“I am dead inside.”’- Michael Scott It’s only Wednesday. Petrified Forest National Park, in northeastern Arizona, is known for — and named in honor of — its extensive deposits of petrified wood. In fact, the park contains one of the world’s largest and most colorful concentrations of petrified wood. So what is petrified wood, and why was it so frightened that it’s now unable to move? Most likely, millions of years ago, a dinosaur, uninvited, approached a gathering of trees. At first they were afraid. Then they were petrified. All their rings turned to stone inside. But they survived. Yes, they survived. We were told that’s not 100% accurate, so we will try again. When the trees died (dinosaurs?) they washed into an ancient river system and formed log jams and buried sediment. Minerals, including silica dissolved from volcanic ash, absorbed into the porous wood over hundreds and thousands of years and crystallized within the cellular structure, replacing the organic material as it ...