In Arizona’s Petrified Forest National Park, the fossilized trees look like rocks filled with minerals including quartz, amethyst and cobalt. They are dazzling—so dazzling, in fact, that visitors frequently pocket pieces despite all the signs prohibiting them from doing so. I did it myself, taking two tiny pieces of rock when I stopped at the park on a road trip a few years back. But many people who remove the rocks end up wishing desperately that they hadn’t, often returning them in the mail. “They are beautiful, but I can’t enjoy them, ” scrawl capital letters on one note. “Take these miserable rocks and put them back into the rainbow forest, for they have caused pure havoc in my love life and Cheryl’s too, ” pleads another letter written on torn-out notebook paper and signed “Dateless + Desperate.” This story is from Kinfolk Issue Twenty-Eight Buy Now Related Stories Arts & Culture Issue 50 Field Notes A new nature column. Arts & Culture Garden Issue 37 Ron Finley An exclusive excerpt from our book, The Kinfolk Garden. Arts & Culture Issue 37 Rendered Impossible Those who can only dream of the great outdoors may as well have some fun while doing it. Arts & Culture Issue 37 Wild Thoughts On the nature of nature writing. Arts & Culture Issue 37 Jane Goodall From her perch in the tiny Tanzanian nature reserve of Gombe, primatologist Jane Goodall changed how we understand the nature of chimpanzees—and ourse Arts & Culture Issue 37 Home Grown In conversation with a plant stylist.
Arts & Culture Issue 37 Rendered Impossible Those who can only dream of the great outdoors may as well have some fun while doing it.
Arts & Culture Issue 37 Jane Goodall From her perch in the tiny Tanzanian nature reserve of Gombe, primatologist Jane Goodall changed how we understand the nature of chimpanzees—and ourse
