The Great Mesa vs Butte Debate

"That one over there," I said, pointing to a listing, flat-topped Titanic of rock in the middle of an Arizona desert, "which is it?"

"Butte," my road tripping companion said with assurance.

"Not a mesa?"

"Could be a mesa," he allowed.

"We've really got to ask someone the next place we stop. I mean, what if this comes up as a question on "Jeopardy". Or what if they don't let us leave Arizona until we know the difference?"

I could see how the situation would evolve. We'd be driving along some backwater road near Globe, Arizona, and suddenly the flashing/revolving/gyrating lights of a sheriff's Range Rover would splash across the rearview mirror. I'd glance at the speedometer to make sure I hadn't been speeding, check our seatbelts to make sure we'd been wearing them, look to see if we had any illegal weapons or immigrants in the backseat, and then wonder why we were being pulled over.

"What's the problem, sir?" I'd ask when the sheriff approached the driver's side door.

"Just checkin' to make sure you know what the difference between a butte and a mesa is a'fore we can let you outta the state, son. It's the law. You DO know how ta tell 'em apart, duncha?"

"Erm, yessir," I'd say. "You see, the mesa is a…I mean, the butte looks like a…but the mesa is…"

Then that sheriff would shake his head sadly, spit a gob of chewing tobacco (or possibly "tobbaccy") out of the side of his mouth, and say, "Sorry, son, I'm goin' ta have to run you boys down to the station. Maybe a few days in the pokey'll learn you up some."

I wouldn't know what a "pokey" was, either, but it wouldn't sound good. So there was really no choice: we had to figure out what distinguished a mesa from a butte and vice versa.

My sum and total knowledge of buttes and mesas at that point in my life:

1.  
   1. You frequently find both in the desert, but not so often in Canada. I think.
   2. That mountain in "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" is neither a mesa nor a butte, though it kinda looks like one or the other--but if it was, I'm not sure which one it would be, though it probably isn't made out of mashed potatoes like it was in the movie.
   3. Butte, Montana, is the name of a town, but I don't know whether there's an actual butte nearby, or, if there is, if it might not be a mesa.
   4. There's a Mesa Mountain in Alaska, but I suspect they were just being creative when they named it.
   5. Both are really photogenic at sunrise; therefore, you can find a lot of calendars featuring pictures of buttes and/or mesas.

We happened to have a dictionary in the car, so my navigator left off trying to read the map (which worked out okay since we usually managed to find the right road when the map was under the seat but somehow always managed to get lost whenever he was giving directions gleaned from it) and turned to the "M's" instead.

"Says here that mesas are 'isolated rock formations having steep rock cliffs for sides. When diminished in size by natural forces, they are known as buttes'."

We pondered that for a few dozen miles. Finally I said, "Well, that makes sense."

"Uh huh." Another dozen miles passed before he asked, "What if there's a large mesa in one part of the desert that gets weathered and becomes a butte, but there's a smaller mesa in another part of the desert that doesn't get weathered and so it's called a mesa-- is the first one still a butte, or does it go back to being a mesa because it's larger?"

"Erm…right." That left us back where we'd started: asking someone at the next place we stopped.

Unfortunately, the "next place" was a convenience store specializing in touristy Native American gewgaws (nesting dolls, rugs, t-shirts that read "Fighting Terrorism Since 1876," and shot glasses with pictures of bison on them). No one there seemed particularly interested in answering the stupid questions of a couple of gringos from the Midwest unless the stupid question had something to do with the quality of hand-woven rugs.

The best we could hope for was to sneak across the border into California without being pulled over by any mesa-obsessed sheriffs and, once in Golden State, avoid becoming contestants on "Jeopardy."