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River of fire, river of stone
Did they look up, fox-wolves drinking the sudden
warm water? Did they even have the time
to look up at the odd glow to the east,
a second hellish sunrise, red as fire
incinerating forests? Broadleaved oaks
and ash, the lurid-leaved persimmon trees
whose fruit fattened the horses, fed the short
faced bears, leaf litter of magnolia trees
ablaze at once? The sky would have been dark
for days, the eddied stratosphere pregnant
with dust, and thin plumes of it blowing west
against the usual ocean wind, the storm
of fire stoked by a scouring blast
across the plains. Did the Eucyons flee,
or drawn by terror-stricken, injured prey
would they have chased the fire along its edge
coyote-like? (The opportunist dog
as old as Hesperocyon, 40 million
years ago.) Guile doomed Eucyon’s whelps
to leg-hold traps, to tar pits, to the leash,
so as the peccaries, pronghorn, the sloths
and rabbits ran wild-eyed and westerly,
the fox-wolves might have headed toward the fire.
No matter. They were drinking. Did the banks
glow ruddy? Did the wretched stream run dry?
The earth had opened up, and lava bled
into the Miocene Sierran streams,
ran toward the Fresno Sea. Did they look up?
That old, steep-sided river canyon might
have taken a few moments to escape.
Fish would have been turning belly up
as river water warmed, the main stem blocked
and shrinking pools filled gills with caustic ash.
They may have been distracted. When the wall
of seething rock, molten and fast, came down
the river canyon, sandbar pools in steam
subliming at its front, air crackling and the screams
of animals unable to escape
to herald it, they may have stood, eyes wide
reflecting fatal red, transfixed, and then
even the water in their veins would burn.
Who knows? The red brim-filled the rill,
burned every tree, each fish, each sprig of moss
and raptor’s nest, melted the top few feet
of gold-flaked cobble, scoured the soft rock walls
the river had incised, flowed swift until
the earth’s anger subsided, cooled, a strange
traumatic calm descended slow after
burn-out, and other fox-wolves came to eat
what meat there was, charred by the pallid fire
of trees, cool by comparison, and the new rock’s
red glow subsided over days. Rain came
and then the river, ousted from its bed
worked on the softer rock. Eucyon whelped
the wolves. The sloths died off. The salmon lost
its fangs. The land grew cold and mountainous,
ice shrouded the peaks, and fed the streams
to quarry out the rock. That river now
a long mountain, the lava all that still
remains of those old days, the canyon walls
long gone, the sea the river fed now plowed
for cotton, its flow frozen fine-grained rock,
wild oat awns nodding from its crevices,
and travelers intent on granite domes
pass by the mountain, never seeing it.
Posted by: Chris Clarke
Note: A database glitch in 2008 ate a bunch of archived comments. Don't be offended if yours isn't here, or confused if the conversation seems disjointed. Thanks!
wow.
thanks for this on a sunday morning.
nature is my true religion - this was a religious experience for me, akin to finding a new beetle, or seeing ravens where I’ve never seen them before.
from one dog-lover to another, you made me google Eucyon…
great way to start the week!
By: By sravana on 2007 08 12
Wow indeed. Written with such dense and scary onrush of words, viscerally creating the lava flow for the reader - gorgeous, Chris. Thanks for this.
By: By Theriomorph on 2007 08 12
I’m reminded of this photograph of wildlife caught in a Montana fire (taken by John McColgan of the Alaska Fire Service in 2000).
The image was captured in the late afternoon of Sunday, August 6 from a bridge over the East Fork of the Bitterroot River just north of Sula, Montana. ...several forest fires converged near Sula into a firestorm that overran 100,000 acres… Temperatures in the flame front were estimated at more than 800 degrees. Nevertheless, McColgan said, the wildlife appeared to be taking the crisis in stride, gathering near the East Fork of the Bitterroot River where it crosses under U.S. Highway 93.
“They know where to go, where their safe zones are,” McColgan said. “A lot of wildlife did get driven down there to the river. There were some bighorn sheep there. A small deer was standing right underneath me, under the bridge.”
The elk sought refuge in the river bottom during what may have been the most extreme day of fire behavior on the Bitterroot in more than 70 years. “I do shoot some photography, but certainly that was a once in a lifetime, stunning opportunity.”
He was traveling to the Valley Complex along with the deputy incident commander of the Sula Complex. “I was on that ridge for maybe 15 seconds.” “We just saw the elk, and I stopped and said, ‘I’m taking 15 seconds here.’” McColgan said the photo does not fully convey the extreme weather conditions that day. “It was a fairly violent situation out there,” he said. “It looks fairly serene, but the wind was really whipping.”
By: By Lesley on 2007 08 12
A few days ago i was sitting in Sinking Creek, part of the Current River system in the Ozarks. Under a 150 foot limestone bluff (call quite appropriately Echo Bluffs), i was playing with the various rocks on the bottom and strewn across the shallow bank shoreline to the east of this wonderful swimming hole. Here we were at the end of July, and the water was moving rapidly, crystal clean and pure (fed by numerous springs flowing through the porous rocks). Among the submerged rocks, i found a chunk of dark green crystalline material that contain some very cool fossils of fern like plants. It was another one of those moments when i thought: “Wow if CC were here right now he could tell me all sorts of stories about all these things.”
The Ozarks are still quite beautiful, much as i remembered them to have been since the 1950’s when i was a kid forced to visit them and my relatives. The people though are in desperate need of access to better resources and diverse viewpoints. Begged by festival/ concert goers to provide resources and links for access to the most basic environmental and greening thoughts. It was different and still amazing.
By: By spyder on 2007 08 12
On a related note, does anyone have any recommendations for kids’ geology books? My 5 year old is really starting to be interested in rocks. He loves seeing bits of quartz in various rocks and the idea that a piece of rock was once “hot lava” fascinates him.
By: By Charles on 2007 08 13
I learned a bit about a slower die-off from another Miocene volcanic event (Bruneau-Jarbidge supervolcano eruption) through the unlikely agency of renting a U-Haul truck this weekend.
My truck was graced with a pictue of this bad boy, a Teleoceras, the remains of which are apparently found in abundance at the Ashfall Fossil Beds in Nebraska. Death appears to have come slowly via the inhalation of ash.
By: By JP Stormcrow on 2007 08 13
Awesome piece Chris. California is such a quiescent place these days and so few are aware of its tortured geological history thanks for the reminder. I suppose Long Valley could wake people up any day now…
You should really consider submitting this to the Boneyard carnival.
Charles: I always enjoyed the DK eyewitness series when I was a kid, long on pictures and short on text, probably about the right pace for a 5 y.o.
By: By microecos on 2007 08 13
Yes, you are a wonderful writer! I’m terribly jealous.
By: By Daisy on 2007 08 13
Thank you, microecos.
By: By Charles on 2007 08 13
A couple of weeks ago, I drove from the San Francisco Bay Area east through Sonora, and over the Sierras via CA 108. Downhill from Sonora are the most wonderful volcanic hills, sinuous like snakes—or rather, like the stream channels they filled when the Miocene lava flowed. The softer stream banks have since been eroded away, leaving the basalt lava to remember them, and the modern road cuts through them.
I encourage any readers in Northern California to take that drive some weekend, admire the black basalt “snakes”, and think about the creatures who might have seen the eruption.
By: By Karen on 2007 08 13
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