Seward Park: A Scientific Wonderland

In Seattle, you take your sunshine where and when you can get it.  The weather reports all assured me we’d get rained on Sunday, but they lied.  I decided, on a whim and on a microscopic amount of sleep, that a trip to Seward Park was in order.  I’d just found out it had glacial erratics and an earthquake scarp, hadn’t I?

I ended up taking so many photos in just those few short hours that we’ll have to split them into groups.  Fault scarps and erratics shall have their own special post.  In this one, we’ll get an overview of some great glacial topography and some lovely sunshiny shots of life, the water, and other gorgeous things that caught my eye.

Allow me to whet your appetites with this image:



If you click to enlarge, and look to your right, you’ll see sun dappling the trees in a very satisfying way.  Then follow me after the jump for more.

Seward Park occupies Bailey Peninsula, which juts out into Lake Washington like a crooked finger.  It is (drumroll please) a drumlin.  You’re standing on a hill that didn’t exist until the great continental ice sheets came down, covered Seattle in 3,000 feet of ice, and left their mark all over the place.  Lake Washington was created by the same glaciation.  Believe it or not, while it’s huge, it’s a lot more shallow than Lake Crescent – only about 200 feet at its maximum.  What it’s not got in depth it makes up for in breadth – and its lovely shallows along the shore where you can see huge freshwater snail shells gathered up in tiny, quiet coves:



If I hadn’t had so much astounding geology to look at and so little time before we’d lose the sunshine, I might have lingered at that grassy bank with my feet in the water.  Maybe next summer, then.

The quieter areas of Lake Washington grow a copious amount of Nymphaea odorata, the fragrant water lily, which is incredibly beautiful but decidedly non-native.  Some of them are still in bloom right now:



And yes, that’s Seattle poking up in the background.  Could not, alas, find a place to get up-close and personal with the water lilies, so no macro shots of them.  Next summer, my darlings.  I know many good places where you can practically touch them.

They’d run out of maps, so I had to do a blind search for the fault scarp.  I headed up a side trail that turned out to go nowhere but right back to my car, but along the way, I saw a tree with amazingly fat roots poking up through glacial outwash:



I used to be incredibly confused by these deposits, so it’s worth taking a moment to discuss them.  All over Seattle, you’ll see these deposits on the tops of hills that look for all the world like a river dropped them.  There are well rounded pebbles and cobbles with the occasional odd large rock thrown in, all mixed up in a matrix of sand and clay.  And if you are ignorant of glacial landscapes, as I was, you’ll ask yourself, “How the fuck could a river run through this? It’s two or three hundred feet above the floodplain!”  Being from Arizona, I hadn’t had much experience with such things.

Turns out all that stuff is glacial outwash.  Before the leading edge of the ice sheet got here, meltwater from it poured out up to 400 feet worth of debris.  Ice sheets 3,000 feet in thickness can do such things with ease, especially when they block local drainage to the sea and cause lakes to back up.  I’m sure it dumped plenty more on its way back to Canada, and voila – we have river and lake deposits in some very odd places indeed.  They’re so thick, in fact, that you’re pretty much shit out of luck if you want to see bedrock in most of the Seattle area.  But there are a few places.  Seward Park is one:



This is a chunk of very coarse sandstone fallen from one of the fault scarps.  These (I’m reasonably sure) are rocks of the Blakeley Formation, about 26-37 million years old, and they tell a story of the days when Seattle was under the sea.  The early Cascade volcanoes erupted and eroded, streams dumped the results all over the continental shelf, et voila – a few million years later, bedrock.  Volcaniclastic, in fact.  (I love that word.  Don’t ask me why.)

Here’s another piece, which was too pretty to pass up:



‘Twas hard to tear myself away from the cliff, but blue water and bright sunshine beckoned, so I went wandering along a deserted strip of beach.  A very narrow deserted strip o’ beach, which was probably why it was deserted.  And I saw one of the biggest hollow logs I’ve ever seen in my life, casting its reflection into the water:



How lovely is that?

Along this strip, you’ve got a nice bank covered in trees, blackberry brambles, and other assorted plants shielding you from the main path, and a vista of Andrews Bay:



Note the wee waves: the wind was blowing predominately from the left, but you’ve got waves coming in from the larger lake, too, so you get this hatched, curved pattern.  Someday, I’ll know more about wave refraction and interference and all that, and I’ll be able to impress people with said knowledge (glazed eyes is a sign of interest, right?)  For now, though, we’ll just enjoy the lilies and the brilliant blue water and the glacial topography.

There were a bunch of purple flowers which I will someday be able to identify, all growing up through the blackberry brambles.  It’s late in the season, so some of them have dropped off and developed berries.  Here we have an example of both states of being:



One of the nicest things about Andrews Bay is that you get a good view of boats against a city backdrop with a little near-wilderness thrown in.  I know my intrepid companion likes that sort o’ thing, so these next two are for him since I abandoned his ass:



Regular flotilla, there.  When I came back this way as I was leaving, they had grills going and were wandering from boat-to-boat having a merry ol’ time, which is just as it should be on a holiday weekend. 

This boat caught my attention because it’s a bit atypical of what you normally see motoring around Lake Washington:



There are also excellent views of I90 from here.  It gleamed in the sun like a road from a sci-fi fantasy, and so of course I had to shoot it. Here it is headed into Seattle:



And to the east, crossing Mercer Island:



It looks surreal from here.  Sometimes, the things we build actually are beautiful.

Speaking of Mercer Island, here’s a good view of it from near the tip of the peninsula:



I learned just recently that it’s a drumlin.  Most of Seattle’s fabled hills are.  Ice is an amazing artist: it dumps its materials down, then shapes and molds and reshapes and remolds, moving things here and there, piling up masses of stuff in one area whilst gouging it away from others, never quite satisfied, until it gives the whole thing up as a bad job because it’s getting just too damned hot round here and melts back to happier climes.  I had only a dim idea of how powerful a sculptor it was.  Looking at Mercer Island, which gets up to 338 feet, one starts to realize that it’s not just volcanoes and continental collisions that can pile up a hell of a lot of land.

It has also made it a real bitch to travel on an east-west axis in this city, lemme tell ya.

Here’s another good example of the power of water to change the landscape.  The waves curve around the point and come smashing into the shore, and you can see some pretty spectacular examples of sorting:



From right to left, you can see how the wave energy changes.  As water hits the shore and slows down, it’s dumped larger cobbles and angular fragments of rock.  Then there are the smaller but still large rounded bits of rock, grading into ever-smaller bits.  And you can walk the beach and tell just how strong the waves are and where they begin to lose their energy: everything’s sorted into great, long and very obvious strips grading from large to small, until you round the point and get to a lot of little pebbles that tell you things on this side are fairly calm.  You can see that at a lot of beaches, but this is the best example I’ve found here in Seattle in a very short stretch of beach.

There’s also a large grassy bank with some truly lovely blue flowers blooming in it:



Following the ever-narrowing rocky strip around the point brought me to another bank with plenty of blackberry brambles.  One of the things that’s always fascinated me about Seattle is how things grow here.  In Arizona, we haven’t got many blackberries, and where we do, they’ve bloomed, ripened, and are picked out by the end of June.  Here, they ripen late, and in areas with dappled sun, you can have new blooms with ripe berries right on top of each other:



And yes, they were incredibly tasty.  I got a wide selection from barely-ripe and delightfully tart to rich, sweet, melt-in-your-mouth goodness.  I don’t care that they’re invasives.  I loves me some Himalayan blackberries!

The “beach” becomes just a few inches wide a bit further along, and then you reach the end o’ the line, where if you want to get round the point, it’s either go back and get on the main trail, or get yourself soaked to the knee.  In that area, sheltered under an overhanging bank and a riot of plants, are some of the most extraordinary wave-carved rocks I’ve ever seen:



The blackberries prevented me from getting very intimate with them, so I’m not sure what that dark one with the blue base might be.  The whiter ones might be an extremely fine-grained and hard sandstone, or they might be limestone or dolomite.  I’m a bad field geologist – I didn’t have hydrochloric acid or even a vial of vinegar with me, so I couldn’t do the fizz test.  Never fear – next time I go to Seward Park, I’ll be prepared, and the mystery shall be solved.  There’s another bit of the same rock available a few feet back, out of the brambles, and it shall be duly interrogated.

Those boulders seem to be eroding out of the bank – judging from the sandy deposits in the lake bed here, I doubt the waves picked them up and moved them.  It’s pretty calm just there.  But they have managed to smooth the stones wonderfully.  It’s hard to see from the angles I was able to get, but those rocks have really been worked over.  They reminded me a bit of what I used to see in slot canyons.

Alas, I couldn’t linger.  Had to get home to call me best friend, get food and drink, and realize how very sadly out of shape I am.  On the way back, though, I had plenty of time to linger lovingly among fault scarps, and to admire yet more blue flowers, which it turns out can grow taller than I am.  And they love to pose:



Up by the Ampitheater where I’d parked, there’s a winding rock wall that begs for attention:



That’s at the top of one of the fault scarps, so I imagine they put those jagged stones on the top to discourage sitting.  It’s hard to see through all the plants that the ground just vanishes.  A person could step right over a cliff if they weren’t paying attention.

And here are our tax dollars hard at work hanging in a tree:



Entomologist were here!  The Washington Department of Agriculture is apparently doing a study.  Science happening before our very eyes!  I wonder how many park visitors don’t have a clue how important this sort of stuff is.  It makes me want to stand by random trees with green boxes in and give a quick and dirty field lesson in science.  So did the lifeguards at the beginning of the trail, who had no clue what a fault scarp is, or that they had one just a few hundred yards away.  When I retire, if the flesh is willing, I do believe I’m going to be spending the majority of my summers accosting people in parks and taking them on impromptu field trips.  This park especially is an open-air demonstration of several different branches of science all at once.  And I think people would enjoy that if they only knew.

Since you’ve been so good and made it to the end of the post, I’ll give you a sneak preview of the fault scarp:



You know, when I first moved to Washington state, I didn’t think I’d be getting much geology-wise.  A few volcanoes, yeah, and some plateau basalts, and that would be pretty much it.  When you come from a part of the country that displays in rather dramatic fashion over 1 billion years of geologic history all in one go, it’s hard to believe that a place as young as Washington would have all that much.  But I’ve discovered some pretty damned dramatic geology up here, all the way from spreading ridges to collisions between tectonic plates, from ancient sea floors to lands left by ice sheets, and from wave-cut cliffs to cliffs made by earthquakes.  Yes, it’s young land, but it hasn’t had a quiet youth.  And some of the most dramatic examples of the power of mother Earth to create and destroy are right in the middle of the city.

You really can’t ask for more.

For Seward Park geology, I commend this missive by Paul Talbert to your attention.  I wish every park had someone who would do up a page like this – it’s outstanding.  The Friends of Seward Park do a tremendous job keeping that park in order and interesting, and you can find a lot of information on many aspects of the park at their site.  This pdf from the Geological Society of America contains quite a bit of info on the area, including bits of Seward Park. 

Seward Park: A Scientific Wonderland
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Give Me Your Tired, Your Hungry, Your Unappreciated Animals

Because I haz plans for them.

Seriously.  Doing up vultures made me realize there’s probably gobs and oodles of blue-collar animals out there who deserve some recognition.  So this winter, we shall be doing a Blue-Collar Animal Tour.  This means we need blue-collar animals.

Thanks to Lockwood and Chaos Lee, we’ve got a list started, which includes

Hyenas
Crows
Rats
Skunks
Jays
Coyotes
Moles
Deer
Rabbits
Pigeons

But there’ve got to be bajillions more.  So lay ’em on me.  If it’s ugly, unglamorous, bothersome, noisome, rude, obnoxious, boring, common as muck, or otherwise unwelcome, I want it.  I’ll even take awesome animals if they’re virtually unknown.

Bring them to me, my darlings.

Give Me Your Tired, Your Hungry, Your Unappreciated Animals

Dumbfuckery du Jour

I didn’t intend to write much about pollyticks this weekend, seeing as how it’s a holiday and everything.  But this is just too extreme to ignore:

First up from the God Machine this week is a good example of the larger dynamic among political conservatives this year, with competing contingents split between secular economic issues and religious culture-war issues. For much of the right, the emphasis on issues like taxes and health care should remain the focus, especially in the midterm elections, but as we saw last week, self-proclaimed moralists also have a religious war in mind.
It’s leading some Republican officials to shape campaign messages built around notions of “righteousness.”

The head of the Hawaii Republican Party is calling GOP Lt. Gov. James “Duke” Aiona the only “righteous” gubernatorial candidate while urging pastors to bar Democrat Mufi Hannemann from campaigning in their churches.

In an undated e-mail that came to light Sunday in three Hawaii political blogs, Jonah Kaauwai also wrote that a vote for Hannemann or Democrat Neil Abercrombie is “succumbing to fear and advancing unrighteousness.”

The e-mail frequently cites Bible verses and uses other religious language to allege that Hannemann deceptively wants to visit church services to boost his support in the Sept. 18 Democratic primary.

“Duke will win because the church has been behind him the entire time operating in the POWER and the AUTHORITY of the NAME OF JESUS!” stated Kaauwai’s lengthy e-mail. [emphasis in the original]

Kaauwai added that Hannemann does not deserve voters’ support because he’s shown “no signs” of being “controlled by the Holy Spirit.” He also described the Republican candidate’s campaign as “Christ’s opportunity.”
Just to be clear, the letter wasn’t written by some odd televangelist, but rather, the head of a statewide Republican Party — who apparently believes in some kind of evangelical religious test for public office.

Note: these are the same fucktards screaming about sharia law and dictatorships and so forth.  Then they turn around and spew this frothing fundie bullshit.  If these assholes had their druthers, they’d set up a Christian theocracy in this country in about a tenth of a second.

They’re not even trying to hide it anymore.

American Taliban indeed.

Dumbfuckery du Jour

Have You Appreciated A Vulture Today?

Deary me.  Today’s Vulture Appreciation Day.  Must take a moment and find some vultures to appreciate.  Why bother?  Because they keep icky dead bodies from piling up all over the place, and besides, they’re lovely in the right light.

Take, for instance, this king vulture:



King vultures are denizens of the New World, but you’ll have to head for parts between southern Mexico and northern Argentina to see one in the wild.  It can glide for hours without bothering to flap its wings.  If that doesn’t impress you, you’re hopeless.

Slightly less majestic is the fact that these tropical-to-sub-tropical denizens poop on their legs to cool down.  This, it turns out, is also a habit of some storks.  Sometimes, evolution is icky.  Whatever works, I guess.

Here’s another vivacious vulture – the Egyptian vulture:



Otherwise known as the Pharaoh’s Chicken, this old-world bird is one of the very few avian tool users – it’s not above using stones to bash open ostrich eggs, and the Bulgarian variety actually winkles wool with twigs for nest-building, so they’re clever little bastards as well as widely-traveled.  They engage in some coprophagy, but don’t judge – we do silly and disgusting things for beauty, as well, and it’s possible they get pigments from poo that give them those beautiful orange and yellow faces.

There.  Hadn’t given much thought to vultures before now, but today I’ve discovered that they’re varied, gorgeous, and eminently worth our respect.  Where would the world be without them?  Possibly knee-deep in dead bodies, so pay your respects.

Have You Appreciated A Vulture Today?

New Zealand Gets Shaken, Not Stirred

Got up early today, wailed at the unfairness of the universe (because while it was a picture-perfect summer day today, rain’s in our forecast for the entire holiday weekend), and got on Twitter whilst I was debating whether to call in dead.  My petty little concerns went right out the window.  New Zealand, y’see, suffered a 7.0 earthquake.

Happily, no deaths and surprisingly few injuries were reported.  Quite a bit of damage to structures, but it appears at this time that there’s nothing major.  Regulations work, people (h/t Chris).  And to think the developers were whining about all that horrible regulatory stuff.  They may not give a shit about dead people, but they need to remember that dead people can’t buy property.

(Interesting coinky-dink: today is the day Head Rush had a bit about earthquakes between Australia and New Zealand.  The quake they were discussing moved the two about a foot closer to each other.  This keeps up, flights between the two might get super-short in a few million years.)

Chris at Highly Allochthonous has a good piece up about the tectonics of the quake.  You can find a map showing who felt the quake at Dave’s Landslide Blog – looks like most of the country got shaken.  Erik at Eruptions has some links for ye.  And I’m sure there’s a ton of stuff I’m missing, but I’ve been talking to me mum all night, so you’ll just have to let me know in comments what I should’ve seen.

Some extraordinary pics below the fold (h/t Chris and Erik).

Mini fault scarp:



O’ course, that could just be from something hollow (sewer or suchlike) collapsing below, but it’s pretty interesting anyway.  So is this one:



I’m pretty sure they didn’t build the parking lot like that.

Here’s a pretty dramatic crack in a road:



And another big ol’ crack in the ground:



Pretty amazing stuff.  The earth’s powerful, and we don’t control it – it’s best we don’t ever forget that.

Best of luck as you ride out the aftershocks and dig out, my dear New Zealanders!

New Zealand Gets Shaken, Not Stirred

The Hazards of Working for a Major Cell Phone Provider

So, the phone rings the instant I get home tonight.  It’s my mother.  She has acquired a phone with the company I work for.  We then spend the next two hours going through her service with a fine-toothed comb to ensure there’s no surprises, and I have to explain how picture messaging works. Argh. 

I’m glad she’s with us, though.  I see the worst this company has to offer, and it’s nowhere near as bad as what some of the competition does to its customers, as my poor dear mother found out the hard way.  And she bought a cell phone that’s extremely hard to break.  And I can send her pictures, which I haven’t been able to do for years.  Woot!

Now I just have to convince her to get on a text messaging plan so we can communicate.  She hasn’t got a computer, so this is the next-best thing.

So, all parents are now with my company.  You know what this means.  I’ll never be off work ever again….

The Hazards of Working for a Major Cell Phone Provider

Some Stunning Geology

I’m off to enjoy me new books and work on a post idea that struck me on the way to work.  In the meantime, here’s some intriguing and awe-inspiring stuff from the world o’ geoblogging.

Silver Fox has posted her Highway 50 links.  I wish more geobloggers would do what she’s doing and post in-depth on a stretch of accessible geology they know well.  Looks like another field trip for moi will be in order, because after this series, I’ll be wanting to sample the geology for meself.  Who’s in?

Those who doubt the power of a mudflow need to watch this video:

Yes, that is a semi being floated off like a little leaf on a current.  I was going to do a little home experiment on the power of mudflows to move boulders, and still might if I remember to buy the damned chocolate pudding, but in the meantime this shall suffice.

Dave’s Landslide blog has this image of the landslides caused by Pakistan’s current monsoon woes:



Talk about yer debris flows.  The size of some of the boulders that came down in that thing is staggering.

Speaking of landslides, Dan McShane’s not happy about finding the Whidbey Formation:



When it gets wet, it gets slippery, and then substantial bits of Seattle fall down and go boom.  As grim as this is, though, his description of it will probably crack you up, so do go visit.  And if you should ever move to Seattle, be sure to check out the geology underlying any home you intend to purchase, lest you find yourself sleeping with the fishes in the Sound.

Highly Anne has an eminently readable post up on social media, diversity and women in the geosciences

Callan Bentley has an absolutely delicious metamorphosed graded bed to show you:



His blog turns me into a drooling idiot.  Not that it’s not filled with substantial science that gives my brain a good workout – it’s got plenty o’ that.  It’s just that when I first click on, there’s usually a picture like the above that gets me salivating, and my first comment is “WANT!” 

I haven’t had time today to do more than skim it, but he’s also got a post up about creationism that I commend to your attention.  I shall be settling in with it over dinner tomorrow night.  If you think it’s only biologists who have to confront creationism, you haven’t hung about the geology department lately. 

I think that’s enough for now.  I’ve got books to delve in to, my darlings, one in particular which led to a sustained SQUEE! when I cracked it open this morning.  I even did a little dance.  The cat was not impressed, but then she wasn’t even impressed by the dancing dog, so how the fuck can I compete?

Oh, and – happy Labor Day weekend!

Some Stunning Geology

Dumbfuckery du Jour

All I want to do is spend time with my new books.  I want to sit surrounded by them, and page lovingly through them, lingering here and there on a page or a photo.  Oh, and I want to change the blade on my razor, since I finally found blades at a somewhat less than obscene price.  So what happens?  Today, the stupid overfloweth.  Argh.

So difficult to choose which deserves the tender attentions of the Smack-o-Matic.  So many excellent targets to choose from, so little time.

Let’s start with a little news from my former home state.  Over the years I lived there, I saw plenty o’ lame in Arizona politicians – we are, after all, the state that has foisted Jon Kyl, J.D. Hayworth, and John McCain upon this poor nation, among a great many others so painfully stupid that one wonders how a state so beautiful can elect so many dumbfucks.  But Jan Brewer is vying for the title of Dumbshit of the Decade.

Folks, we are talking about a governor – an actual sitting governor – who can’t even make a simple opening statement in a debate:

It really is bizarre, and kind of painful to watch. An opening statement is the easy part — a quick introduction, highlight a few talking points, something about getting stuff done, ask for support, and move on. It’s the part of a debate in which folks tend to memorize a short spiel so they come across as competent and set a good impression for the rest of the debate.
Brewer just had a breakdown of sorts. Worse, she seems to be referring to notes in front of her — which would seemingly tell her what to say if she forgets — but which didn’t help.
By my count, there’s a full nine seconds in which a stumped Brewer says literally nothing. That may not sound like a long time, but on the air, during a debate, it’s an eternity.

Video at the link.  But wait!  There’s more!

During an exchange on the economy, state Attorney General Terry Goddard, the Democratic gubernatorial nominee, noted that it doesn’t help the state when its governor tells the nation that Arizona is a dangerous place, unsafe for tourists and investors. He was referencing an incident in which Brewer insisted that immigrants entering the U.S. illegally are responsible for “beheadings” in the Arizona desert. The governor appears to have just made the claim up out of whole cloth, as part of a larger attempt at shameless demagoguery.
During the debate, Brewer refused to comment on her own allegations, so after the event, reporters followed up. The frighteningly unprepared governor, unable to think of a response, froze, said nothing, and then literally fled.

Friends.  Countrymen.  Arizonans.  If you elect this nitwit, thus condemning my beautiful former state to several more years of inane Con artistry wrapped up in a ball of burning stupid, I shall never ever forgive you. 

In other news, Sheriff Joe’s getting his ass sued by the DOJ.  Good.

And, in case you haven’t had your fill o’ burning stupid, Mr. Dan “Bike Riding Programs Are a Dastardly UN Plot for WORLD DOMINATION!!1!!!” Maes is at it again, this time spinning hair-raising tales of his daring deeds in the Kansas Bureau of Investigation.  Perhaps he got reality confused with a novel he’s read, because he never actually worked for the Kansas Bureau of Investigation.

Where the hell does the GOP keep finding these morons?

Dumbfuckery du Jour

Thank You All

Those of you who recommended books have earned a free drink when next you’re in Seattle.  Not that I wasn’t going to buy you one anyway, but you’ll have an extra on the table.

My order has been placed.  It is, in fact, sitting in the office right now, and at the moment I’m debating whether to stay up until 9am to collect, or try to sleep for a while first.  It’s worse than Christmas as a kid, I swear. 

My bank account’s sulking, and gave a little scream when it noticed I’d put extra stuff on the wishlist for later, but it can go get stuffed (not with money, o’ course, cuz I spent that).  I’ll trade moolah for knowledge any day.  Someday, it shall come to terms with that fact.

Thank you again, and thank all of you for being a part of this cantina.  You make my day every day!

Thank You All