A Rock Amongst Rocks. Many, Many Rocks.

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Location Taken: Agewa Bay, Ontario, Canada
Time Taken: June 2010

I’ve been to a variety of beaches over my life. Most are the standard sandy beaches, since that’s what’s most common. Besides, sandy beaches are great for swimming and sunbathing and whatever the heck people do on beaches. I wouldn’t know, I’m a swimming-only type, not to mention that I’m allergic to sunlight.

Which might be part of why I actually prefer rocky beaches.

You don’t really get swimmers at such places, and certainly not sunbathers. But they’re beautiful, and frequently full of interesting rocks that I could spend days looking at.

I know, I know, most people don’t care about rocks anywhere near as much as I do. But still, if you’ve got sturdy swim shoes, there’s nothing stopping you from swimming from any beach, rocky or not. And the geologic conditions that lead to rocky beaches tend to make for excellent swimming.

There’s not that much pounding of waves, after all. Otherwise, the rocks would have broken down into sand long ago. And there can’t be that much of a current, else they would have been covered by sand brought in from elsewhere.

Admittedly, this particular beach is probably not the best for swimming. Not unless you packed an insulated wetsuit, at least. It’s on Lake Superior, the northernmost of the Great Lakes. It’s a rather chilly lake even in summer.

Admittedly, I might want to try it, I actually like swimming in chillier waters. It’s great after that initial shock! And the increased energy drain from keeping warm both burns calories and makes you feel more alive! Try it some time!

  

A Simple Harebell, at least at first glance.

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Location Taken: Gros Morne National Park, Newfoundland
Time Taken: July 2012

I think this lovely flower is a harebell, aka a Scottish bluebell. Or at least the flower itself looks exactly like a harebell flower. The leaves and the white fluff don’t really match the pictures I’ve seen. For one thing, all the pictures show a much darker green foliage.

Admittedly, there’s plenty of reasons for this flower to be abnormal.

For one thing, it’s very windy where this flower was growing. One thing you can’t see in this photo was the three people trying their best to block the wind enough for the flower to stay still enough for a photograph. That amount of wind can easily change the dynamics of a plant.

For another, and one you can see, it’s a very rocky environment. There’s not much holding onto the plant, and even less holding onto the water. It’s possible this is actually two plants that just happen to grow in the exact same spot because they both act as windblocks for each other and that there’s easier access to water here. They do look like the same plant in the pictures I have, but then, harebells have very skinny leaves that could easily blend in.

And, for the last reason, the rocks themselves are abnormal. This is right next to an outcropping of mantle rock (I’ve mentioned it before). This rock is full of peridotite, which is full of nickel, which is awful for plant growth. And while this is not on the mantle outcropping itself, it is quite thoroughly in the place where all the rocks falling off the side end up. So all the plants making a living here have a rough time, but at least there is enough other material for them to grow on without getting a fatal dose of nickel poisoning before they have a chance to flower.

Heck, it’s even possible that this is a specialized version of the species, evolved to handle the extra nickel so it can take advantage of the edge land few other plants can handle. That happens a lot in places like this, where there’s an unusual geologic condition. Even something as simple as an island being a little too far from the mainland can create truly alien species.

All in all, those flowers really do look like harebell, so I shall continue to consider it a harebell.

  

Asian Garden in Idaho

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Location Taken: Idaho Falls, Idaho
Time Taken: June 2010

There’s a lovely garden in Idaho Falls, Idaho. It’s located right next to the falls, so it’s fairly easy to find. And since it’s by the falls, one section of it is full of lovely small waterfalls split off from the main one, dancing through the rocks exposed by the water.

It’s also got some lovely Asian-style statuary scattered through that part of the park. I suppose thematically it makes sense; Asian gardens frequently have more water and rock decoration than most western gardens do. Still, at first thought, “Asian” and “Idaho” just don’t go together. I mean, just think about it. A land known for potatoes, that most prosaic of American foods, and the land considered the most exotic to most Americans. Well, at least to the Americans in my area, the East Coast. I saw enough teriyaki places and sushi stores in Seattle that Asian might be normal to people there.

But as a sign explained, it’s because Idaho Falls is a Sister City to a city in Japan. The town of Tōkai, along the south-eastern coastline of the main island.

Sister cities are relationships set up between two cities in very different cultures to form an increased knowledge of the other culture in each place. Events will be held, mutual tourism is encouraged, that sort of thing. Sometimes there’s little connection between the two cities, but more often they’ll have something in common.

I mean, the first American sister city was Toledo, Ohio, sistered with Toledo, Spain. There’s also Boring and Dull sister cities. Make that Boring, Oregon, and Dull, Scotland.

At first glance, there’s no obvious reason Idaho Falls and Tōkai are sistered, until you delve into the history of both towns. Both have nuclear research facilities nearby, and both have had nuclear accidents in the past. Idaho Falls’ accident was in 1961, and was the only fatal nuclear reactor accident in the US, with three deaths. Tōkai had its accident in 1999, and two of the three affected technicians died within a year. Mind you, the accidents were quite different (explosion due to improperly removed control rod versus a blue flash event caused by adding too much uranium to a chemical mix involved in reprocessing used nuclear material), but still, there’s certainly enough similarities there.

Certainly enough to make these two towns become sister cities, which leads to this rather pretty garden working oh so well.

  

Nice Ice! Oh, and some snow, and there are some rocks poking through…

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Location Taken: Along the Trans-Canada Highway, Eastern British Columbia
Time Taken: June 2010

There’s a stretch of the Canadian section of the Rocky Mountains that’s high enough to have a permanent ice sheet of noticeable size.

This isn’t part of it.  But it’s in the same general area and altitude.

Creating ice sheets (which are basically really large glaciers) is pretty simple.  Just have more snow fall in an area than melts during the year.  The pressure of the snow itself will do the rest of the job.

Where ice sheets differ from glaciers is that ice sheets tend to spill out of their enclosures in multiple directions.  The pressure is enough to keep the ice moving downhill, forming rivers of ice (glaciers).  A large number of the world’s major glaciers start as part of an ice sheet.

This mountain definitely has glaciers on it.  It might even come close to an ice sheet if the ice extends far back enough.  But most likely it’s just some nice glaciers.

  

Stare into the Ring that Stares into You

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Time Made: December 2006

I don’t recall which fractal graphics program I was using when I made this. There was a period where I was testing a whole lot of free art programs (aka the poor art major in college period) and I didn’t keep track of such things.

This was one of those that had random permutations available from a random starting point that you could click through until you liked what you saw. So I started clicking, aiming for simple shapes, and ended up with this.

…Am I the only one who actually finds this a little creepy? I think it’s the combination of the distortions within the shape, which are a bit hallucinatory, with the one strand of the aurora-like shapes that bleeds out into the center of the circle. And I said bleed quite deliberately.

Not that I’ve ever really been in a hallucinatory state. I’m just not the type to go out of my way just to change my mental state. It’s weird enough already. I haven’t even been sick enough to get to the mind-altering states. Closest I’ve come is occasional spurts of vertigo and times when I’ve had far too little sleep and food. Neither of which change colors for me, just shift my perception of how fast the world around me is going. The vertigo’s the fun one, since the world keeps moving even when I stop…