Mammoth Rocks
The earth turns, the seasons change, and life on this planet responds to the fluxes of warmth and cooling. Pretend that the earth has metaphorically begun to spin backwards: so back we will go, whirling through great dark space, until, slowing, we will find ourselves alive, and somewhat near the same place we are now, on the coast of Northern California. The place is the same; the time, however, is different: it is the end of the last ice age, for we have traveled back in time 10,000 years.
The land seems fairly similar, although the prairies extend eight miles farther out to sea that they do in the 21st century. The huge, rolling hills and sudden rocky seastacks and boulders of blue schist, chert, and jasper that jut roughly out of the plains are all still there, thirty and sixty feet high. The coastline still dissolves foggily into the distance as we gaze south. However, the plants are somewhat different. Our hayfever is nonexistant. Instead of a carpet of short green grass, we walk through fields of bunchgrass punctuated by flowers. Wild iris and strawberries are blooming heartily in the spaces between rocks, thriving off of the trampling and grazing that creates open spaces for them. Sand dunes dot the landscape. We see evidence of people at this time, though we do not see the people themselves. Small heaps of discarded shells, bones, and stones, fire pits, perhaps even paintings on the tall rocks. This is a seasonal home, and the people who have camped here are already further south. All this is noticed later, when we look around - what catches our attention at the very first are the animals. Down the hill from us, not forty yards away, is a herd of mammoths. They aren't the woolly mammoths that roamed the Siberian steppes, but the larger Columbian mammoths, endemic to North America. They are huge - twice as heavy as an African elephant, although only slightly taller. It is a herd of about twenty animals, loosely related, led by a matriarch. This is part of their coastal migration route, and they have stopped here to rest. They graze, nap, and nurse their young. Some are licking the salt deposits exposed in the boulders, a valuable resource which may have helped them return through this prairie year after year. Juveniles test their tusks by play-fighting with each other. A lone bull has been following the herd from a distance and now ventures to move closer, the matriarch watching him warily. Some are rolling in a mud pit that has been created out of a large depression in the ground. Years later, this wallow may become a clear vernal pool, home to delicate and amazing creatures. But right now it is muddy, eroded, largely inhabited only by the mammoths. A large female chases them out of the wallow, and a young mammoth, already ten feet tall at the shoulder, rubs the mud off of himself against one of the rocky outcroppings. He has a favorite place to do this. There are several ledges that are at just the right height to reach behind his neck, and all the mammoths rub against them in the same few places. As we watch, the young mammoth leaves and the matriarch takes his place, scratching the thick hair on her cheek.
Fast-forward 10,000 years. Standing in the exact same place, we look up. The coarse schist and quartz, normally a rough and lichenous sandpaper, has been rubbed to a smooth sheen of green-blue. After millions of years of migration along this same route, we are reaching up and touching warm rock that the mammoths polished. <>
Most of the information presented here is the result of internet searches, abstracts of scientific papers, and my own inferences from the behavior and biology of modern elephants.
Some great links on the subject are:
http://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=23566, which led me to most of the sources I used in writing this.
http://centerfirstamericans.org/MT-archives.php, a publication by Oregon State University. Most of their issues are archived online, although the most recent issues may not be available.
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