A sacred oral tradition of the Paiutes states that the Hoodoos are ancient “Legend People” turned into stone by Coyote as a punishment for bad deeds.

It is the custom of the Paiutes to tell these stories only during the winter season. It is out of respect for this custom that the authentic story is not repeated here.

Bryce Canyon Interpretive Sign

What human beings want more than anything else is to become human beings.

Clarice Lispector, An Apprenticeship

Rumor has it, Georgia O’Keeffe was walking in the desert; her long black skirt swept the sand. She could smell bones. With palette and paintbrush in hand, she walked west to find them.

It was high noon, hot, but O’Keefe would not be deterred. She walked down arroyos and up steep slopes; her instincts were her guide. Ravens cavorted above her, following this black-clothed creature through the maze of juniper and sage.

Suddenly, O’Keefe stopped. She saw bones. She also saw Coyote and hid behind a piñon.

Coyote’s yellow eyes burned like flames as he danced around the cow carcass with a femur in each hand. His lasso made of barbed wire had brought the bovine down. Maggots, beetles, and buzzards had miraculously cleaned the bones. The skull glistened.

Coyote had succeeded once again. He had stripped the desert of another sacred cow.

Georgia stepped forward. Coyote stopped dancing. They struck a deal. She would agree not to expose him as the scoundrel he was, keeping his desert secrets safe, if he promised to save bones for her—bleached bones.

Stones—smooth black stones would also do.

And so, for the price of secrecy, anonymity, and just plain fun—O’Keeffe and Coyote became friends. Good friends. Through the years, he brought her bones and stones and Georgia O’Keeffe kept her word. She never painted Coyote.

Instead, she embodied him.

Terry Tempest Williams, An Unspoken Hunger

The rock is the seat of their minds. The rock organ is filled with billions, trillions of intricate channels, forming a maze that divides water into countless tiny, parallel flows that drip, trickle, wind around each other to represent simple values which, together, coalesce into streams of consciousness and emerge as currents of thought.

Over time, the pattern of water flowing through the rock changes. Older channels are worn down and disappear or become blocked and closed off—and so some memories are forgotten.

New channels are created, connecting previously separated flows—an epiphany—and departing water deposits new mineral growths at the far, youngest end of the rock, where the tentative, fragile miniature stalactites are the newest, freshest thoughts.

Ken Liu, Bookmaking Habits Of Select Species

Hoodoos are found all over the world.

Some large, some small; some short, some tall.

Each has a unique combination of rock and erosion that results in unusual, otherworldly formations.

There are many names besides Hoodoo for free-standing columns of rocks: Earth Pyramids. Goblins. Tent Rocks. Spires. Pinnacles. Demoiselles Coiffées (Ladies With Hairdos). Fairy Chimneys.

Hoodoo comes from the Southern Paiute word for being afraid, pronounced “uuudooooooooo” as an expression of fear.

Hoodoos develop in stages as water and ice chip away at rock. First a wall forms. Then openings in the wall develop to form windows. As the tops of the windows erode away, free-standing rock towers are left standing.

As rain falls and snow melts, water containing dissolved minerals flows down the rock faces. As the water evaporates, dissolved minerals crystallize, coating the rock with decorative layers that slow erosion.

Bryce Canyon Interpretive Sign

What appears to be a genesis of pattern by quantity arises where the pattern is latent before the quantity impacts the system.

Imagine an island with two mountains on it. A quantitative change, a rise, in the level of the ocean may convert this single island into two islands. This will happen at the point where the level of the ocean rises higher than the saddle between the two mountains.

The qualitative pattern is latent before the quantitative change makes it manifest; and when the pattern changes, the change is sudden and discontinuous.

Gregory Bateson, Mind And Nature