Rock as Hard Places

October 2022 Newsletter

Rock as Hard Places

Pedro pointed his carbon walking pole towards a pile of granite rocks along our path through the Peneda-Gerês National Park in Portugal. The park is the only national park in Portugal and is a confluence of natural artifacts. Much of the landscape is on the move: Iberian wolves,  Barrosã cattle, wild boars, and wild Garrano horses ramble over the rough landscape, made rough by heathers, gorses, and insistent wildflowers that emerge through the cracks in the rocks. 

Rocks provide the armature for Portugal’s Serra Do Gerês. Two granite massifs conjoin in the park, crusty mountains with faults and fissures that form valleys and other geomorphic shapes. The shapes that Pedro pointed out included large rock slabs erected during the Neolithic period called menhirs. (Tourist guides love to point out their phallic significance. There’s a moment when my guide is giggling and I am in awe of his amusement.) The menhirs appear alone, in clusters, aligned in a pattern similar to Stonehenge, and some have indecipherable symbols carved on their surfaces.