The picture from the previously mentioned article - on geological time and human agency - appears to be that of some sort of badlands. I'm not clear on which region that may be, but the Petrified National Forest has similar formations, and is a good place to start for the discussion. A badlands region is a very heady place to visit for many reasons besides the region's striking landscape and geological features.
In terms of the Painted Desert region's history, one begins to understand the eerie significance of the bright, layered hills and the psychedelic petrified tree trunk fragments strewn about the land. The star of the Petrified National Forest, the petrified wood, was created through the burial of fallen prehistoric trees, which accumulated in river channels and were eventually covered by sediments containing volcanic ash, as the Wikipedia article explains.
The bright colors in the petrified wood indicated the presence of an incredibly rich array of iron oxides and other substances, which combined with silicas set free from the volcanic ash by groundwater, gradually replacing the organic material in the logs, forming colorful crystals within them. The vibrant layers in the crumbling hillsides betray an eons-old process of distinct, stable geological periods physically buried by their successors, a burial that is often rapid, preserving various geological layers in time.
It took a prehistoric rainforest, one of nature's mega cities, to form a landscape such as this through its utter and complete ruin, and the depositing of its many constituent parts into various geological features after the forest's disintegration. It is a landscape that is completely transformed and wholly alien to its prehistoric origins. Behind this strange landscape was a complete wiping out of complex ecosystems, which casts the national park service that maintains the park into a curious light.
The bright colors in the petrified wood indicated the presence of an incredibly rich array of iron oxides and other substances, which combined with silicas set free from the volcanic ash by groundwater, gradually replacing the organic material in the logs, forming colorful crystals within them. The vibrant layers in the crumbling hillsides betray an eons-old process of distinct, stable geological periods physically buried by their successors, a burial that is often rapid, preserving various geological layers in time.
It took a prehistoric rainforest, one of nature's mega cities, to form a landscape such as this through its utter and complete ruin, and the depositing of its many constituent parts into various geological features after the forest's disintegration. It is a landscape that is completely transformed and wholly alien to its prehistoric origins. Behind this strange landscape was a complete wiping out of complex ecosystems, which casts the national park service that maintains the park into a curious light.
Like many national parks such as Yosemite, Yellowstone, and Glacier, the Petrified National Forest can be viewed as a site of nature worship, its sprawling fields of petrified artifacts and layered landscapes meticulously managed and preserved for the pleasure of researchers, outdoors people, and the general public. Here was the evidence of a great and calamitous Event, which our sensibilities, our imagination, and our curiosity regard with awe and reverence, and the public instinct in the face of such a phenomenon was to preserve it in its present form, and buttress it against the very forces of transformation that produced the witnessing public in the first place.
To be fair, there is a constant tension of internal and external opposing interests and instincts within the national park system. There were older, conservative ideas of careful management and preservation that predominated, which have given way to conceptions of a dynamic nature whose morphing forces should be minimally interfered with by its stewards, but which is nevertheless protected as an entity separate from and contrasted to the human realm, with its expansionary and transformative forces of business and capital, forces which disintegrate or augment the natural worlds they come into contact with, depending on whom you ask.
And indeed, business is always seeking to penetrate the park system, and encourage material growth and commerce within its bounds. Such an interest is not without its sympathizers within the park system itself, and within the greater government which funds the park system. So we see the constant drive to “develop” parks with wider roads, scenic loops, showers, bathrooms, shopping centers, hotels, and eventually wifi.
These trends stand next to the drives for resource exploitation in these parks as well. Such interests tend to be lumped together in political organization and propaganda, so we get the reasonable impulse to expand accessibility and comfort combined with the hunger for greater traffic volumes, expanded markets, and resource exploitation, which naturally muddies the debates surrounding these systems.
These trends stand next to the drives for resource exploitation in these parks as well. Such interests tend to be lumped together in political organization and propaganda, so we get the reasonable impulse to expand accessibility and comfort combined with the hunger for greater traffic volumes, expanded markets, and resource exploitation, which naturally muddies the debates surrounding these systems.
Now the park system stands as a bastion of public feeling and awe, stood against the disintegrative forces of business, but which include opposing instincts even within those opposing categories. Within the material forces of business, a drive to preserve the enjoyment of nature by humans, and within the preservative forces of the park system, a drive to let the chaotic forces of nature disintegrate what they will. And in general, we wrap our arms around the national monuments in a protective embrace, simultaneously as we destroy all of the earth around them.
As resource desperation grows, this state of affairs is quickly changing. Of course the political right has wanted to crack the parks open and subject them to exploitation for some time.
The more basic opposition is curious, and pertinent to our discussion. From where does this drive spring, this impulse to preserve a temporary state of affairs, a natural landscape that frozen, provides us with a picture perfect account of an incomprehensibly dynamic and destructive natural process stretching back eons?
I'm being coy of course, as I too have a great love for these parks in their present form. But given their nature, and this worship of the grandiose forces of transformation in temporary stasis, why not simply welcome on the complete development of and destruction of the landscape by capital, as it has done throughout the modern world?
How is it that the formation of these great glass and steel canyons, these cities of skyscraper and the bursting out of plastic and concrete across the land, has suddenly become distasteful to the worshippers of nature's powers of transformation?
Indeed, our recent powers of self-reflection have produced some curious reactions to unlimited expansion, as if the expansion was reaching some sort of unseen boundary and curling back onto itself, before, presumably, buckling under its own weight.
Of course, the human subjectivity that has emerged out of this cauldron of chaotic natural forces seeks also to preserve itself, its continuity in time and space. By gazing upon the national park, the human subjectivity wishes to preserve its own experience. Perhaps it is this instinct of preservation that is responsible for the logic behind the park system, and its antagonism to the forces of capital, which appear to be carrying out the old process of expansion and domination.
After having emerged from the earth and exploding into the sky, like a great volcano, a regulative instinct, an instinct for self-preservation, is now set against a runaway instinct of raw expansion, and the two are bound together, confounding each other and irritating each other.
Right, heady stuff. Before things get out of control here, let's just say that such an ideological landscape makes for a difficult reckoning with the future. After all, one's understanding of the past and present is bound up with such a project. Nevertheless, how does one come to terms spiritually with this state of affairs now?
This is one of the things that spiritual thought is good at after all. It is spiritual thought that can cut through the confusion of a universe of movements, of creation and destruction, stasis and flux, and establish a reckoning with the present. Let's get to that next.
As resource desperation grows, this state of affairs is quickly changing. Of course the political right has wanted to crack the parks open and subject them to exploitation for some time.
The more basic opposition is curious, and pertinent to our discussion. From where does this drive spring, this impulse to preserve a temporary state of affairs, a natural landscape that frozen, provides us with a picture perfect account of an incomprehensibly dynamic and destructive natural process stretching back eons?
I'm being coy of course, as I too have a great love for these parks in their present form. But given their nature, and this worship of the grandiose forces of transformation in temporary stasis, why not simply welcome on the complete development of and destruction of the landscape by capital, as it has done throughout the modern world?
How is it that the formation of these great glass and steel canyons, these cities of skyscraper and the bursting out of plastic and concrete across the land, has suddenly become distasteful to the worshippers of nature's powers of transformation?
Indeed, our recent powers of self-reflection have produced some curious reactions to unlimited expansion, as if the expansion was reaching some sort of unseen boundary and curling back onto itself, before, presumably, buckling under its own weight.
Of course, the human subjectivity that has emerged out of this cauldron of chaotic natural forces seeks also to preserve itself, its continuity in time and space. By gazing upon the national park, the human subjectivity wishes to preserve its own experience. Perhaps it is this instinct of preservation that is responsible for the logic behind the park system, and its antagonism to the forces of capital, which appear to be carrying out the old process of expansion and domination.
After having emerged from the earth and exploding into the sky, like a great volcano, a regulative instinct, an instinct for self-preservation, is now set against a runaway instinct of raw expansion, and the two are bound together, confounding each other and irritating each other.
Right, heady stuff. Before things get out of control here, let's just say that such an ideological landscape makes for a difficult reckoning with the future. After all, one's understanding of the past and present is bound up with such a project. Nevertheless, how does one come to terms spiritually with this state of affairs now?
This is one of the things that spiritual thought is good at after all. It is spiritual thought that can cut through the confusion of a universe of movements, of creation and destruction, stasis and flux, and establish a reckoning with the present. Let's get to that next.
