We left Gallup, New Mexico, with its very cool public art…
…and headed north to visit Shiprock, the solidified magma core of a volcano. Since the volcano’s eruption 27 million years ago, everything around the core has wasted away. Shiprock, located on Navajo land, is sacred to them. Non-native Americans must have the permission of the Navajo Nation to visit it.
At a height of nearly 1,600 feet, Shiprock is the tallest of several volcanic magma cores found in the Navajo Volcanic Field of northern New Mexico and Arizona.
Extending in a straight line for several miles from the Shiprock's core is a lava dike, an intrusion of molten lava into vertical fractures in the earth’s crust. The earth which covered the dike continues to waste away.
As we photographed Shiprock, we discovered a beautiful local inhabitant.
We left the desert of northern New Mexico for the vegetation of southern Colorado near Durango.
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