Why I love California (A photojournal with an emphasis on rocks)
Much of Californias coast--with the exception of San Diego and Los Angeles--looks like this. The beaches are better suited for wearing sweaters than bikinis. They are also a much more rewarding place to spend the day. Flooding and ebbing, the same ocean that built these sandstones now wears them away. The air of intertidal life seems distance and fleeting. A snapshot in the life of this beach. Because water doesn't flow equally through sandstone it takes the paths of least resistance, finding channels and etching them away. Whats left is a rock of alien nature at odds with the symmetrical world around us.
Pinnacles is a name never doubted once applied to this swath of land. The San Andreas fault system has left its mark on this area. Serrian granite from Southern California has inched its way up the coast at a rate averaging half a centimeter per year. The San Andreas isnt one fault but many faults, some going left and right, some going up and down. Volcanoes have visited too. Much of this rock is breccia, consolidated tufts of volanic matter held together by a pink lava. The faults have broken it apart, sent some jutting into the air while water brought it back down to earth. Cliff and spires indicate the lasting struggle.
Hetch Hetchy and Tuolumne Valley. John Muir's last battle. It may have kiled him. The Tuolumne River flows through the Tuolumne Valley--adjacent to, but higher in both elevation and latitude, the Yosemite Valley--into the Hetch Hetchy Reservior. Two hundred miles of aquaducts carry the water across the central valley, leaving some for agriculture, to the city of San Francisco. San Francisco gets its water from snow melting in Yosemite. John Muir fought unsuccessfully to save the Hetch Hetchy Valley, said to be as spectacular as ever, before it was dammed.
Standing atop El Capitan, the largest single chunk of granite in the the Americas. At sunset alpenglow paints the distance peaks red. North America slide over the Farallon plate consuming it. The Sierra Nevada Batholith. The Rocky Mountains. Nevada's Basin and Range. The western end of a continent buckled, folded, faulted and ultimately shaped.
When I close my eyes and picture California, this is what comes to mind. The Pacific Coast Highway, Rt 1, winds up and down nearly 1000 miles of California coast. It doesn't take much luck to see gray whales migrating off the shore or sea otters flapping around the kelp. Big Sur, 2005.
Much of Californias coast--with the exception of San Diego and Los Angeles--looks like this. The beaches are better suited for wearing sweaters than bikinis. They are also a much more rewarding place to spend the day. Flooding and ebbing, the same ocean that built these sandstones now wears them away. The air of intertidal life seems distance and fleeting. A snapshot in the life of this beach. Because water doesn't flow equally through sandstone it takes the paths of least resistance, finding channels and etching them away. Whats left is a rock of alien nature at odds with the symmetrical world around us.
Pinnacles is a name never doubted once applied to this swath of land. The San Andreas fault system has left its mark on this area. Serrian granite from Southern California has inched its way up the coast at a rate averaging half a centimeter per year. The San Andreas isnt one fault but many faults, some going left and right, some going up and down. Volcanoes have visited too. Much of this rock is breccia, consolidated tufts of volanic matter held together by a pink lava. The faults have broken it apart, sent some jutting into the air while water brought it back down to earth. Cliff and spires indicate the lasting struggle.
Hetch Hetchy and Tuolumne Valley. John Muir's last battle. It may have kiled him. The Tuolumne River flows through the Tuolumne Valley--adjacent to, but higher in both elevation and latitude, the Yosemite Valley--into the Hetch Hetchy Reservior. Two hundred miles of aquaducts carry the water across the central valley, leaving some for agriculture, to the city of San Francisco. San Francisco gets its water from snow melting in Yosemite. John Muir fought unsuccessfully to save the Hetch Hetchy Valley, said to be as spectacular as ever, before it was dammed.
Standing atop El Capitan, the largest single chunk of granite in the the Americas. At sunset alpenglow paints the distance peaks red. North America slide over the Farallon plate consuming it. The Sierra Nevada Batholith. The Rocky Mountains. Nevada's Basin and Range. The western end of a continent buckled, folded, faulted and ultimately shaped.
When I close my eyes and picture California, this is what comes to mind. The Pacific Coast Highway, Rt 1, winds up and down nearly 1000 miles of California coast. It doesn't take much luck to see gray whales migrating off the shore or sea otters flapping around the kelp. Big Sur, 2005.
niobe:
Wow, these are awesome pictures!