Desolation Wilderness V - Geology Rocks!

This is a few-months' jump back in time now, a continuation in posts from the July 4 Desolation Wilderness trip. I had begun to write this note, and saved the draft, before I left for Europe in late July; but life has been whirling since then. I intend to get around to publish something about the trip, but for now some images are publicly shared, with captions, on my Picasa page, and that's it.

The split boulder below is just cool, plain and simple. I wonder whether the angle of these cracks would tell us something about the molecular structure of granite. They certainly tell us a few things about water. At least I think so -- I assume this boulder cracked as a result of freeze/thaw expansion/contraction of water in its fissures. 

Then again, maybe it just fell from above and shattered in place. That would have been a sight to behold.

Interestingly broken boulder, Desolation Wilderness, 2012.

Below is a shot of the reflection of some glacial polish on a slab of granite on the south shore of Middle Velma Lake. Imagine: a slab of ice atop this surface, thick enough to weigh down the sediment between the two, enough to grind it smooth as it slid, ever so slowly.

Growing up in Wisconsin, I was schooled about glaciation and its visible relics on the earth's surface today. We skied and hiked through them: drumlins, eskers, kettles, kames, and moraines are abundant there. But it wasn't until studying physical geography and geomorphology in Colorado that I learned of glacial polish. It's all deeply fascinating and awe-inspiring, especially once you set foot on a landscape where these relics exist.

Glacial polish on granite, Middle Velma Lake, Desolation Wilderness, 2012.

Falling Forward

I love the concept of walking as falling forward. I was first turned on to the concept by Milwaukee musician Willy Porter, who released an album with that title in '99.  Think about it. Stand up straight. let yourself lean forward until you are losing your balance, falling. Your reaction: a foot steps forward, breaking the fall. Move your other foot next to the first one. Repeat. You are walking.

I am a bit of a non-walking stickler. Unless I'm hiking on a trail with plants and birds to entertain me, I generally can't stand it. I use a bike to get almost everywhere in the city, and when I can't, I use a bus. If it's more than a few blocks and no bus is going my way, I will jog in whatever non-jogging clothes and shoes I'm wearing, just to get to Point B a little sooner. (This is ridiculous.)

But sometimes, when my patience is strong, I do walk, and when I do, I tend to notice stuff. And that's a good thing. It's much safer for an observant fellow to walk rather than bike. The risk of being involved in a damage-inflicting collision while blindly walking is not too great.

I recently read an inspiring post on Outside magazine's blog about a recent art-inspired environmental movement in China.  It seemed like an effective way to convey to the masses the simple beauty of walking, and the actual environmental benefit of walking. Hopefully people take that message home and change their decision process before doing something less "green" than walking.

Pedestrian-inspired tile art, NYC Subway, 2011.

Gull Footprints on the Baltic, Svetlogorsk, August 2012.

Desolation Wilderness IV - flora/ponderosa pine

My favorite conifer in the US, so far the world, is the ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa). They can become huge, living 300-600 years. They grow in elevations that I tend to enjoy most -- since I first learned of them in Colorado, I always thought of their home range as around 7,000 feet. But sources say it grows from sea level to about 9,000 feet.

Above all else, they invite a passerby to sniff them. When one pokes his nose into a furrow of the bark, he is rewarded with the smell of butterscotch (some say vanilla). 

Unable to capture the smell on film, this time, I bring you a photo of the photogenic female cone of the ponderosa. These lined the path in places of Desolation. It's hard to imagine there's a function of the 2-tone color of the inside of the scales on these cones. I wonder if that is just an effect from the materials used for that part of the cone. Or is it a pattern designed to have a certain effect on wildlife? Although I'm not sure, I believe they are wind pollinated -- in other words, they don't rely on birds or insects to move their pollen from male to female tree. So that would exclude any reason for the cone scales to attract the attention of a pollinator.

Ponderosa Cone, Desolation Wilderness, 2012.

Desolation Wilderness III - flora

Wildflowers boomed in early July in Desolation Wilderness this year. I don't know whether this is typical for the area, but figure it probably is. High elevations yield snows into early June, and summer is brief, so it's game on once days lengthen. At just a few weeks past the solstice, the sun is hot, pollinators abound, and every new step yields a new flower.

Unfortunately, I didn't have the ability to look up this plant before leaving, and didn't bring any flower identification tools with me to Europe. And I am typing painfully slowly! So - I think the plant pictured below is a penstemon. This showy flower decorates the rocky hillsides and was very abundant. This one, situated next to an ancient down log, seemed to point both in the direction of the log's spiraling grain and the path we walked upon.

Penstemon and down log, Desolation Wilderness, 2012.

And more ancient wood, this snag still of use to woodpeckers before it topples. I think these holes are the work of pileateds, although I am not sure if they hang out at high elevation. There were definitely hairy woodpeckers around, which also could have been responsible.


Woodpecker work, Desolation Wilderness, 2012.