Geocaching, Sombreros, and Trundling, Part III

Miss Part I? Read it here

Miss Part II? Read it here

Full of Mexican food and high on life (or on sugar from the flan), we left the restaurant in good spirits and in the mood for adventure (aka trouble). I don’t remember how or why we ended up where we did, but I remember driving along a dirt path and seeing a bunch of discarded tires laying on the side of the road. The boys had a hankering to haul some of them up the nearby hill, and roll them down the side. So, we started gathering tires. 

Being as they were pretty heavy, we finally got the brilliant idea of roping them to the back of our vehicle and driving them most of the way up. Which is how we ended up driving the van up the side of the mountain, with 3 boys hanging off the back of the car, “riding” the tires on the way up. 

Once we were at the top of our destination, we occupied ourselves for a short while, flinging the tires off the side of the mountain and watching them roll all the way down. This easily segued into rock trundling, which is another favorite pastime of geologists, and is just a fancy way of saying “throwing small rocks and boulders down the side of a mountain”. We started small, finding individual rocks to throw, as heavy as we could lift. Then we started working together to dig out larger boulders and push them down the side of the hill. 

Don’t ask me why this activity is so entertaining. There is just something about watching the rocks gather speed and momentum and barrel their way down the side of a mountain, obliterating anything and everything in its path along the way. And the larger the rock, and the more effort it took us to get it moving, the more exciting it was when it flew down the hill. We would yell and cheer as they tumbled their way down to the bottom. 

Then, we discovered it – the mother lode of all trundling rocks. A perfect sandstone sphere, it sat there glowing in the rays of the setting sun, beckoning us. It must have been about 6 feet high and wide, and perched perfectly in a starting position at the edge of the cliff – all we had to do was loosen some of the rocks around the base. You could sense our excitement in the air. 

We got to work and suddenly realized this was going to be a much more arduous task than we first imagined. This rock wouldn’t BUDGE. Too much of the base was buried in the dirt, and no matter how many rocks we loosened, it seemed like it wasn’t helping. Too eager to give up right away, we kept at it. 

30 minutes later, we were still working on this stupid boulder, and had officially passed the point of giving up and were now hell-bent on digging this thing out. It was one of those situations where you had already invested too much time and effort to give up, and there was no going back. With the sun down and us quickly losing our light, we worked at a feverish pace, all five of us digging away. 

Occasionally we would stop digging and all push together, to see if we could get the rock to move. Every time, we would count to three, hold our breath, and push, anticipating the feel of the rock shifting under our hands. But, nothing. 

We worked until the last bit of sunlight was gone, and on a moonless night in the desert, it was pitch black out there. At some point somebody brought up the elephant in the room, which was even if we somehow finally got this rock to move, it was now too dark to even watch it roll down the hill. We didn’t even care. We were not leaving this mountain side until this thing moved. 

My arms aching, I took a break to hold the flashlight, while the boys hacked away at the bottom of the rock, the metal from their rock hammers flashing in the light as they raised their arms, sweat flying, and a crazed look in their eyes.  

Finally, it came time to test the rock again. This time, I inched my way up a neighboring rock, with my back flat up against it, and my feet on the boulder so I could push with all of my leg strength. We counted – 1, 2, 3…and pushed. This time I felt the rock give underneath my feet. There was a communal gasp from everyone as we felt the rock lift, then settle back into place. We were close! You could feel all of us now quivering with excitement and anticipation. I even recall hearing someone say the phrase “this is like foreplay!” We tore at the rock with renewed fervor, knowing the time was near. 

Finally, one last push. We knew this one was going to be it. In a moment of hushed silence, we pushed together, and felt the rock move forward and tip over. Then we saw one of the coolest things I can remember – the boulder striking other rocks as it charged its way down the mountainside was causing it to spark and was sending streaks of flying yellow sparks into the air the entire way down the mountainside. It was a magnificent sight we would have never been able to see unless it was pitch black outside. 

The darkness also intensified all of our other senses, and we could feel the vibrations under our feet and hear the boulder crashing into everything else, until we heard the final loud BOOM of it hitting the bottom, echoing through the desert canyon like a gavel. It was glorious. 

I have so many memories of geology trips, with plenty of others containing much more exciting circumstances than these. But they are still hard to compare with this first trip. The five of us had bonded over geocaches, sombreros, and trundling. We shared new discoveries and experiences together. It taught me that you don’t have to be in an exciting place to have fun – you can be in the middle of a dry desert, with shady restaurants and tire-littered dirt roads – but as long as you are with good friends, you can have a blast.