Walk a dry wash

On the way to Stanton last Sunday we stopped to take a walk into a dry wash tributary to Antelope Creek.

Dry falls
Presumably, a lot of gold has been taken out of the washes in this area and almost all the public land has been claimed for mining. There are stakes and markers everywhere.

Water smoothed schist
But we really weren’t out gold mining, well maybe a few pretty rocks.

Quartz in schist
The surrounding rock in the Weaver Mountains is primarily granite and schist. The granite was formed by slow cooling in the earth’s crust about 1,000 million years ago. It is typically medium- to coarse-grained and created by magma made up of various combinations of primarily hornblende, feldspar and quartz.

Schists are formed from sedimentary shale or sandstone, igneous basalt or metamorphic slate under temperature and/or pressure. In fact schist is a Greek word meaning to split as the rock will break easily into slabs.

Mica in granite
Within certain areas of these rocks are found thin quartz veins which carry pyrite, galena, and gold. We did find some pyrite and a lot of mica in the rocks.

MWT - A walk in the wash

Just outside the door, it’s probably less than 100 feet through brush to the wash which flows only during heavy rain.

Mighty Arizona Oaks reveal intricate root wads half exposed on the banks.

The roots twist and turn back on themselves encountering rocky obstacles in the soil, creating windows to the sky.

Poplars tower above.

Ancient granite boulders squat in the sand.

Quail feather evidence of a successful hunt
The wash is full of life. Bird song all around as they flutter by in a blur.

Deadwood critter
The imagination awakens with the discovery of nature’s gifts.

We see the BIG picture.

And also the small components.


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