ARCHIVE - Landscapes of Change: Dry Falls » brajes02 http://blogs.evergreen.edu/dryfalls Writing & Mapping the Future Mon, 11 Feb 2013 22:36:50 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=4.2.2 ARCHIVE - Southern Escarpment Gallery http://blogs.evergreen.edu/dryfalls/2012/10/31/southern-escarpment-gallery/ http://blogs.evergreen.edu/dryfalls/2012/10/31/southern-escarpment-gallery/#comments Wed, 31 Oct 2012 08:23:56 +0000 http://blogs.evergreen.edu/dryfalls/?p=3245 [nggallery id=22]

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ARCHIVE - Deep Lake Pothole and Cave Gallery http://blogs.evergreen.edu/dryfalls/2012/10/30/deep-lake-pothole-and-cave-gallery/ http://blogs.evergreen.edu/dryfalls/2012/10/30/deep-lake-pothole-and-cave-gallery/#comments Tue, 30 Oct 2012 20:54:55 +0000 http://blogs.evergreen.edu/dryfalls/?p=2947 [nggallery id=21]

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ARCHIVE - Red Alkali Lake Gallery http://blogs.evergreen.edu/dryfalls/2012/10/30/red-alkali-lake-gallery-3/ http://blogs.evergreen.edu/dryfalls/2012/10/30/red-alkali-lake-gallery-3/#comments Tue, 30 Oct 2012 20:24:28 +0000 http://blogs.evergreen.edu/dryfalls/?p=2774 [nggallery id=5]

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ARCHIVE - Southern Escarpment Map http://blogs.evergreen.edu/dryfalls/2012/10/24/southern-escarpment-map/ http://blogs.evergreen.edu/dryfalls/2012/10/24/southern-escarpment-map/#comments Thu, 25 Oct 2012 01:52:06 +0000 http://blogs.evergreen.edu/dryfalls/?p=2053 Continue reading ]]> The southern escarpment is an area located just south of camp. Here, there was a small rock outcropping that we found shelter underneath when a few drops began to fall. Thick, golden grasses tickled our ankles and played with the wind.

Southern escarpment

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ARCHIVE - Southern Escarpment Field Notes http://blogs.evergreen.edu/dryfalls/2012/10/24/southern-escarpment-field-notes/ http://blogs.evergreen.edu/dryfalls/2012/10/24/southern-escarpment-field-notes/#comments Thu, 25 Oct 2012 01:49:15 +0000 http://blogs.evergreen.edu/dryfalls/?p=2048 Continue reading ]]> Plants:
Sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata)
Cheat grass (Bromus tectorum)
Other knee high grasses
Desert Asters (Xylorhiza tortifolia)
Desert Buckwheat (Eriogonum codium)
Orange, green, and white crustose lichens (Mycophycophyta)
Moss (Bryophyta)

Animals:
Darkling beetle (Gonopus tibialis)
Sparrows
Cows (in the form of cow pies) (Bos primigenius)
Gnats (Culex pipiens)
Ants (Formicidae)
Deer (Cervidae)
Coyote (scat) (Canis latrans)

In this area we also identified several patterns in the nature around us, including concentric, spiral, parallel, tessellate, and scatter patterns.

At the southern escarpment, it was windy and slightly rainy, which created the sound of rattlesnakes rustling in the grasses. There were some light clouds but mostly dark grey ones covered the sky. A rainbow appeared towards the north midway through the day. There were plentiful gnats and bees at lower elevations and between bluffs, but once we were on top of the bluffs they disappeared. There are signs of trauma in burned wood on the ground.

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ARCHIVE - Deep Lake Pothole and Cave Collage Essay http://blogs.evergreen.edu/dryfalls/2012/10/24/deep-lake-cave/ http://blogs.evergreen.edu/dryfalls/2012/10/24/deep-lake-cave/#comments Thu, 25 Oct 2012 01:35:12 +0000 http://blogs.evergreen.edu/dryfalls/?p=2022 Continue reading ]]> This path seems to be going further than I had anticipated when I started out. My book group is still sitting at the picnic table, probably, talking about the channeled scabland formations and the significance of Deep Lake. This sagebrush is so interesting though, the patches for some reason are comforting, and I keep walking, twisting kind of.  The light is changing.  I crouch down a bit, getting closer to the earth as I follow the rocks and veins in the rocks and the grasses and the sound of the wind in the grasses.  My steps are hearing, it seems, a song, and I can’t quite hear it completely, and continue walking.  The song is coming from what appears to be a small portal in the rock face of the cliff, next to the lake here.  Climbing into it, moving physically, actually inside the rock itself, and more strangely, through to the other side.

Sunlight.  There is sun here.  I descend to the largest rock, giant and glowing in it.  Rocks of all sizes, twisting squares in layers neither random nor predictable, accrete protectively around this small home, bringing water here, ringing this curious sky.  I leave my rock to look under one of the larger bushes, finding some small seeds among the roots, blown here by the wind.  I smell the place where there is water.  I scurry up to the edge of this place in the mornings, watching others come and go, scattering their cans and poison and taking their fish and thoughts.  At night I curl into my safe, warm place in the dark rock, nestle my nose into my breastfur, and dream.

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ARCHIVE - Southern Escarpment Collage Essay http://blogs.evergreen.edu/dryfalls/2012/10/24/southern-escarpment-collage-essay/ http://blogs.evergreen.edu/dryfalls/2012/10/24/southern-escarpment-collage-essay/#comments Thu, 25 Oct 2012 01:33:58 +0000 http://blogs.evergreen.edu/dryfalls/?p=2016 Continue reading ]]> We sit at the edge of the world, and smell distant fire making its way through the air. Sun and water diffuse each other to form a rainbow over the distant bluffs. Calm. The little pebbles that were so noisy to walk upon now remain silent beneath our quietness. The world is still, aside from the intermittent patches of sagebrush and desert buckwheat rustling as quietly as our breathing.

 

We have explored this place.  In the morning we set out on a long walk, snaking over bluffs and valleys, allowing our landscapes of thought and place to merge. Passing over, under, and through a barbed wire fence we wander up a grassy ravine toward a cliff. Droplets fall on our dirty heads and birds cry.

 

We take refuge from the storm under an outcropping, allowing ourselves to fall deeper into the trance. As the space between droplets increases we venture from the cave opening, pulled by the landscape up the cliff, over ridges and along the curving swales and ripples of the land. We come together quietly in an open circle of pebbles, taking our places to listen, beginning to feel our surroundings as we unclench our thinking minds and allow our senses to guide our perceptions.

 

Everything is round, flowing channels twisting and circulating, expanding and contracting.  It is easy to see the movement of water here. The rock escarpments break in tessellations, spreading and scattering. Sagebrush, grasses, bushes at edges of elevations, reeds and forbs in the potholes.

Everything grows in rings and patches.  We sit in a similar manner and are here.

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ARCHIVE - Red Alkali Lake Collage Essay http://blogs.evergreen.edu/dryfalls/2012/10/24/red-alkali-lake-collage-essay/ http://blogs.evergreen.edu/dryfalls/2012/10/24/red-alkali-lake-collage-essay/#comments Thu, 25 Oct 2012 01:32:21 +0000 http://blogs.evergreen.edu/dryfalls/?p=2012 Continue reading ]]>

Grasses in the wind

Land. It has seen 10,000 years of our past and has lived through more than we can know completely. Each rock tells its own story, carved with patterns of geologic lineage. In the valley below, boulders open to a barren, white circle. It is the residue of Green Lake, which has all but dried. Another ring of wet, this one nearly filled with cattails and tall grass: red alkali lake.

We set out in a circuitous path, a large group from the camp with our reality bunched up around us and slowly, as we walk over the land, through the air and plants, the bunches divide like cells and we begin to feel the place. To feel the desolation, to hear the solitary bee hum by. Rocks, grasses, dry flowers, knobby worried foreheads of giant stones buried in the soil. As we walk into the remains of green lake, cracked, alkali crusted earth swallows our boots and the fecund, complex scent of mud fills our senses. We sink in the mud, or try to balance on top of it, and it ripples beneath our weight: we feel the place.

 

Finding our own patterns in this place, we spread out. Some of us follow a path, some circle into a point, some scatter. We all find a place. We sit in a cave, high above the arid ground, perched like the golden eagle that peers down at us. Alkali lake is below, newly furnished with our footprints. Positive energy surrounds and fills us as we gaze out on the canyon below. Turning and looking into the cave, it is quite shallow, about 4 feet across. There is evidence of life here, and we too feel our place.

 

We explore the patterns further, encountering rocks, plants, tracks in the soil, growth spiraling into the center of red alkali lake. Inside the thicket, reeds fall on one another, following the evaporation rings of the lake, becoming thicker and thicker until they form an upside-down, giant woven basket. Clambering onto the basket, gently at first in a wobbly unsteadiness, we look to see the protective semicircle of the giant inner channel cataract.  Becoming quadruped, seeing the water circle to the center, we feel in place.

 

As we come back together and sit, the cells of our knowledge regroup, forming an organism of being: a living system of knowledge.

 

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ARCHIVE - Red Alkali Lake Field Notes http://blogs.evergreen.edu/dryfalls/2012/10/24/red-alkali-lake-field-notes-2/ http://blogs.evergreen.edu/dryfalls/2012/10/24/red-alkali-lake-field-notes-2/#comments Thu, 25 Oct 2012 01:27:36 +0000 http://blogs.evergreen.edu/dryfalls/?p=1991 Continue reading ]]> Plants:

Orange, green, white crustose lichens

Basalt loose rocks and cliffs

Sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata)

Cheat grass (Bromus tectorum)

Cattails

Nettles

Wild Roses

Saddle fungus

Rotting Elf fungus

Algae

Animals:

Gnats

Bees

Wasps

Gardner snake

Bull snake
Rattlesnake skin

Hobo spider

Golden Eagle (Aguila chrysaetos)

Crow (Corvus brachyrhynchos)

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ARCHIVE - Red Alkali Lake Map http://blogs.evergreen.edu/dryfalls/2012/10/24/red-alkali-lake-map/ http://blogs.evergreen.edu/dryfalls/2012/10/24/red-alkali-lake-map/#comments Thu, 25 Oct 2012 01:27:24 +0000 http://blogs.evergreen.edu/dryfalls/?p=2002 Continue reading ]]> At Red Alkali Lake, there was evidence of the drought. Arid ground cracked beneath our feet and a hawk circled above, looking for any prey we might stir up. We sat on a boulder and watched the day go by, meeting with other humans occasionally but mostly sitting and drawing.

Red Alkali Lake Map

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