New Mexico Rocks
In earlier writing, I made quick reference to ongoing events that ultimately are large-scale, life-altering, and intertwined global occurrences that defined 2020 and continue to frame 2021 - the COVID-19 pandemic, Black Lives Matter protests, etc. - which should necessitate a larger unpacking and review of their impact on public and personal lives and wellbeing. That will be saved for a different day (or honestly, year). Today, I want to capture two quirks of a trip before they escape my memory.
With the availability of effective vaccines, the United States is inching closer to a new normal; paused gathering, travel, and hugging are beginning to resume. (Globally, conditions remain precarious - even desperate - due to ongoing and increasing outbreaks combined with a lack of available vaccines.)
The first time I traveled in 18 months was to New Mexico recently for a new project in Alamogordo (“fat cottonwood”). Driving through the state from El Paso to Alamogordo to Albuquerque was like driving past movie set small towns and landscapes. Highway 380 held two remarkable geologic surprises, one natural and one man-made - the unexpected Carrizozo Malpais, a 5,000 year old lava flow, and Trinitite, glassy sand residue from the first atomic test at the Blanchard Rock Shop, close to the middle of nowhere.
The Carrizozo Malpais (Spanish to English translation = badlands), a long finger of basalt lava rock winding 44-miles to the south through the Tularosa Basin, originates at the Little Black Peak and ends just north of the White Sands National Monument. Unassuming highway signs note distances to the approaching and aptly named "Valley of Fires,” which is a recreation area managed by the Bureau of Land Management. We quickly pulled over at one of the highway viewing spots, across from campgrounds. The views were wide, bright, and striking, with scrub brush and cactus growing out of black lava rock; we quickly saw a desert squirrel running across the rock in the hot sun and heard the long, crescendoing rattle of what I assume was a snake. The stop was an unexpected and invigorating pause as we sped through the desert, and I later fell into a Wikipedia hole to find out more about how and why there is a lava flow in the southwestern middle of the continental US (“The vent area for the lava flows, Little Black Peak, falls on the Capitan lineament, a zone of crustal weakness that extends across eastern New Mexico” from the New Mexico Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources - fascinating!). Little Black Peak is only 27 meters tall and likely erupted twice in relatively quick succession, as the Malpais flow is composed of two parts. The eruptions would have been long and low, spanning over two to three years in total duration, with the flow having coiled rope textures typical of a pahoehoe lava flow. Remarkably, Highway 380 bisects the field.
Further along Highway 380, the unique solitary location and large sign advertising “TRINITITE FOR SALE" of the Blanchard Rock Shop made us turn our car around at the only other building nearby - a lone general store / post office in the “populated place” (this is a real term) of Bingham, New Mexico. It is composed of a general store building (I am uncertain of what is in here - presumably more rocks), the rock shop in second building out front, and a residence in a third building in the back. Dogs and peach trees dotted the fenced yard surrounding the rocks on display in that bright New Mexico sun. Many of these were striking and were not local; we asked about the trinitite advertised on the sign and were shepherded into the front rock shop where an unassuming wooden case near the entry had small pieces of the rock on display. I was very much unaware of what trinitite is, although my traveling companion’s family is well versed in rocks and geology; I was amazed to learn that trinitite is the glassy residue of melted sand from base of the first atomic test held at the Trinity Site in 1945. Fading paper signs and photographs tacked to the walls behind the register explained the history of the Trinity Site, the Gadget test device, and trinitite. This lyrical article from the Smithsonian Magazine provides artful background on rock’s origin, and this Ars Technica article made me laugh as I shared a mutual strange (and ultimately unfounded) feeling about the rock shop. Interestingly,
“Once the site was opened, after the war, collectors picked it up in chunks; local rock shops sold it and still do. Concerned for its residual radioactivity, the Army bulldozed the site in 1952 and made collecting Trinitite illegal. What’s sold today was collected before the ban. Unless you eat it, scientists report, it isn’t dangerous anymore.”
Big mid-century scientific names (and one could argue, cultural personalities) like J. Robert Oppenheimer and Enrico Fermi observed the detonation from multiple sites. While I did not purchase any trinitite (something that I admit I occasionally regret) I drove away sobered, knowing that these initial tests would result in the deaths of hundreds of thousands, affect the health and wellbeing of many more prior to and after the end of World War II, and impact the world through the Cold War to today’s nuclear development standoffs with Iran.
For future visits, White Sands National Park is a priority on my list of places to visit, especially with its proximity to my project site, and if possible, the Trinity Site (although this may require additional levels of coordination as there are only two days annually that the public can visit - no trinitite collection allowed). There is also a giant telescope (the VLM) east of Socorro, and the cool pine-tree air to breathe in Cloudcroft (we did drive out to see the Trestle, where you can amazingly still see White Sands).
Note 1: The title is a not so clever reference to a tourism poster promoting New Zealand (“New Zealand… ROCKS!!!”) from this Flight of the Conchords episode.
Note 2a: The US recently hit a grim milestone at the time of writing this - 600,000 recorded COVID deaths. I do not take the privilege and dangers of traveling in a pandemic lightly.
Note 2b: As I continue to muse over this trip (I paused on my thoughts for around a month), the very contagious COVID Delta variant is gaining speed in the US. Cases are beginning to increase again due to stagnation in vaccination and anti-masking among those unvaccinated.
Note 3: Perhaps no. 3 or no. 4 on my list of remarkable surprises would be driving by pistachio fields and the world’s largest pistachio statue (unverified) as we left Alamogordo. I was unaware and highly doubted that pistachios could successfully grow in the Chihuahuan desert (especially without a steady source of water - nuts require a lot of water for their growth), but apparently the dry climate is well suited to their cultivation.
