The Flat Hills of Eastern Washington

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Photo #463: Flat HillsLocation Taken: Eastern Washington
Time Taken: June 2010

It’s amazing how land this rugged and hilly can still look, well, flat. Or at least it did to me, on first glance.

I suspect it’s because the line where land meets sky is actually pretty straight. No matter how clear the hills are in the picture, if they form a rectangle on the image, I’m going to think flat.

Although, given this terrain and how it formed, it’s not too odd of a leap.

This section of rock used to be quite flat. About, oh, 10-15 million years ago, this land was flooded with lava. I mean that quite literally, some not-fully understood mechanism (but most likely related to the Yellowstone volcano), large amounts of lava flowed across this region in successive bursts, eventually covering the area with a succession of layers of basalt, some a full kilometer thick. It’s eroded down now, but the lava flowed smooth and fast enough to leave a flat surface across the land.

And this was not a small feature, either. The Columbia River Basalt Group covers some 63,000 square miles of land in eastern Washington and Oregon. That’s not too much smaller than the entirety of Ireland.

These features ARE called Large Igneous Provinces for a reason, after all. And yes, there’s more than just this one. And as size goes, this one’s quite small. The largest one found, the Central Atlantic magmatic province, was formed by Pangaea splitting apart to form the Atlantic ocean, and is, oh, about 68 times the size of the one in this photo, covering an area half the size of the USA.

At least they’re quite rare. The Columbia River one is the newest one, after all. It’s a large part of why we’re not sure how they form, since our species has never even come close to one. Which is just as well, really. These mega-eruptions have a slight tendency to potentially cause major extinction events, after all. The Central Atlantic magmatic province, for instance, seems to have maybe just wiped out 50% of the species at the end of the Triassic era. Which did pave the way for dinosaurs to take over for a while, at least, to the joy of many a kid.

  

Is it related to the violet? I don’t have a clue!

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Photo #462: WildflowerLocation Taken: Cypress Hills, Saskatchewan
Time Taken: June 2010

I’m pretty sure my favorite flower is “Whatever wildflower I just found growing somewhere”.

Ok, either that or gypsum flowers, but then, I’m weird.

There’s just something extra awesome about finding a flower. When you’re in a garden of any ilk, flowers are, well, expected. They may be the most gorgeous flower you’ve ever seen, but there was very little surprise and discovery involved in finding it, unlike a wildflower.

Wildflowers also tend to be a bit smaller, which triggers my feminine “awww, how cute!” mentalities. Perhaps that’s why I go so gaga over alpine meadow flowers, which are the smallest of them all. They have a harder life, so they can’t grow as strong, but somehow the sheer joy in life from just trying your hardest shows through.

And I really like the thrill of spotting something a bit hidden. Wildflowers are in an odd spot for that, being both hidden and flamboyantly obvious at the same time. The colors of the flowers make them stand out, but they’re surrounded by grasses and leaves and all the natural detritus you can imagine.

Of course, the thing I most like about wildflowers is how well they match their environment. Because these plants came from local seeds, and because they chose their own spot to grow, there’s just something right about them in relation to the environment. Gardens tend to just place flowers in aesthetically pleasing and visible spots, which while beautiful in its own right, means the plants are just, well, sitting there. They haven’t found a small spot sheltered from the wind enough for their seed to settle down, with enough water to bring it to life, with similar plants scattered nearby. Wildflowers fill a niche in the environment (and I mean that both ways), and somehow come out more perfect for it.

And the last thing I like about wildflowers is that not only do I not have a clue what type of flower it is (which is normal for me and flowers), I don’t really feel compelled to find out. It just is what it is, where it is.

  

*Insert Philosophical Musings Here*

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Photo #461: Cloudy PeaksLocation Taken: Just East of Banff, Alberta
Time Taken: June 2010

There’s a thunderstorm rolling through, we’ve already had one short power outage, and I don’t know if any others will come to wipe out this post.

So, um, stare at this photo for a good long time and tell me how it makes you feel about your place in the universe or something.

  

A Land on the Edge, the Faded Vague Edge

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Photo #460: Fading TreesLocation Taken: Chase, British Columbia
Time Taken: June 2010

It’s surprisingly difficult to pinpoint the spot where the trees fade away. There’s a bunch of them, at various points where the climate transitions from just wet enough for trees to just dry enough to not be able to support them well.

In most cases I’ve encountered, human activity obscures the line. The transition from the great forests of the eastern US to the plains of the middle of the continent are a great example. The line keeps getting pushed further and further east by large fields of crops, and it takes a while to realize there just aren’t that many trees in the margins anymore.

In the mountains, it’s a bit more obvious. There’s this effect called rain shadow that causes moisture to pile up on the windward side of a mountain and never make it across to the other side. There are plenty of places where you climb a mountain range and go from very tall trees on one side to dry scrub on the other. Snoqualmie Pass on I-90 heading east out of Seattle is a great example of just that.

Even then, though, there’s a transition section that obscures the line. The top of the pass is solidly an alpine climate, with trees that are short due to cool temperatures rather than moisture. This manages to create a gradual shift to both of the disparate climates on each side.

And then there’s cases like this, where you’re entering a rain shadow from the other direction. The land is mountainous enough that human activity hasn’t obscured everything. And there isn’t a special climate getting in between to obscure things.

Instead, the trees just start fading out. It starts on the steepest slopes, places where water runs past the quickest. Large meadows open up, the grass still vibrantly green. There’s enough moisture there for all but the largest plants, after all. And as you head deeper into the rain shadow, trees become limited to just the ridges and valleys, and then just to the banks of streams. The plants transition to the deep green grasses to the browner ones of desert climates. It does not take too long for the world around your car to look quite different than it was just a little further east.

And yet, even as clear as this particular case is, I doubt you spotted the fact that this mountain is heavily forested on the right side of the photo and lightly forested on the left until I pointed it out. There’s too many other distractions for the eye, the town spread out below the road, the dynamic clouds above it, the power lines cutting across the image. And well, you can’t deny that it’s a very natural transition, in all the meanings of that word.

  

What is this green thing and what is it doing in my ocean?

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Photo #459: Octopus LeekTime Drawn: June 2013 (Today!)
Medium: Digital

As I was falling asleep at, oh, 9 am this morning, my brain was wandering in its usual strange paths, and I was struck with the urge to draw an octopus.

But it could be JUST an octopus, no! That would just not do!

So I started running through the possibilities as I feel asleep. Teddy bear? Nah, I’d have to either draw it soaking wet or inaccurate to the setting and neither appealed. Toy truck? Cute, but trucks are really complex, even toy ones. A scuba diver doll? Hmm… Maybe…

And then I woke up at 9:30 pm. For the first half hour I dithered, trying to figure out if there was enough time to draw my octopus before I needed to post it.

And that’s when I decided to just take the crazy Japanese tactic and draw it with a leek.

Makes perfect sense.

So, with two hours before the deadline, I opened up MyPaint and started sketching. And coloring. And tossing in a quick background. I was done in 45 minutes.

Though “done” is relative. The lines are very sketchy and not really as clear as I like in some places, and I only used at most two colors for shading. At least the brush I prefer using lets me vary the tint of the color to produce a lot more variation than normal. I also had to tweak the heck out of the colors after I was finished to get them close to where I actually wanted them, rather than being careful with my color choices from the get-go.  And the octopus only has seven arms showing now that I count them, rather than the eight I thought I’d drawn.  Ah well, the last one is hiding behind the head, obviously.  Obviously.

But still. Octopus. Leek. All is right with the world. Or at least the leek-bearing octopi part of it.