New Mexico is called the Land of Enchantment for a reason: its landscape takes stunning new forms at every turn, from rocky mountain peaks to deep-cut gorges, flat-topped mesas to rolling sand dunes. Then there are the hoodoos, geological features so seemingly magical that elsewhere they’re known as goblins or fairy chimneys.

Hoodoos are naturally-occurring stone spires that dot dry basins like enormous mushrooms. Unlike fruiting fungi, though, they didn’t sprout upward from the ground—rather, they held their own while the rock around them was weathered away by millennia of water and wind. Worn-down expanses of rock are one things, but how were these free-standing hoodoos left behind?