We went to our local BLM field office and got a license to collect up to 250 pounds of material from the community pit outside Hurricane, Utah. I wasn’t feeling well at all, but I needed to do something meaningful to take my mind off the pain and incessant coughing, so we headed out with a five-gallon bucket and collected a few pounds of what turned out to be oxidized basaltic lava.

It wasn’t the 220-million-year-old exposed Petrified Forest Member of the Chinle Formation from the Late Triassic geological layer after all. That was wishful thinking on my part coupled with being misled by the colors at the pit as they appear on Google Maps.

This pit is positioned within a Quaternary-period volcanic complex, so it’s actually exposed lava, lava, and more lava. The red color comes from the basaltic lava oxidizing after the eruption. I say eruption because this was all part of a single, continuous eruption that lasted weeks or months as opposed to a series of eruptions.

I might be able to do something with the lava we collected, but it’s going to be difficult to crush. I don’t have the health or energy to attempt such a thing right now. I’m experiencing the equivalent of a single, continuous eruption in my lungs, one that’s not spewing anything anyone would want to collect for anything, ever.

Images: The drive to the pit from Hurricane, several photos of the pit and the heavy equipment parked in it, our car parked by the area where we collected the basaltic lava, and a close-up of the lava in a glass jar.