So said Gilbert and Sullivan in HMS Pinafore. I took this picture a few years ago at Libby Flats, elevation about 11,000 feet, in the Snowy Range in Southern Wyoming. I’ve shown this picture to quite a few people and I get significant variance in responses — from cracked mud to modern art to some sort of landscape from an airplane.
It’s just a dead pine tree root that had been sandblasted by the ice and snow that blows with such ferocity at those altitudes. It’s a stark but beautiful place and I make it a point to visit whenever I drive through Wyoming. It gets me off the interstate and slows me down.