Today marks one full month on the road but it doesn't feel that long at all. I’m enjoying myself too much to really notice the passage of days and I’m strangely proud of the fact that I’m not quite sure which time zone I’m in at the moment. Without any type of schedule to adhere to, the date and day of the week become irrelevant. I’m also happy to report that my index finger has finally healed from my very fist night of camping in Big Bend when I sliced it open the very first time I used my new knife. Unfortunately, now both my thumbs are all beat to shit. The left one I pinched between a hammer and a tent steak while setting up camp one night. It’s been torn up and discolored ever since. The tip and pad of my right thumb are dried and cracked from a month outside in the desert air. Split like a chapped lip, it’s deep and painful and an inconvenient place for a cut.
When I’m through whining to myself about the current state all my digits I explore the Petrified Forest and Painted Desert National Park. The landscape is desolate but gorgeous and unlike anything I’ve seen yet. But with nothing to block it for miles in any direction, the wind literally howls. 50+ miles an hour. I can lean into it and it holds me up. I pull up to a trailhead and go to open my door but it's locked. I hit the unlock button but don’t hear the familiar unlocking noise from the electronic mechanism and I realize it’s not locked. The wind is just blowing against the outside of the jeep so hard that it wouldn't budge. When I make conscience effort I’m able to force it open and slide out. The wind violently slams the door shut behind me. It’s so strong it’s making it difficult to enjoy the park. I do a few of the shorter trails but quickly call it a day and hope the wind lets up tomorrow.
I spend the night in the Jeep at a nearby truck stop and the next morning wake up shivering. I pull myself together and climb out one of the back doors. It may be slightly less windy than yesterday, but not by much. I'm still annoyed by this when I turn and look at the Jeep. One entire side, plus the hood are plastered with a layer of snow nearly 2 inches thick. There is literally no snow anywhere else in sight, the ground isn't even wet. It's like a practical joke. What the hell Arizona!?
I’m still able to explore and learn about the park despite Mother Nature. This area used to sit where Panama is now. It was swamp-like with a tropical climate. Enormous trees, some 200 feet tall would fall into streams and get washed down into a flood plain where the mouth of the stream slowly covered them with silt, mud, and volcanic ash. This sediment cut off all the oxygen and slowed their decay. Then silica laden groundwater penetrated deep into the wood and a chemical reaction replaced the wood, cell by cell, with rock. Over millions of years the Colorado Plateau was pushed up while erosion worked its way down and when the two met the petrified forest was uncovered.
The colors are incredible in the petrified trees, across the painted desert, and in the hills of the badlands on the other side of the park but the wind just won’t let up. I’m not sure if it ever does so I trudge through it down a few more trails. The Blue Mesa Trail features mountains of sediment deposited by ancient rivers. Easily discernible layers of blues, purples, and grays mark the passage of eons. Thousands more fossils could still be encased in the soft rock and considering the size of the deposits - they tower over me - it had to be one big ass river. 
I investigate hundreds of petroglyphs on Newspaper Rock. Pictures of animals, people, hands, and shapes chiseled into the outer layer of the rock and remained for hundreds of years. I come upon one in a spiral shape with a shaft of sunlight stretching towards it. The sun shines through a small gap in the adjacent rocks and makes a finger of light on the opposite wall. Throughout the year that finger of light works its way across the rock face, through the rings of the spiral eventually reaching the center. This happens every year on the Summer Solstice and the indians know it's time to plant their crops. It’s a fucking calendar!? That’s ridiculous! How these ancient people could figure something like that out is beyond me. That's some Indiana Jones shit right there. Those are some smart ass indians. 
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