I stand in a hole created by a giant’s footstep.  The crater 50 feet wide and 30 feet deep. It smells of dry grass. It feels of damp stone. The walls rise, cracked in near perfect hexagonal prisms, reminiscent of Easter Island, faces facing me with some unknowable wisdom in their eyes. Stone eyes. Nonexistent eyes. It evokes an awe, a godly air. Damp stone columns become temple pillars. Red Indian paintbrush becomes stained glass. This crater is not alone in the landscape, clusters dot it in the distance, witness to water’s power.

It is hard to imagine that a gigantic flood carved this place. Several great lakes worth of water rolled over this land, creating vortexes of compressed water, huge tornados with enough force to rip through rock. Where they touched down, however briefly, stone was flung aside and these craters were left behind, massive monuments to its force. How fast did the water rush over the landscape?  What obelisks did the flood crash into, creating the vortexes that drilled out the earth?  It is hard to imagine, yet somehow I can almost sense what I have in fact been told.  I see water rushing in, smashing and splashing angrily at the land.  This giant’s footprint still contains the force that created it. Somehow here, in damp stone and dry grass a tornado still coils.

You are in the hole.  Looking up at the cliffs rather than looking down from upon them. Gaze limited by stone walls, cracked, and segmented in squares and pentagons. Broken off rock piled halfway to the top at times, sagebrush craning for the sky while reaching for dampness with its roots. My attention is drawn here and then out again. The sky informed by a lens, the kind only a limiting enclosure of stone can create. Is it that it is a circle that evokes such sacredness from this place? It is sacred. A temple built like an Anasazi Kiva, a place to connect with the earth, and perhaps the tornado that still coils within.

This is a pothole, oddly named, found in Dry Falls National Park where I am. Why a pothole?  This hole is considerably larger than any pot I’ve seen. It is too large to be a pothole, too large to be anything save sacred in my eyes. This is a giant’s footprint. Here I am insignificant. Standing in the wake of a giant, awed by its vastness.

In the hole I am in awe.Around me I see rock that was carved out in an instant by a twister of bubbles, burrowing into solid stone. As I feel the rock with my hand I imagine the bubbles bursting – creating enough force to carve out the stone. Within the pothole, there is life flowing everywhere. There are grasses on the ground – lichen and moss, growing up the side of the walls.Trees sprout from the ground trying to reach the sky. I feel like I am in a giant planter pot and I am a bug looking up at the plants above

Smell: On the surface is the smell of dry grass, yet beneath is a dampness. There is a sour damp smell when on the left side of the pothole or on the floor. I associate the smell with that of a swamp. This place is an interplay of hot and cold, dry and damp. The smell reflects that. Dry grass is most pogent yet beneath it lies damp moss, and the shadows beneath dark rocks.

Sight: In our area there are three potholes – The walls of the largest are jagged, but with an unmistakable pattern. Directly in front of me is a hexagonal cliff face where, if you look from above, you can see the way the rocks cracked, creating jutting angles of rock from below. In many areas the rock has crumbled creating slopes by which we can descend. Plants and trees come alive here, vibrant from the surrounding landscape in their greens yellows and reds.

Taste: The rock reminds me of Mayan temples, how I imagine they would taste against my tongue. Deep, dark, cold stone, like dark bitter gravy without the salt. The grass tastes like – well – grass, threads pressed lengthwise like dry straw.

Sound: Yesterday it was quiet, here resides silence. No sound permeates to the bottom of this pothole, and I find myself tapping just to make noise. My ears instinctively make their own sound, a high whine that might not be my own ears but rather the little bugs – gnats I think –  common to this place. As we move in we bring our own sound. The clicking of cameras, voices calling across the circle, the shuffle of feet, a cough, a clap. At one point we heard a frog croaking from the marshes nearby.