illuminesce

Queer indie dev. Kinda feral.

I co-run a video game cooperative called Studio Terranova with @mabbees.


💚 blog 💚
illuminesce.net/blog/
interface drama + games discord
discord.gg/NUg8ny8Qv2

notable-trees
@notable-trees

A pile of petrified wood, taken from the national park and mailed back with pleas of atonement.

Inside of the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona, an unassuming pile of mixed stones stands, unmarked, off a private service road. This pile is entirely made of petrified wood, ranging in size from mere slivers to entire logs, and widely varying in color, origin species, and replacement minerals. These are the so-called "conscience rocks"– fossils taken from the park and returned, sometimes decades later, with letters asking forgiveness.

The Petrified Forest is known for its Late Triassic tree fossils. These trees had their organic material replaced by stone through a process of mineralization, with logs periodically buried in volcanic silt and flooded by silica-rich water some 230 million years ago. The park contains nine species of fossil trees, all extinct. Rainbow-colored and sparkling, they positively litter the ground of the park. Visitors– perhaps unsurprisingly– sometimes slip them into pockets, socks, and (in at least one instance) the entire back seat of a Volvo stationwagon.

Arrive "The Mystery of the Conscience Wood", a visitor's center exhibition that documents these stones' precipitous returns. A three ring binder contains thousands of letters of apology, anger, and fear. They say things like:

  • “You’re right; it’s a curse to take wood from the forest. My girlfriend of three years finished with me on the drive home. So here’s your damn wood back.”
  • THE FINAL STRAW WAS WHEN I STEPPED THRU THE CEILING OF OUR NEW HOUSE. THAT’S WHEN I TOLD MY WIFE. I’VE HAD ENOUGH. I’M SENDING IT BACK.
  • "Please return to the Crystal Forest. It sparkled and the devil made me pick it up. I can't live with it anymore."

Some letters even detail exactly where the stones were found, with diagrams– but they can't be returned to these spots without rendering them useless for further scientific study. So instead, they languish in the conscience pile, a hodgepodge of stones that make the missing parts of thousands of trees– piled together as if they grew that way.

A book and blog on the letters and the rocks.


illuminesce
@illuminesce

I’ve been to the Petrified Forest prior to Conscience Wood and there were signs everywhere telling people not to take fossils home.

I love that the fossils have left have come back home and also the park is growing its own cursed lore


You must log in to comment.

in reply to @notable-trees's post:

nice that at least one national park enforces take only pictures leave only footprints, but tbqh if you can't handle an ancient curse or two you don't deserve a cool rock

in reply to @illuminesce's post:

me designing a plasma actuated curse collimator in my mind: "what‽"

seriously tho i have family near there, the wildfires and scorpions and bizzare lifecycles are very not to be messed with. a landscape to remind us we are lucky visitors to earth. absolutely love it.