Tufas, like mineral flowers, emerge, protrude, and fragment as a lake recedes. Bud, blossom, seed, left high and dry. Tufas congeal in crenate patterns, constellated, crystallized, caverned, calcified froth.
This tufa boulder formed
under the waters of a bay of Pleistocene Lake Lahontan in northwest
Nevada. An immersed spring emits dissolved calcium which combines with
carbon in the lake water to form calcium carbonate into a sort of
crystalline structure, which is then eroded. These deeply carved
petroglyphs, vulva-like shapes and linear incisings, are undated.
The
petroglyphs on this boulder appear as emblems of desire, as
invocations, perhaps entreating sexual fecundity, necessary
replenishment. In these landscapes as marvelous, saturated dream-space, I
am reminded of Max Ernst’s frottages and textured paintings. The boulders' location is proximate to the justly famous, oldest dated
petroglyphs in North America, also carved on tufa. Those dated
petroglyphs look to the east over Winnemucca Dry Lake, east of Pyramid
Lake - both remnant lakes of pluvial Lake Lahontan. The Winnemucca
petroglyphs were determined by Larry Benson and associates in 2013 to
date to at least 10,500 years ago.Another carved tufa boulder near the spring.
A very hot spring, once at the bottom of a pluvial (Pleistocene) lake, located on the playa near the tufa boulders.
CODA
We all belong not just to our present moment, nor to the place in which we find ourselves at that moment, but to a far greater system of changes which have occurred throughout Earth's history and will continue to occur long into the future. The present convulsions of the planet are the result of the whole Earth system trying, in response to terrible pressures, to shift itself, often violently, into a new set of alignments, and we are part of those changes. We are the weather, and the water; we are the lionfish, too, changing our environment as we are changed by it. This realization can be humbling. and it can be hopeful too. We belong to the whole timescale of history. —James Bridle, from Here Come The Lionfish, Emergence Magazine, Vol. 5: Time (2024)
Below: Max Ernst: The Gray Forest (1927)
