all just for me. Just me, the purple and white mesas, the petrified wood, a few flowers, the clouds, and lots of wind (that naughty wind tried to knock me over on the narrow downhill section, but I held my own). Nothing more peaceful and nothing better for a time of self-reflection and self-discovery.

I have so many pictures already of the park but I had to take a hundred more because it literally never looks the same way twice. The colors are always changing. Maybe that's part of why I love the Painted Desert; it is ever-shifting and yet always recognizably itself. It can transport you to a thousand places all in a single glance . . . and then you can come back later and discover a thousand new places in that same old glance.

The Land Painted in Red, White, and Purple

Where land meets the sky, where bare earth is hidden between sheets of grasslands, and where color is born out of the land, that is the Painted Desert. The land spreads in the area southeast of the Grand Canyon and northeast of Phoenix; it's to the right of Flagstaff, taking the 40 out. Technically, when you visit, you will go to the Petrified Forest National Park, entering a long road from one end or the other.

As you travel along this road, there are various stopping points, some with short trails and some just with lookout points. What is amazing is that, driving through the area, all you will see is grass and maybe a couple of the pretty rocks and dirt. So when you get off and look, it's like you're in a secret land. Sometimes it is colored in red, etched against all the space leading to the horizon. Sometimes it is white, decorated like ancient stone.

I was entranced by the Painted Desert from the first time that I heard its name, in class in 4th grade. I didn't visit, however, until about eight years ago, and my second visit wasn't until this past weekend. It is a gorgeous place of color, completely incapable of being photographed. No picture can ever grasp what it is like to stand there. All colors seem pale in pictures and all sense of space is lost. The first time I visited, I don't remember taking the Blue Mesa Trail; it's possible that it wasn't set up yet, but I don't know.

This trail takes around 45 minutes, and it is absolutely one of the best parts of the park. You descend a short distance into a land of purple and white hills. They look soft, like piles of powder, but are in fact stone, if soft stone. There are cracks in this stone, like cracks in cement: when it rains, the rain absorbs into the hills until they're full and it drains out through the bottom (or something like that). That's how you end up with the lovely, miniature dry river beds all around the hills. 

It was about 90 or so degrees when we arrived at the park around one. We had our picnic lunch and got off at the first few stops, and by the time we got to the Blue Mesa Trail, the clouds were settling in, the wind was gathering, and the rain was beginning far off on the horizon. Translation: the weather was perfect for a nice little walk, even if it was quite windy. 

It's like you're walking in another land or in an artist's sculpture, formed out of clay and painted with pastel colored pencils. You look in awe at everything. What a shade of deep purple. What beautiful tops of white. What wonderful sheltered, open space. In a way, it's better than the Grand Canyon: you have to be in good shape to for a long hike there and we're all used to seeing pictures of it, but this feels so very unique and personal. 

The Painted Desert is one of my favorite places. The sky seems so big and the earth so delectable. There is always something to look at, and none of it is the same. 

And oh, yes, here are some petrified wood stumps. The petrified wood is what the park is all about, after all, though as an Arizonan, petrified wood just isn't as interesting to me as it might be to someone else. I've always owned at least a few pieces of it (and not the boring polished kind, either). 

The area is also known for fossils, so some of the stores around sell fossils and the like. On the way home, I stopped to help a young dinosaur out of its shell. Cute little thing.