if these stones could walk

摘要

When we were kids, my uncle used to take my cousins and me on trips to Racetrack Playa. Geologists know the flat, dry lake bed in California's Death Valley National Park for one strange phenomenon: its slithering stones. Since the late 1940s, they've been investigating how boulders scattered across the land-some as big as compact fridges-seemingly move thousands of feet on their own. Theories abounded, from the reasonable to the absurd, but no one had ever seen the rocks in action. Death Valley, as its name implies, is inhospitable. Put aside that it's one of the hottest places on Earth, but it's also hit by severe winter storms. No one wanted to sit around and watch.