The view from the top of Rocky Butte provides a detailed view of both mountains in their entirety. On a sunny day, the sunshine captures every detail of the mountains. Sharp, definitive black lines covering the white background of the mountains represent their steep cliffs.
During the summer of '94, my dad and I spent long hours on top of Rocky Butte playing baseball (particularly pitching and throwing mechanics). The weather on top of the Butte was usually very hot or very cold, and it never seemed to be perfect. The wind was always a factor, but it didn't interrupt the trajectory of the baseball because of the stone wall that enclosed around the tower like a medieval garrison. The general area between the stone wall and the tower was where my dad and I played baseball. The grassy area yielded enough room to throw a simulated game to my father. Nearly every day that summer in '94 my dad let me drive the car to the top of the Butte. I remember how the steering wheel burned every time I touched it, and I would have to drive wearing my baseball glove. The smell of pine grows stronger as one drives up the Butte, unaffected by the heavy traffic and bubbling ponds that surround the base of the Butte. The loose asphalt easily crackles under the weight of the tires and becomes the only sound as car horns and sounds of other city life slowly dissipates behind us. Startled grasshoppers jump out of the long brush that lines the windy roads like frogs in a dynamite pond, and, just as quickly, disappear back into the long brush on the other side of the road. At the top, sounds of baseball begin to fill the air. The seams on the baseball make a whistling noise as it cuts through the air, and the impact of the baseball slaps the malleable leather of my glove, shooting a subtle burning sensation through my fingers. My father's instructions echo off the stone walls, as I am usually thirty five feet away from him.
From the geologic record preserved there, it is evident that a mountain range predating the Rockies existed when the Grand Canyon was just being formed. ... During the late Devonian, the "Temple Butte Limestone was deposited in a fresh to brackish water environment Deposition of the Redwall Limestone, a marine unit, during the Mississippian marks a rise in sea level" (Foos, 2000; p. grand). ...
