• Red pin indicates our location, the longitunal groove
• Yellow pins indicate observations of interest

Field Notes:

3^rd Location at Dry Falls: Longitudinal Grooves

Sunday, October 14th 2012

Audio:

Very quiet

Almost (but not quite) far enough from the highway not to hear it

Voices of other teams are heard but they are not in sight

Weather/Atmosphere:

Overcast, with slight rain, cold and windy

Measurement:

150 feet or less

15-20 feet deep

Composition:

Mostly light yellow dry grass inside groove

Rocks and stone dispursed

Mostly rock and ever-present shrubs outside of groove

Cattle feces

Fallen leaves and branches inside groove

Colors:

Red-purple, green-gold, yellow-white, gray-gold, brown, tan, pea green, bright yellow spores

Lots of dark brown

Yellow is a recurring theme

Texture and Shapes:

Rocks are generally rough and uneven

The area and the groove itself are not straight (more zig-zag)

Culture:

Cattle feces, no cattle in sight

Jeep tire marks

The ground is now dry but there are depressions in mud where cattle have walked, jeep has driven

As always, power line in the distance

Other notes:

Wind is more prominent here than on the bottom of the plateau

Rocks here currently look wet

Unlike the rocks, the grass growing here still looks very dry

We are now seemingly level with the museum building

The jeep lines almost accentuate the longitude of the groove

We spent a long time looking for this location: “Looking for longitudinal grooves…” was driven into my mind as a search object and now I am noticing lines in everything

Cattle feces in combination with the dry grass makes me feel like I am in the country, like a farm niche

Outside of the niche are the broken rock surfaces and sage shrubs to remind me of where we are

Very different places, outside and in

Smell of hay

The cows (judging from their hove marks) seem to have followed the already present jeep trail, just as we followed cattle and deer paths much of our way here

The presence of birds has diminished

Most barren, least active of the 3 locations

The longitudinal groove is a feature in the tabled lands of the Dry Falls area.  The elevation is about 1,500 feet above sea level but the water that gnashed and carved this groove peaked at an immense 1,800 feet.  Being there one would not know it.  The land is rough terrain superimposed on an ultimately flat expanse of ground.  At the crest of a rise you can see for miles.  There are discernible way points: the Dry Falls Interpretative Center, big agriculture silos, and toothpick structures with fiddly bits of wire strung between them, stringing out in a thin line against the horizon on the edge of a far-off gorge.  In this sense, one can know a place for its location, triangulating it mentally with no fear of descriptive failure.

However there is a deceptive abundance of emptiness in the land.  Maybe it is the way the still, echoing physical features allow the interstate doppler to invade – even at a two-mile distance.  Perhaps the answer lies in the way the flat land and engulfing sky reign sovereign over psychological tendency toward diversity.

It is a land and sky that isolates and targets an individual.  There is little to glean from such an area.  It reflects emotions and thoughts back toward the viewer.  It expels place.

When I was at the longitudinal groove I did not see the basalt ledges, the mineral blocks, or the anthill as special or meaningful.  There is a distinctive disparity in the ability to inspire original thoughts about place or identity other than what is already in the observer’s mind, what is already embedded in the observer’s world.  The longitudinal grooves at Dry Falls were utterly desolate – not only by the stale and arid regional climate, but also in the place itself.

Being there I thought this gave it a label of meaningless.  Now I realize, in a world of distinctive places, the strength in existing without a high degree of individuality and special meaning is a feat in its own way.  This realization gives the area place.  Dry Falls is a place so far removed from meaning that it allows you to simply be.