Another oddity in the Mojave, a lone rock has resisted the erosion that has laid waste to the surrounding geology. And in doing so has emerged, to my mind anyway, as a relic mimicking the anvil of a thunderhead as it billows its cumulonimbus updrafts towards the sky. Weather has always been a favorite of mine, and I even did one of those storm chasing trips once, to the midwest in the heart of tornado alley, in search of the monster storms. You wake at sunrise there and the skies are clear, birds chirping, sun beaming; by maybe 3pm that same area could be under a tornado watch, sirens blaring, gold ball sized hail thundering down, lightning all around. I’m getting carried away.
But that’s exactly what this rock looks like to me! A solid thunderhead in the desert made of rock, far more permanent than an actual thunderstorm but still fleeting in the scale of geologic time, and ultra fleeting in the perspective of cosmic time with the Milky Way above as a reminder. The light from these stars in this scene is reaching us from a time so long ago that the rock as seen in its present incarnation simply did not exist as such. When this light was emitted, this rock may have still been buried by sediment, awaiting thousands of years of water and wind to liberate it. Cosmic light is a trip like this - it is present but ancient all at once.