For more than a decade I have been hiking a trail called Muffin Ridge, which overlooks Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area to the west and the Las Vegas Valley to the east. The hike is rigorous for someone like myself who spends most of his day behind a desk. It requires a certain amount of mental preparation, so I only attempt the climb a few times a year. The hike involves a relatively steep climb which lasts more than an hour, and usually I anticipate some soreness and mild cramping the following day. At the top of the ridge sits a rock outcropping that is shaped like a large muffin with an overflowing top. The outcropping looks like it was formed out of a natural concrete—small stones held together with compressed sand. Interestingly, as you get close to the outcropping the composition of the stone resembles a course bran muffin loaded with nuts and seeds. Geologists call this sedimentary rock. The remarkable thing is, over the 10-year period I have hiked this trail, the muffin has been breaking apart. The muffin top is much smaller than it was when I first started hiking this trail.
I have never personally witnessed a piece breaking off, but the evidence is clear. Large pieces are scattered at the base and match the part missing from the original form. Sometimes you will see scaring on the earth below where a larger piece evidently achieved escape velocity and managed to roll off the ridge. In the Mojave Desert, changes to the natural environment tend to occur very slowly. You don’t experience the dramatic seasonal transformations like leaves turning in autumn, the ecosystem hibernating through the winter or coming back to life in the spring. Desert plants take decades to mature, and rocks are sculpted by wind and water over thousands of years. This stability and slowness is part of what makes the desert so calming and strangely comforting. However, in this particular case, I feel like I am witnessing a sped up time-lapse of a geological transformation. Every hike I see a noticeable deterioration of the muffin—as if Father Time is hungry and nibbling at edges of the muffin.