The Red Rocks of the Dry Deserts and Plains

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Photo #721: Red RockLocation Taken: Thermopolis, Wyoming
Time Taken: November 2012

I’ve been so many places, seen so many things, and it still boggles my mind when I come across a deeply-colored rock.

Admittedly, that may be partially due to some sort of bias for rocks. I’m not sure, but I think I have one. Maybe.

I’ve spent most of my years in the Eastern US. This land is full of lots of trees and plants and people and not so many rocks. There’s just too much dirt and life in the way to see them. The only ones you run across tend to be the hardest rocks, which, due to reasons, tend to be solidly in the grey range.

Now, a fine red rock like this? You just don’t see those in the wet East Coast. The red color comes from rusting iron, which has a tendency to make the rock a bit more brittle. You can see how it looks like it’s shedding red dust.

Rain is really great at dissolving away rocks. The water itself is slightly acidic, and then there’s the sheet mechanical force created by water following gravity to the low spots. Put a brittle rock like this in a rain storm and it’ll come out smaller.

This also creates a lot of fine, wet, rock dust. Just the stuff plants love growing in and converting to dirt. Not only would this rock be shrinking from the rain if it got transported to the East Coast, the plants would be quickly colonizing the heck out of it.

Which, amusingly enough, would actually stop it from shrinking as much, since all those plants divert away the water. Doesn’t help one bit for letting me see the rocks, though.

  

There’s a lot to be said for having a local waterfall…

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Photo #720: Waterfall RocksLocation Taken: Savage, Maryland
Time Taken: August 2010

The local waterfall isn’t the most spectacular. It’s less falling water and more a jumble of rocks getting in the way.

It still fascinates me, despite its ordinariness. And I’m not the only one.

This stretch of river has always been marked as not for swimming. Which, of course, reads “swim at your own risk” to the locals. There was a story floating around of how someone had dove off one of the occasional high rocks by the waterfall into water that wasn’t quite deep enough, which explained the “no swimming” thing.

So we just didn’t go jumping off the high rocks.

Mind you, I never swam at the waterfall itself. There’s a section a bit further upstream that’s calmer and safer where my group of fellow kids went. We never had any problems of any form, and took great delight splashing around.

But in the height of summer, you will find people swimming and fishing all over the place, with the occasional brave soul or two daring the treacheries of the waterfall.

I haven’t heard any new stories floating around. Perhaps the “no swimming” thing does help keep down the problems. Or maybe it’s just that no one tells anyone when issues pop up.

Really, I don’t care too much. I stopped swimming in the river a long time ago, long before I paid enough attention to the world around me to notice the “no swimming” sign at the entrance to the park the falls are in.

These days, on the rare occasions I visit, I might perhaps dip a finger or two in, feel the water brush past me.

Oh, and look at the rocks. I like the rocks.

  

Shallowness is Not Always a Bad Thing

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Photo #718: Shallow RootsLocation Taken: Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming
Time Taken: October 2012

A few days ago, I mentioned that pine trees tend to have shallow roots.

Well, here’s an example.

Now, it might just be a quirk of the particular spot this tree grew on, but that root system would have barely scratched the surface of the planet. And yet, judging from the thickness of the trunk, it grew quite well.

There are some disadvantages to being able to root yourself in shallow and otherwise difficult spots, and they’re actually nicely illustrated here.

For one thing, shallow roots means you’re far more prone to tip over. If you’ve seen deeper-rooted trees that managed to tip over, you may recall just how much dirt they dragged with them. But there’s not even a pile at the bottom of these roots. There just wasn’t anything holding this tree in place once things got tough.

And speaking of tough, the reason this tree died was a forest fire that passed through several decades before I took this photo. You may notice the large number of dead pine trees in the area, and a nice grove of shorter, younger trees around them.

Deeper-rooted trees can ride out forest fires in a properly managed area. The deep roots don’t even notice the heat, so the tree rarely fully dies from even the worst fire (though it does severely damage them, which does mean a lot will die shortly after), and hardwood trees especially have a lot of anti-fire systems built in to their bark.

Shallow-rooted trees, however, have their whole system baked. Rather than give up the advantages of shallow roots, they tend to go for long lasting seeds that ride through fire just fine. Hence, the odd shape of the pinecone. There’s even a few pine species that require fire to open up the hard shell of their cones. What this means, though, is that while the parent trees die off, their children survive and even thrive. There’s little competition for sunlight, and the fast-growing pines with their fire-happy seeds can quickly claim all the burned off land, forming a new forest on the bones of the last.

  

The Thin Dark Line

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Photo #717: Horizon IslandLocation Taken: Caseville, Michigan
Time Taken: December 2009

At the edge of the horizon, there is an island.

I don’t know its name, or how large it is, or what it’s like there. But it lurks, a black line above the water.

In the winter, the ice on the lake looks like it stretches all the way. Perhaps people, in the distant past, set off across the treacherous surface to see if they could reach it. Or perhaps they visited by boat or canoe in the summer and knew just how far that walk would be.

The shipping lines tend to run right on the horizon. If you’re on one of the large dunes dotting the Great Lakes coastline, you can sometimes see ships right at the edge of forever, that vanish as you descend. The great boats of the lakes require deep water, and deep water does not freeze easily.

This, however, is not an area of deep water. This is a large bay, and the rules are different. Perhaps, sometimes, when the air is bitter cold for weeks on end, you can walk across. And find what is to be found in that dark line.