Petrified

Clyde and I find ourselves sitting around the house with nothing to do. Clyde, bless him, comes up with an idea for an adventure: a quick trip out to see the Mississippi Petrified Forest.

We’ve threatened to make a visit to the park for ages. For years, I’ve seen the roadside advertisements bearing the forest’s logo: a surprised woodpecker breaking his beak on a section of stone log. The photos on the website suggest the park is “Mississippi’s equivalent of the Grand Canyon.”

On the drive north, I picture us wandering, slack-jawed, through a thick forest of stone trees. In Hawaii, we once took a nature walk through a section of land ruined by lava flow, where the charred corpses of trees stretched out in all directions, as far as the eye can see. In my mind’s eye, the Petrified Forest is something like this … but with all the blackened trees still standing.

The Welcome Center is pleasant enough, with slushies, rock samples, and models of Confederate soldiers for sale. The general theme of all gifts available here? Stone. Not stone from the forest, mind you … but Stones from Many Nations, including onyx chess sets from Mexico and hunks of quartz from a dozen different places.

An overhead sign beckons us to the black light display (“It’s not scary!”), so we wander in. Inside, we find two glass cases containing hunks of flourescent rock. Scattered among them are dolls of various sizes: dinosaurs and old miners. One sign points out that one of the rocks — a bit like one of the large polished stones around our backyard pool — looks something like an onion.

With great anticipation, we buy our five dollar tickets and step out onto the nature trail. There’s a massive slice of tree immediately to our left — but it’s not from the Mississippi Petrified Forest. Instead, it comes from a sequoia tree in California. A nearby sign tells us “Trees here were once this large.”

The word “once” appears to be the key to the entire attraction. Once, there was a petrified forest in Mississippi — now, it seems, the woods and overgrowth have pretty much taken over. The path takes us past mounds of honeysuckle and loblolly pine, punctuated with barrel-sized hunks of petrified stone every forty feet or so. Some of the hunks are lying on their side. Some ocassionally jut from the ground.

We decide the more accurate name for the park would be “A Few Scattered Pieces of Petrified Wood all but Lost in the Mosquito-Infested Mississippi Overgrowth.”

Which brings us to the real marvel of the expedition: the mosquitos. Swarming black clouds of aggressive insects roam the park, descending on sweet-fleshed tourists with a vengence. Every few steps, I found myself experiencing quick, sharp incisions. Slapping at my thigh would kill not one but several “no-see-um’s”. After one particularly sloppy slap, my leg was smeared with mosquito grue.

Still, I had a good time because I was with Clyde. If you don’t have a Clyde with you … you might want to put the Petrified Forest a few entries further down on your list of things to do.