Except for a quick browse of the Maya Jones Books stall in the El Museo Cultural Market adjacent the Santa Fe Farmer’s Market, I did very little book shopping on my recent trip to Santa Fe with my partner Denise and her brother and sister-in-law Mike and Kathy Koslow. (“Excuse me, sir, do you have any margarita recipe books?”)
But other printed matter came into play—maps. And appropriately so, since we road tripped through Abiquiu and Ghost Ranch up Highway 84 in a geological tour or rock formations. I had no idea what they were about until I purchased the exquisitely printed Abiquiu: The Geologic History of O’Keefe Country by Kirt Kempter and Dick Huelster. The detailed map gives a rundown of the rock formations, the type of rock, a timeline and explanation of how the topography was formed.
Here's an excerpt about the formation near Georgia O'Keefe's Ghost Ranch (shown at the top of the post):
"The Mesozoic Era is represented by the sedentary deposits that surround Ghost Ranch. The basal, mostly red mudstones represent the Triassic Petrified Forest Formation, when broad rivers meandered across a flat landscape in northern New Mexico. The orange-red to yellow overlying cliffs represent the Entrada Formation, petrified sand dunes from the Jurassic Period approximately 165-160 million years ago."
Well, it’s not exactly the map you can follow while you are hiking but it serves well as a memory of what we experienced, not unlike this photograph of us trekking through a slot canyon near the Cerrito Blanco.
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