Petrified!!!
On a recent family outing, we went to a town called Chirundu which borders Zimbabwe. Tim, being the safari man he is, scouted out all the possible sites to see while we were there. A few kilometers before the town, we stopped at the Chirundu Forest Reserve. Tim and Michelle (along with us for the weekend) got out and started scouting out the place. It didn’t look all that interesting to me at first so I hung back getting the children ready. I took Ian and Ireen – we walked around the path and I was, for the most part, unimpressed. Tim, on the other hand, was thrilled with what he saw. Perhaps the discrepancy exists because I was looking up at trees and Tim was looking down at stumps. This was a petrified forest. No, it wasn’t scared of wild animals…the tree stumps were wood turned into rock. They maintained the appearance of wood but all organic material had been replaced by minerals in a process called petrification. Really, quite cool. Ian might gain more of an appreciation in years to come.
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