Five Buttes on the First Nations Navajo (Diné) Reservation in Arizona

Black Butte, in the immediate foreground, is part of the Five Butte geological formation just to the west of the Hopi Butte area on the First Nations Navajo (Diné) Reservation in Arizona.    

Buttes are interesting: A butte /bjuːt/ is an isolated hill with steep, often vertical sides and a small, relatively flat top; buttes are smaller than mesas, plateaus, and table landforms.  The word butte comes from a French word meaning "small hill"; its use is prevalent in the Western United States, including the southwest where "mesa" is also used for the larger landform.    

Because of their distinctive shapes, buttes are frequently landmarks in plains and mountainous areas. In differentiating mesas and buttes, geographers use the rule of thumb that a mesa has a top that is wider than its height, while a butte has a top that is narrower than its height.  (Research Source)

Navajo people call themselves Diné, which means “the people who live under Father Sky on Mother Earth". They see each butte as a living being with a heartbeat that can be heard if you stay still and listen.

The Hopi Buttes to the west of this by a mile or so is what is known as a monogenetic volcanic field. The volcanic field covers an area of approximately 965 square miles (2,500 km2) and contains about 300 maars and diatremes. The erosional exposure of the deposits varies with those in the eastern portion exhibiting the shallowly eroded maar deposits and those in the western portion the more deeply eroded feeder diatremes. 

The maars result from explosive interaction of the hot diatreme material with the groundwater system and result in a mixture of volcanic tuff material and sediments of the Miocene–Pliocene lacustrine sediments of the Bidahochi Formation. In the western portion of the field the buttes consist of the feeder diatremes of monchiquite and nepheline syenite magmas. Most of the volcanic activity occurred between 8.5 and 6 million years ago, with the most recent dated at 4.2 million years ago.  (Research Source)

This image is from my ongoing project in which I seek to raise awareness of the 47% of the USA and 90% of Canada that remain unpopulated wilderness.  

Where Eagles Fly - The American Wilderness Expedition is my personal mission to introduce people to these amazing locations that surround us.  

Please upvote and then resteemit so that others may experience these wondrous places as well.  

Yehaw!!