Snow-fog obliterated my view of Crater Lake itself (and much of the surrounding terrain) but I simply had to try — the park’s terrain and history are so fascinating! Imagine a great volcanic mountain building and spewing and erupting —- until it empties itself of magma, and becomes hollow. The great subsidence that followed propelled the “mountain” deep into the earth! The collapsed crater now holds the lake, like ice-water in a stone bowl held up for the sky to sip. I was disappointed by the weather but —- I think it was Confucius who said “Wherever you go, go with all your heart.”
View from the rim (which had been plowed open only for a short distance, to Discovery Point):
After a long (unpredictable! windy! beautiful!) road trip from Upper Michigan, I arrived at the Andrews Experimental Forest in the Willamette National Forest late Friday afternoon —- just in time to check in, and catch part of a talk by researcher Fred Swanson, who was addressing an inaugural gathering of geomorphologists, who are calling themselves the Bretz Club, in honor of J. Harlen Bretz.
Fred Swanson gave me a whirlwind tour of the Andrews admin building, and we walked out to a “gravel bar” site in Lookout Creek, where geologist Gordon Grant was speaking to the assembled geomorphologists. From there, we drove out into the forest a bit, so he could show me a log decomposition study site, one of the “Reflection Sites” that the writers are asked to respond to. Since I’m new to this pacific-northwest-cool-wet-old-growth-rainforest environment, every detail of the forest scene is new, and staggering. I’m sure I’m missing 90% of it, looking everywhere at once, unfocused.
Evidence of experiments (flagged markers, white plastic buckets and funnels) are scattered like a bit of seaside flotsam, hardly noticeable amid the grand old trees. A few plastic buckets jut out of downed logs in various stages of decomposition, everything lichenous and moss-cushioned from ground to canopy.
I was given a topo map of Andrews, and marked directions to several other study sites including a clear-cut plot and the “Blue River face timber sale” (which is another reflection site). My plan for today (Sunday) will be to explore the Andrews further.
Yesterday (Saturday) was my “establishing context” day: a crash course in the surrounding GEOMORPHOLOGY.
After a serene night sleeping under great trees, with the sound of Lookout Creek sluicing over rocks below, I joined the Bretz Club gathering on their all-day Field Trip to see various hydrological, geological and vulcanological sites in the surrounding McKenzie River system, just above/outside the Andrews system. We hiked in to a secretive “lost” spring (large, cold, pristine) nicknamed “hobbit-land” and then up to the Collier Cone lava flow, hiking onto it and beyond, to see dry stream channels (complete with stream-rounded cobbles amid the broken landscape of the larger flow) and the absolutely stellar “Proxy Falls” — a waterfall which cascades down from a high ridge drainage area, forms a large clear pool, and disappears! It is like an inverted spring, flowing down *into* the ground, where it escapes under the lava flow.
During our hike we frequently stopped to hear the fluvial geology comments of Gorden Grant, as well as current research findings (with lots of fascinating and as-yet-unanswered questions!) about the lava flows by researchers Natalia Deligne and Sarah Lewis and comments from world-renowned vulcanologist and professor Kathy Cashman. Often the group hiked with (or started by consulting) large LIDAR images, which are revolutionizing landscape research/scientific mapping, or we passed around small xeroxed copies showing the locations of numerous lava flows of various ages. Some flows are hidden by moss and old growth forest, while other flows are young and easily visible, lying black and broken atop the terrain… new research is showing, among other things, there are far more flows of distinct ages/events than previously understood.
We stopped at Olallie Creek (high Cascades spring-fed stream) for lunch, then on to see the Carmen Reservoir (and dry channel) of the upper McKenzie River, much of which is siphoned off through a surreal tunnel in the mountain, bypassing the water to an entirely different canyon, allowing Oregon Power to harvest hydrological power from the river, before it rejoins the original McKenzie downstream.
We hiked along the upper McKenzie as it roars in full whitewater form over logs and through rock gorges and over several drop-dead waterfalls, where the geologists debated erosion theories while the poet sketched and eavesdropped. As a sign at the NFS trailhead put it: “Centuries of visitors have stood in awe of this place. You can almost see their spirits lingering still.”
Finally, we visited Clear Lake where we commandeered a fleet of rental row boats and observed downed (and still-standing) trees along the bottom of the lake. The water is tropically blue-cerulean, ice-cold, and crystal clear. The lake bottom is marbled white with diatomaceous material, reminding me of snorkeling over the white coral reef floor along Cozumel (minus the tropical-fruit colored fish). We put ashore on the far side, and hiked around to see the “Great Spring” which is the source, or headwater, of the McKenzie. Crystalline, teal-sky-blue, the water pours forth with such force that we could not row into the spring’s inlet, which enters the adjacent lake like a whitewater stream. The Great Spring is surrounded with huge trees (including a great Douglas Fir that has fallen down into it on one side, and older bleached trunks visble, deeper down). As with the other hydrological sites we visited, there was a great rubbly lava flow just uphill from the Great Spring.
Repeatedly, the inter-connection was made between the lava flows and the activity of groundwater, and the interplay between river-courses and obstacles such as the lava flows. It was fascinating to hear researchers discussing the underlying seismic activity of the area, including past eruptions and inevitable future volcanic events. How do we plan for catastrophes? How will these groundwater systems be affected by large change (volcanic) or subtle changes (climate shifts could affect groundwater volumes, seasonal precipitation, etc.) The McKenzie provides a key drinking water source for cities like Portland Eugene… begging such questions as how will flooding or ashfalls or earthquakes continue to change this critical high Cascades landscape of complex systems? And how to respond, poetically…
“Ideas without precedent are generally looked upon with disfavor and men are shocked if their conceptions of an orderly world are challenged.”
If you’re a plant in the Badlands, the first thing you need to do each spring is tunnel up through new sediments! (this stuff can be about as soft as poured cement when it hardens). But as it dries, the claypan cracks, and the spring perennials are forcing up through these gaps. Pretty incredible to witness. The green spears must be in the Allium family, because I pinched a bit and they taste/smell like chives. I believe the other plant, developing yellow/ruddy buds, is a “fetid marigold.” Doesn’t stink yet!
The trees are budding out, and the lawns appear 80% green today (without squinting or using a magnifying glass). Further afield, the sod tables still appear to be a dozen hues of winter-beige, but this is only because they are covered with long dry grasses that conceal all the subtle greening happening below.
It will be hard to leave this heady dose of spring and return to Upper Michigan (although it has been warm there, too, and the ice melted early): along the shoreline of Lake Superior, our lilacs won’t be blossoming until mid June. Until Friday, at least, I’m loving the sight of buds…..
The sun illuminates the sediment layers, the wind and water carve them into sensual formations. I let the wind and sun (70s today!) and a stream of visitors grit-scour all dark thoughts of “The Day After” from my mind. The landscape sweeps out our cobwebs.
As the late Stewart Udall once wrote:
“By a fascinating irony, what we have called in the past the “badlands” turn out to be good lands, and very good lands indeed. I like to tell the story that is related by one of the Utah historians whose grandparents came across some of the desolate southern Utah country with which Powell was so familiar. In those days water was so scarce and the weather so harsh that the people referred to this arid country as “the land God forgot.” This historian writes that now, 100 years later, we see that it was indeed the land “God saved for Himself.”
The sense of scale at Big Badlands Overlook is pretty stunning, both in the long view down into the White River valley and lower grasslands, and in the sheer drop of the eroding wall itself, prairie to thousand-foot tumble in just a few steps. This photo shows just a tiny bit of the scene, like a sliver of apple, as one is looking back from the jutting overlook platform. But I love the reference-point of my truck in the upper corner, insignificant as an ant.
The white clays in the foreground (appearing bluish at dusk) are eroding smoothly into deep channels, resembling folded cloth impregnated with plaster. This formation was approximately ten feet high (there is a large sod table on the far side, a higher plateau); others were twice as high. I was walking in a drainage area, lower than the road at the Visitor Center in Cedar Pass, which is located just behind (and below) my apartment here. Water run-off has formed similarly-smooth gullies in the clay pan sediments, which are simultaneously MUDDY and CRACKED. Weird place. The formations are pale, mudstones trending to ruddy Brule layers in higher formations. These clays feature channel sandstone (or is it limestone?) layers near their tops, often undercut and crumbling, and studded with rust-colored concretions. I saw fossil bones in several locations, as well as a lot of mule deer scat, coyote tracks, and mouse-tunnels.
As I write this note, the coyotes are howling their heads off outside! My window is still open a few inches, since it was so warm today. The howls were so eerie and near, I thought it was my own stomach making noises! I cracked my door to see what the moon looked like (quietly, so as not to wake any neighbors) and when I stepped outside, I was surrounded by a herd of mule deer who’d been grazing on the lawn of the staff-housing compound. They snorted and tore off in all directions, probably thinking I was a coyote.
I wanted to share this lovely old diagram — Osborn’s 1909 “Idealized Bird’s Eye View of the Great Badlands of South Dakota, Showing Channel and Overflow Deposits in the Oligocene and Lower Miocene.” First, it is a lovely visualization, in that many disparate elements are depicted, yet it remains meaningful and readable at a glance.
Osborn’s diagram is outdated, but this image is still reproduced in many of the books I have read, because it is helpful in identifying the geological layers. For those who are not familiar with the Badlands area: not all of these layers are visible at any one location. The top layers (above the pinnacles) are revealed in the higher terrain of the Pine Ridge Reservation, and parts of the South Unit of the Badlands. The highest point in the drawing (porcupine butte) is where the KILI radio station and tower are located.
The lower mounds in the diagram are not revealed unless you are on the Lower Grasslands level of the Badlands, approx. 2500 feet I’d say, from memory, from White River to Conata Basin and Sage Creek, although again, these formations are on an “incline” and disappear/reappear as you move around the park.
At any rate, this is one of the diagrams I’ve found most meaningful. Technically it is no longer correct in terms of dating, but timeline shifts are easy to make in your mind. The Chadron and Brule have remapped to from “Oligocene and Lower Miocene” down to Eocene and Oligocene, roughly speaking. Keep in mind that these materials were “deposited” at the above times, and the dates are based on fossils found within the layers. But the sediment’s origin itself may be elsewhere; materials were transported here by wind (ash) or water (mud/stone). Hope this helps those who’ve asked me, in one way or another, “how old” are the Badlands!
I’ve been totally focused on writing lately, so no photos….. sorry. Blustery day yesterday, yielding to brilliant and sunny today, with high 70’s forecast for tomorrow! Hard to stay focused on writing and revising in weather like this. Thought I’d upload a couple sketches I forgot about (from last week).
Between rain showers, Cedar Pass formations suddenly lit up like a neon “Vacancy” sign, half the horizon wide. I couldn’t help taking a pan-series and pasting them up in Photoshop. Again: no color manipulated. No need.
