In the Battle between Water and Earth, Water will Win, in Time…

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Photo #593: Tenacious WaterfallLocation Taken: Oregon
Time Taken: June 2010

It’s rare for me to not be able to place a photo even years after I took it. Even if I don’t recall it just using my amazing map memory powers, I can usually figure it out based on the photos around it. This one, though, is between an on-the-road photo and the first of my Multnomah Falls photos. Based on the fact that there’s a river/lake, there’s a good chance this is near Multnomah Falls, or at least somewhere along the Columbia River gorge. It’s too narrow to be the Columbia itself, but there were some small lakes along that road on the other side from the river.

The rocks look right for that region, if nothing else.

That’s solidly the hard igneous rocks that make up the mountain ridge the Columbia River cuts through near Mt. Hood. You see that section of extra-rough rock right where the waterfall starts falling down the cliff? If you look closely you’ll see that it’s a bunch of vertical columns, though many of then have partway fallen off the rock face.

Those are basalt columns, just like the ones you find at Giant’s Causeway in Ireland. That’s one of the few rocks that will break apart into these regular hexagonal columns if it cools at the right rate and whatnot. And really, for a geologically minded artist like me, these things are awesome to spot. Just the contrast between the vertical stripes of the columns and the flat faces of the rest of the rock is fascinating.

And just look at that marvelous V-shaped valley this small waterfall has carved! This stream’s been working on this rock face for quite a long time, chiseling further and further downwards with every drop of water!

And of course the lovely sheer cliff faces, can’t forget about them! If this is the Columbia Gorge, they were carved by a series of massive floods of water as the glaciers moved and formed gigantic temporary lakes and then released them, again and again. It’s always so fascinating to think about, flooding on an epic scale that not even the movies really manage! Ah, the joys of geology!

  

Early Morning Light is Beautiful – and a great reminder to go to bed!

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Photo #592: Early LightLocation Taken: Agawa Bay, Ontario
Time Taken: June 2010

Darn it, I think I’m allergic to this gum I picked up. I’ve got an allergen headache going quite nicely, and everything else I ate today was stuff I’ve had lots of times before…

At least my allergies are all of the headache type. That’s a lot easier to deal with than the hives or nausea or trouble breathing that others get. It’s solidly in the non-fatal camp, for one thing. Well, aside from the “wish I was dead” migraines, but hey, I’ve only gotten that once!

Most of my allergies are food based, and well, the best way for me to tell I’m allergic is for the headache to start up about one to two hours after I had whatever it was. The headache’s always in the same spot, a diffuse tension-style headache right below the hairline. This lets me tell it apart from other causes, at least. The ear infection headaches tend to be a deep throbbing straight in from the ear. And the muscle tension headaches tend to spread out from where the neck muscles attach at the back of the skull.

…I know far too much about headaches. I really do…

At least I don’t get nausea, and only rarely get sound sensitivity (usually with the ear infections, for obvious reasons). But I do get a touch of light sensitivity, so I’m keeping the lights down right now. Which, mind you, was really easy to do, since I almost never even turn them on. But still, dim lights and dim photos are very pleasant right now.

  

Just imagine this brushing, ever so gently, against the back of your ankle…

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Photo #591: Creepy Pussy WillowLocation Taken: Lake Louise, Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada
Time Taken: June 2010

I think the colors in this piece are really right for the season.

Well, depending on which season you think it is. I was thinking Halloween time, myself. This has the dusty whites and blood reds and other muted colors that remind me of the best creepy stuff I’ve seen. There’s even a delicate strand of spider silk barely visible.

Now, if you believe my local grocery store, well, I’m still in seasonal colors here. The white and red and green are prime Christmas colors, don’t you think?

Thanksgiving? What’s Thanksgiving?

…Seriously, my grocery store has had Christmas candy out since a week before Halloween. And on Halloween day itself, when I went to buy a small amount of candy for the handful of trick-or-treaters we get, well, I nearly had to buy said Christmas candy. They’d sold out of all the fancy Halloween candy mix packs that have been cluttering the place since August and were most of the way through restocking the place with wrapping paper and tinsel and all sorts of stuff in red, green, and white.

Can’t we at least wait for one major candy-centric holiday to actually happen before we start stocking for the next?

…Though admittedly, I am quite fond of some of the peppermint bark candy you only find during the Christmas season and may have contributed to the Christmas creep problem by buying some of that before Halloween…

  

Sweet Little Luna Moth

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Photo #590: Luna MothLocation Taken: Moose Brook State Park, New Hampshire
Time Taken: July 2012

For some reason, I’m always extra excited to see a luna moth. They’re somehow extra special to me, beyond just the joy of recognizing a wild species.

I blame video games.

No, really, it’s probably the video games. I’ve played a few that had some sort of bug collecting subquest, and they pretty much always had a luna moth. And it was pretty much always one of the extra rare bugs, or tough to catch, or something.

I suspect it’s due to the combination of cool name and unusual appearance that makes them a favorite of video game designers. That and it’s one they can make only show up at night with no one complaining one bit, so they can add a time-based element to the collecting minigame. It’s always irritating to spot a luna moth in the distance only to have the sun rise before you actually reach it in the game. They always vanish as soon as it swaps to day, even if you’re ten inches away from them and about to pounce.

So I guess seeing this one out in the daylight helps balance out all those lost bugs of my past. Or something.

  

PEI: Canada’s Tiny Breadbasket. Well, Potatobasket.

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Photo #589: PEI FarmLocation Taken: Prince Edward Island, Canada
Time Taken: July 2012

Do you know how tough it is to get a good picture of flat farmland? Especially from a car as you drive past?

This is the only photo I even attempted of capturing what the majority of Prince Edward Island looks like.

It’s an odd province to drive through. There are very few major roads, and even the numbered ones tend to just be your standard two-lane blacktop. In fact, the only places with more than just one lane going each way that I recall were all in the capital city. And Charlottetown barely counts as a city to the eyes of one who’s been through New York City. The place only has one other designated city, and that’s only got 14,500 people or so. All of the rest of the towns in this place have less than 10k, and there’s only eight of them.

The island is around the size of Delaware, in case you were wondering. And it has less than a sixth of the population of that august body of land. However, it’s also far more domesticated than Delaware, which has most of its population concentrated in the northern cities. PEI, on the other hand, is full of farms. Every single corner of the place is farms farms and more farms, thanks to the excellent iron-rich soil of the place.

Which, perhaps, is why the roads are so small. It’s an island with only one bridge to it (and a ferry or two), and well, there’s nowhere to go except Charlottetown and farms. Well, and the National Park on the north coast, which wins my award for “most human-influenced park I’ve been in”. So the roads just kinda wander around acting as access roads for farms, more concerned with covering as much territory as possible than with actually going anywhere.

So if you do visit Prince Edward Island, which I do recommend, if only to eat their excellent potatoes and ice cream, bring a good GPS or map. You will be making a lot of turns just in trying to get from one place to another, and the only landmarks will be farms, farms, and more farms.