Outpost Mâvarin: Round Robin: Big - The Great Pyramid of Marana

Saturday, June 18, 2011

Round Robin: Big - The Great Pyramid of Marana

This week's Round Robin Photo Challenge has a simple, one-word topic: BIG. You know that I live in the desert, and that my commute takes me outside the city. But did you know that I pass a pyramid on the way to work each day?

Here it is, as photographed by me on the way back from my job interview this past February. As best I can tell, it's basically a massive pile of dirt, as close as the Sonoran Desert gets to sand. This isn't a sand dune, though. It's graded dirt, for sale as landscaping material. This is not where it's sold, just where it is stored.

And here it is again, photographed from the other direction a few weeks later. When I first started working at my job, I used to arrive on this road right around dawn, having left home nearly an hour earlier. This was quite a shock for someone who often used to go to bed at 5 AM!

Today I photographed it again on my way home from work. It's not really taller than the Catalina Mountains in the background, but it is impressively large. It can be seen from the freeway, and for a mile or two in each direction.

It's hard to get a sense of the scale of the thing, since I had no people to pose nearby, and there are no buildings in camera range. Sometimes I see birds flying over it, hawks or vultures or Chihuahuan ravens. But the green thing at the right is a Palo Verde tree, about fifteen to twenty feet tall. The dark spots on the pyramid are bushes. When the wind is just right, some of the dirt can be seen twisting away into the sky.

From the north side one gets sort of a multiple pyramid effect from several piles of graded sand. The shape of the main pyramid from this particular angle on this particular day (Friday, June 17th) makes this especially true. There's also a great earthen wall - not a barrow or burial mound, nor a fortification, but most likely more graded dirt in a different hue.

Now let's go see what BIG discoveries the other Robins have made!

Linking List:

as of 7 PM MST

Saturday, June 18th

Freda - Posted!

Day One

http://fredamans.blogspot.com

Karen - Posted!

Outpost Mâvarin

http://outmavarin.blogspot.com

Jama - Posted!

Sweet Memories

http://mummyjam.blogspot.com