I’m riding with a friend along Interstate 40 in Arizona and he tells me I have to pick: Sunset Crater or Walnut Canyon. The first is a geologically unique site, the second a Native American ruin, but since we’re headed to the pueblos of Mesa Verde on the following day, I opt for mudslides over mud brick.

Just north of Flagstaff, Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument preserves the remains of a cinder cone that was formed in the last thousand years, in one of those blinks of geologic time that still seem like they are long past. School teachers always try to impress upon us that even the age of dinosaurs was not that distant as the earth measures things, but I’ve never been convinced. If even my great-grandmother was not alive during an event – and she lived to be 97 – then it was certainly ancient history.

Nevertheless, I’m surprised when I get to Sunset Crater and feel how recent the eruptions seem.

It’s not that the grounds are still hot, but they are surprisingly bare. I’ve hiked around an active volcano in Hawaii and know what cinder cones and lava flows can do, but it has been some 800 years since there was that kind of activity here, and still the vegetation grows sparse and tentative. It seems to me that, in nearly a thousand years, life would have returned to a thicker and richer presence on the mountainsides. And I’m a little disappointed. 

Not in the grounds. They are perversely beautiful, especially in the mix of black, red and yellow cinders that cover acres of land and give the crater its name; I’ve never seen anything like it before. But I’m disappointed in life itself. I had thought it was more aggressive than what I’m seeing as we hike along the mile-long Lava Flow Trail: an isolated rabbit brush here, a pink spike of skyrocket over there, all separated by yards and yards of gritty volcanic debris. 

I’m surprised because I practice a kind of dull faith: I believe that, short of an exploding sun, whatever you throw at life, it will absorb and adapt. It’s the only religion I have, and to see it undone – or even thwarted – by a mere volcano makes me ponder the big questions.

Only later do I realize that I’ve mistaken aggression for relentlessness. Because life is relentless, after all. At Sunset Crater, lichen is breaking up the rock, plants are taking root in the mineral mix that follows. The Augenblick that has passed since the volcano burst onto the scene has really only made life take a breath, and this monument now preserves its first exhalation.