My Walkabout

50,000 years ago, an unbroken plain stretched along the high desert where a cottontail rabbit nibbled on a blade of sage brush. In a blinding flash, a meteorite estimated to have been about 150 feet across and weighing several hundred thousand tons struck the rocky plain with an explosive force greater than 20 million tons of TNT.

The rabbit is evaporized, and a crater 700 feet deep and over 4000 feet across is carved into this once flat plain. 175 million tons of limestone and sandstone are abruptly thrown over a mile to create a continuous blanket of debris.

The Star man has arrived.

In 1902, Daniel Moreau Barringer, a Philadelphia mining engineer, arrived at the site, formed the Standard Iron Company, and for the next twenty six years, persevered in attempting to drill and find the meteorite.

Unbeknownst to him though at that time, the meteor had completely disintegrated upon impact.

In 1984, a movie is released called “Starman“. I remember seeing the Meteor Crater for the first time in this film, and not even realizing it was a real place, I was inexplicably drawn to it.

Perhaps I too am an alien, looking for a way to communicate back home to the people I love.

Regardless of what may draw you to see Barringer’s Meteor Crater, whether it be scientific, inate curiosity, or a search for something greater in this Universe than ourselves, your time spent on the edge of this wonder will not dissappoint.