Back to the Buckskin Hills

...Those gentle rollers that line the west side of California's Central Valley...

...not a tree to be seen, but beautiful in their sculptural sensuality...

The velvety texture, like a horse's flank, invites your hand to reach out and stroke it.  But at 105', it's too hot to touch!

And, once in a while, a great photo slips by -- I couldn't U-turn to capture a golden hill with the sun highlighting cattle trails that were evenly scored around the slope.  It reminded me of a Native American vessel, with the slight grooves marking the coils of clay, stacked and smoothed.

And then westward, toward the sun, the coast and home.

Galloping Over Basin and Range

Like a horse with her nose turned toward the barn, I headed across northern Nevada.  Having enjoyed John McPhee's Basin and Range, as part of his Pulitzer Prize winning Annals of the Former World, I was primed to understand and appreciate the vast spaces that could have been boring.  To quote Amazon:

"The first of John McPhee's works in his series on geology and geologists, Basin and Range is a book of journeys through ancient terrains, always in juxtaposition with travels in the modern world—a history of vanished landscapes, enhanced by the histories of people who bring them to light. The title refers to the physiographic province of the United States that reaches from eastern Utah to eastern California, a silent world of austere beauty, of hundreds of discrete high mountain ranges that are green with junipers and often white with snow. The terrain becomes the setting for a lyrical evocation of the science of geology, with important digressions into the plate-tectonics revolution and the history of the geologic time scale."

The basin and range province consists of numerous mountain ranges separated by flat plains, over which, when heading east or west, you drive up....and down....and up....and down....and.....  A geologist once compared the many narrow, north-south parallel ranges to "an army of caterpillars marching toward Mexico."  Because of our lingering spring rains, the hills and valleys still wore a lovely veil of green that thinned to wisps as I moved westward...and patches of snow dotted the higher mountains.

Of course on a scorching day, this requires coffee...preferably a Frappuccino (or a fascimile because Starbucks has that name copyrighted).  Who knew Winnemucca would offer a great place, Global Coffee?  (https://www.facebook.com/globalcoffee.nv/). The owner has mounted a world map on which visitors are invited to write their home town.  It made for interesting perusal while awaiting my coffee...which was delicious.

There wasn't much room in California to add Atascadero!

 

And after the final rise, into the Sierras, I settled into Truckee, CA, happy to have a comfortable and interesting place to stay, both the town and the very old (1873) but renovated Truckee Hotel.

The Jazzy Jangle Tree

For obvious reasons, this requires a post all its own!  Soon after I stopped at an old and rather odd little gas station on an obscure road coming out of Idaho around the north end of Salt Lake, I did a double take and had to find a place for a U-turn, which took several miles, but it was well worth it!

There was this tree!!  And it was decorated!!  With all kindsa dis-n-dat!!  Plum in the middle of nowhere!!

When I got out of my truck and heard its special sound, I got the video going for the pleasure of us all.  Our daughter Whitney's comment was that this tree has a drinking problem!  (Make it large and turn up the sound.)

Enjoy:  The Jazzy Jangles Tree.....

The Finale

On the final day of my journey, before heading west through Nevada and the Sierras towards home, I enjoyed the beautiful architecture in several of Idaho's old pioneer towns.  Below, a home in Paris, and the town's impressive tabernacle.

Passing Bear Lake, I saw beaches jammed with happy folks and waters alive with jet skis, skiers, and fishermen. The climb west into the Bear River Mountains offered wonderful views of the lake far below.

The mountains were very steep with no place to camp.  Descending into Logan, Utah, I was hit hard with heat and traffic.  Hoping for luck with a last minute search, I found the best Airbnb ever in Mendon, Utah, a small town across Cache Valley from Logan.  "The Julia Vintage Cottage"

Mendon was settled in 1859, and has 9 sites on the National Register of Historic Places.  Note the hitching post in front of this fine stone building.

The hillside above town offered views of Logan and the Bear River Range across the luscious green ranch land.

Mendon happened to be celebrating its annual Pioneer Days, so they put an exclamation point on my trip with a very grand finale!

Past, Present, and Poetry

Above the Bighorn Basin I saw eight white birds tooling in the air columns. 

                               (wiki photo)

Binoculars showed long orange beaks and black-tipped wings:  White pelicans, my favorite bird…or even animal, too…so prehistoric, so awkward on land but effortlessly gliding just above rising waves…reminding me of speed skating’s glide over the ice.

Their high dance brought to mind Walt Whitman’s spectacular poem:

Dalliance of the Eagles

        Skirting the river road, (my forenoon walk, my rest,)

        Skyward in air a sudden muffled sound, the dalliance of the eagles,

        The rushing amorous contact high in space together,

        The clinching interlocking claws, a living, fierce, gyrating wheel,

        Four beating wings, two beaks, a swirling mass tight grappling,

        In tumbling turning clustering loops, straight downward falling,

        Till o’er the river pois’d, the twain yet one, a moment’s lull,

        A motionless still balance in the air, then parting, talons loosing,

        Upward again on slow-firm pinions slanting, their separate diverse flight,

        She hers, he his, pursuing.

And this led to a fine memory:  Edmond and I were picnicking at Fenton Lake, high above Jemez Springs.  A hawk alighted on a branch right above us with a fish in its talons.  She leisurely picked her way through her lunch, ending up with talons sticky with fish guts.  So she swooped over the lake dipping her talons briefly in the water….then again, moistening the mess.  Finally she took a long run, dragging her talons half way across the lake, flushing off the yuck.  A neat trick and a treat for us to witness.

"My Eye is in Love"...

...by Frederick Franck (frederick franck pacem in terris), was one of my mom's favorite books...me too.  Most mornings I wake with the meadowlarks, thrilled  to look out my window as dawn shades the countryside from gray-greens to brighter hues.

My eyes will never tire of feasting on new arrangements of red, green, blue and white....earth, growth, the heavens, the thunderheads.

I'm incredibly fortunate and grateful to have a husband who understands and supports my enthusiasms, even though he doesn't share them, not even for world-famous anticlines!  And good friends further along in life encouraged me to "Do it now while you can!"

My eye also loves the forms...the sculptural shapes of the hills, mountains, valleys, gulches, hoodoos, mesas...and windrows.  My camera, even though it's only an iPhone, focuses my roving eye, and then reading and writing give context and depth to what I see.  The last time I felt this inspired was at the Chicago Art Institute.  I'd ridden a train cross country as a pilgrimage to a place dear to my mother's heart.  I stayed in Chicago a week (Edmond was in Texas windsurfing), loving every minute.  But when I walked into the modern wing of the museum and encountered a huge Jackson Pollock painting, I was instantly changed.  The kaleidoscope had turned.

This journey has brought another turn, and the pieces have fallen into a fresh pattern integrating many of my loves: travel, photography, reading, writing, geology, wide open spaces, meandering, and simply seeing.  If I need any justification for leaving home and loved ones for awhile, this is it.

When John Steinbeck left his family and home to travel the USA, his family worried but understood his need, as his son reports, to see his country once again before he died.  He traveled over 10,000 miles in his camper Rocinante (named after Don Quixote's horse), with his poodle Charley sitting shotgun.  Years ago I said I wanted to take trips focused on geological sites and sights.  It was over-due.

And so....as my candle is burning lower with the setting sun, I celebrate each dawn.

Grand Foyer to the Bighorn Mountains

                                              

Ten Sleep Canyon is a dramatic entry to the Bighorn Mountains:  

But I was befuddled by the geology signs as I ascended:  The first said: Pennsylvanian, 290-330 Million Years Ago (MYA).  Then came Mississippian, 330-360 MYA, which is older;  and finally came Cambrian, which is older yet (500-530 MYA) !! That seemed topsy-turvy to me.  When you build a layer cake, the first layer down is the oldest, and the second layer is younger.  It was as if someone carrying a cake had tripped and flipped it upside down on the floor.

Googling around the internet didn’t clarify my conundrum.  But days later I came across a sign at Shell Canyon Falls that gave me the clue.  In the diagram, the brown is the Cambrian rock that has buckled up because of tectonic pressures.  Let’s say the white layer is the Mississippian that was laid down next.  Then the gray we’ll call the Pennsylvanian.  Imagine the earth above my red line eroded away.

So if you’re driving up the red line, you come first to the gray layer (the youngest), then the white, (the middle-aged), then the brown (the eldest, on top).  It moves from the youngest rock at the bottom to the oldest at the top.  Interesting!!

In the meantime, I began thinking about all that limestone; in places it’s 9000 feet thick.  Words like foraminifera and coccolithophores floated up from my memory banks.  These tiny sea organisms are types of plankton that die and their exoskeletons drift to the bottom, accumulating really really slowly.  Think about the time it would take to accumulate 9000’!!  ...Especially considering it all gets compressed by sediments on top then cooked to a perfect hardness.  Overcook it and it becomes marble.

Foraminifera & Coccolithophores

(Oops, only one photo of the canyon and lots of these...cuz they're cool!)

Sitting Still After July 4th Festivities

Fun as they were, yesterday's July 4th parade and rodeo in Ten Sleep, with the heat and excitement, took a lot out of me.

My foray into the Big Horns right above Ten Sleep was frustrating as I found every forest clearing packed with huge RV's.  I returned to my BLM spot on the high plains south of town, with its wide open spaces and few people.  Its simple lines and open space calm my soul.  So today, then, is for R&R -- rest and research --  to figure out why, as I drove up the mountain, the signs began with more recent rock formations and got older as I climbed, the upper layer being half a billion years old.  That's topsy-turvy and I feel happily compelled to figure out why.

Joie de Vivre: The Traverse from Moneta to Ten Sleep, Wyoming

Amidst such spectacular scenery, I feel so happy and grateful to be alive and able to be out here!

The combination of red and green is stirring partly because they're complimentary colors that play off each other (as opposites on the color wheel), with clear blue sky as backdrop to the rousing drama of thunderheads...to the accompaniment of meadowlarks and crickets.

The redbeds were laid down during the Triassic, about 250,000,000 - 200,000,000 years ago (zeros for emphasis!). Dinosaurs only began appearing late in this period.  For perspective, homo sapiens have been around for about 300,000 years, the USA for a mere 243.  Now here I am almost 70, not even a century's tick in time, yet it's been a long life.

The muds, silts, and sands deposited along marine margins were eventually buried and cooked to mudstone, siltstone, and sandstone.  Their different hardnesses create the variable erosion which sculpt the shapely stone we see.

Windrows are great for patterns!

It's so idyllic I can barely stand it...

...with family-owned ranches...

...and good mamas who always bring snacks for the road.