Threads and traces

31 May 2012

Nebraska in (almost) black and white

Tipi at Agate Fossil Beds, framing the Bone Cabin

For the first time since I moved back to the prairies, I was able to co-lead one of our field camps. This one focused on the geology and paleontology of Agate Fossil Beds National Monument, an under-appreciated gem in the Nebraska Panhandle. I had grand plans of posting something from there every night.

Let me tell you about internet and cell phone connectivity out there. They use the finest cotton string money can buy. But the light and the quietness were more than enough. Two weeks was nowhere near enough.

Now we are on our way back East for another couple of weeks. I'm sure I'll be connected, but I'll miss the deep peace.

For some reason, everything looked more real in black and white, except the eclipse.

Bone Cabin, from Carnegie Hill

Bone Cabin fence

None shall pass

Weathering paleo sign

The solar eclipse. You've heard how they say not to put the special glasses over your camera lens and shoot the sun? Me neither.

End of the eclipse

Carhenge, where the Chevies dwell...

Dino sculpture at Carhenge

Carhenge sculpture, incoming storm

The covered (station) wagon

Time capsule

Bear-dog at Agate

Thunderhead. Only appreciated by West Texan and other prairie kids.

Storm coming in

16 April 2012

Iron Lightning

Random chair in field

We were back in the Iron Lightning Badlands today, courtesy of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe Cultural Preservation Office. After a good three months of warm temperatures and clear days, today was cold, damp, muddy, and even snowy at times. Welcome to spring on the northern Plains.

As before, it was incredible.

Fossil shells

Weathering

Timeless horizon

Erosion

Boulder

Early spring greening

Distant butte

Petrified wood weathering out

Formations

Bare tree with tiny buds

Unexpected blooms

More formations

Prairie dog jaw

Last year's grasses

Strata

10 April 2012

Time travel to Utah

Roadside sign

So we have a project at Dinosaur National Monument that may keep us busy for months. Years. The Monument has been through the ultimate institutional trauma over the past decade, being forced to close down a failing building and essentially tear it down and build it back at the same time. While protecting the quarry face full of dinosaur (and other) fossils. And satisfying the requirements for dealing with rebuilding buildings on the National Historic Register.

We are going to help figure out if the new building is doing its job, so that future generations of dreamy-eyed kids can continue to be stunned into speechlessness by the silent fossils on their precarious slope. This is one of the National Park Service's outstanding sites, along with Badlands and Agate and a host of others. I'll keep a running journal of our work there.

For me, it's like meeting a rock star (so to speak). Or being one.

Eastern view of the quarry face

Morning light

There are ~1500 fossils on the quarry face

Articulation

Light through the new windows

Bone bridge

Earl Douglass's cabin

The new roofline from the hiking trail

Stegosaur vertebrae in the wild

Quarry sign.

Escalante marker

A bone caught in a stilled stream

Cabin near Vernal

09 April 2012

Architecture of the open places: Highway 212

Cabin near Eagle Butte

Lots of travel lately, by my estimate 1700 miles in 5 days. I am still sorting out the shots of the longer trip to Utah. Today was a drive in the much-needed spring sun to Eagle Butte and back.

Highway 212 is a long, straight line from Edina, Minnesota, to Yellowstone National Park. In South Dakota, it crosses an infinite landscape of hills and buttes, almost hypnotically. Buildings are startling, towns unexpected. It is a good drive for refocusing.