So Wet That Things Are Dry

Dump a garbage can full of water on a dry load of top soil.  You will find that it runs off in all directions and some of it turns into sand; the organic components of the soil having washed away and the bare mineral contents of what consists of ground becomes exposed and featured as the star of the show.  So it is even in the rainiest parts of the world, and indeed our wonderful continent.  The banks of the Amazon are routinely inundated and then exposed and often leave lovely beaches in the wake of the emptying river.  The edge of the rainforest becomes a desert of sorts.  So too does the edge of the sea, with wave action constantly moving around large quantities of the prime material component of our lovely beaches. 

In general, North America starts out very wet on the west coast, with quite dry patches south of Monterrey Bay in California, and then turns bone dry past the mountains which trap the Pacific moisture dead in its tracks.  Eventually deserts, more mountains, grasslands which are nearly deserts, and then the edge of a grand forest progresses eastward and southward.  The Gulf of Mexico sends its bounty west and north into rainier lands of less extreme temperatures and we have our grand forests both tropical and temperate.  Still, this is a pretty dry place.  Even in the humid Gulf Coast one can have many cloudless days and rather arid conditions here and there, especially on beaches and riverbanks.  So it is that we can have cacti even in Florida and New York, far from where we envision they properly belong.  One only imagines what the first settlers thought of such plants, but we know for sure that wherever their descendents found them, they considered them to be a nuisance to draft animals and weeding hands alike and many were removed. 

The best places to find them in the moist east these days would thus be their most practical locations, those dry and sunny places where other plants tend to give up the ghost, the dunes of beaches.

Here we have some Eastern Prickly Pear (Opuntia Humifusa/Compressa), found on the sandier reaches of Hunting Island in South Carolina.  Too dry for the coastal marsh species, too exposed for other island denizens, too much beach and not enough ocean.  Beside them lie cones of the local Slash Pines (Pinus Elliotii), destined to be food for some sort of creature or another, unable to seed properly in a place more suitable for the desert junks that either gets ignored or detested.  The naturalist on staff at the state park noted that no one usually notices them, much less asks about them, despite how exotic and unique they seem to be this far east.  Nevertheless, our dry land has cacti nearly north to the arctic treeline, and yes, right next to both oceans. 

Algonquin's Fabulous Beaches

Passing gifts left by both the continental ice sheets and their melt waters, Algonquin's beaches are wonderful stretches of golden-white sands which quickly darken beneath waters until they merge into the blackness of the lakes.  The sand has a consistency falling right into the realm of perfection between course and soft.  While most of Algonquin boasts lakes that have at least one nice beach, the best by far seem to be concentrated along the Fosmill drainage way extending from Lake Nipissing to a broad delta centered on Pembroke and the mouth of the Petawawa River.  In particular, Grand and Cedar Lake have what I consider to be the finest beaches in the world.

Both of the above pictures are McElroy originals, found at  http://www.mcelroy.ca/bushlog/20120629.shtml.  Both images are of a beach on Grand Lake.

Come back in September for some great Cedar Lake beach images!

They are the results of being in the right place in the right time as far as the glacial events go, and have been constantly helped with prevailing westerly winds grinding and replenishing the sand ever since the melt waters diminished.

Algonquin's Natural History: The Canadian Shield and Wisconsonian Glaciation

Most working scientific theories of the age of the earth suggest that the planet was formed about 4.5 billion years ago, though we have no conclusive evidence of anything on this planet to demonstrate that she is older than 4.2 billion years of age.  The oldest rocks we have are from one of the most stable and large masses of continental core of anywhere on the planet, the Canadian Shield.  Radiometric dating has been used to determine that some gneiss near Great Slave Lake in the Northwest Territories of Canada is close to 4.2 billion years old, pre-dating the creation of life itself on our planet.  Billions of years of erosion have mostly knocked away any great heights that would have covered what now juts up through the earth.

Come back in September for some pictures!

The portions that are exposed today are incredibly tough stuff, having endured travels over the globe, a lot of weather, multiple ice ages, and even being under oceans at certain points in time.  While they are hardly as grand as the Rockies or other such mountain ranges, what does remain of the Canadian Shield mountains, such as the Laurentians and Adirondacks, are far from unimpressive, considering as how they are often taller and more rugged than much younger mountains in the Appalachians and Ozarks, which have been worn down to the same size in a much smaller time scale.  In Algonquin, the mountains often have a prominence of about 700 feet, resting on a base of about 1,000 feet, enough to give a hefty hiker heart problems and enough to change weather patterns in the area, complete with a lusher western region and a drier rainshadow to the east.  We can only imagine what these would have looked like over a billion years ago, when they might have well exceeded 40,000 feet in height.

Come back in September for some more pictures.

Much more can be said about the Canadian Shield, but that is content best left for future posts.  The important thing to leave here is that Algonquin has very old rocks, young as far as the shield goes (between a billion and two billion years old, but there are probably much older rocks that have yet to be found in her depths), rocks that are often exposed and make the landscape very rugged, akin to much more vertical terrain like the Sierras or Rockies.  That said, Algonquin also has very grand forests, and most trees require at least a little bit of soil on top of the bedrock in order to survive.  So, what lies on top of the bedrock?

More rock!  Here and there are ancient traces of limestone from hundreds of millions of years ago.  Young by Shield standards, but remnants of a very different undersea tropical era for Algonquin.

Thanks again to the McElroys, who have a wonderful article on this little limestone peninsula on Cedar Lake at  http://www.mcelroy.ca/notes/brent_limestone_cliff.shtml.

Here we see some rock that looks out of place in Algonquin, but would very much be at home, say, in the Niagara Escarpment or in the Allegheny Mountains.  While the glaciers of several ice ages did a pretty good job of liberating the Shield rocks by scraping the ground bare, some areas managed to survive the onslaught.

That said, when the glaciers did retreat they left some stuff behind, sometimes ground up into a nice till and even dragged north from areas further to the south that they also did a number on.  Glacial till, as we mentioned a few posts back, makes for lovely forests and terrible crop field.  It is gray, sandy feeling, and often quite cold even in the summer and under full sun.  The glaciers left a bit more than till around, however, namely sand and water.  So what's the deal with those glaciers, anyway?

Source: USGS, at  http://esp.cr.usgs.gov/info/eolian/task2.html.

The last major ice sheet that covered North America is known as the Laurentide Ice Sheet, and was over 5,000 feet thick in some interior portions of its range.  For a long time, it would slowly advance southwards, melting a little in the summer, growing back bigger and better in the winter.  Whenever it melted it sent A LOT of water towards the ocean, normally either right into big blue or down the primordial versions of the Columbia and Mississippi rivers.  Along with immense volumes of water would rush small-grained silt, clay, and lovely, lovely sand.  The loess areas seen on the map below are the results of this material blowing around in the dry winters when the floods diminished.

Eventually, about 8,000 years ago, the Laurentide sheet kept melting north as the planet warmed up closer to where we sit today.  While the Mississippi continued to take quite a load of melt with it (you can find many rocks from Lake Superior almost all the way down the Mississippi on her banks), new outlets opened up, namely various predecessors of the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence watershed.  One of these outlets was through the north of Algonquin, and it cut all sorts of interesting lakes, canyons, and such in its path.  It also left behind sand, sand that is without a doubt the best in the universe.  It has such a lovely consistency and softness that it became the sand of choice at the recent Olympic games in London.  Britain might not have the sand for volleyball, but Ontario came through for them.

Come back for pictures of this amazing sand.  I will have lots of them.

Then the glaciers left... and were followed by conifers, birches, willows, and... cacti?

The Clean Pacific

I was going through the California shots looking for more material related to yesterday's post when I found this lovely picture I took of the gentle surf rolling onto a beach out in those parts.

This was taken at Leo Carillo State Beach in Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, one of the most lovely parts of remaining natural southern California.  Though garbage from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch does wash ashore now and then, for the most part the beaches of southern California have absolutely lovely water that feels amazing.  The best places to go, as you would expect me to claim, are the natural beaches found in parks and preserves.  Not only do you usually get a cheaper parking option (this place is actually free if you just park alongside the Pacific Coast Highway, which puts you closer to the beach anyway), you also get to see some amazing plant and animal life and enjoy some really great natural sand.  I maintain that the same is true for most beaches on the continent.  

Wednesday Filler: The Beach is Calling

Today, in Michigan, in March, it was 75 degrees and sunny.  This made me want to sit on a beach.  Here is one I did that on two Marches ago, in the Santa Monica Mountains.  Well, more so on the beach at the base of said mountains.

No, the ocean is not really sideways, even if everything else in southern California seems to be.  I think at the time I had just come out of the water and was feeling a bit relaxed.  This was taken at Leo Carillo State Beach, which is at the intersection of Mulholland Drive and the Pacific Coast Highway.  Unlike most other beaches near Los Angeles, it is not crowded with people, the parking is free, and everything is quite natural, down to the darker patches of kelp you see out there in the water.  There are also cliffs which provide shade, and fun tide pools.

Some people have no desire to ever go to California.  I would suggest they consider a trip to its more natural parts, well, those that remain anyway.

Miners Beach

One of the most visited and alluring attractions at Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore is Miners beach, a typical strand of glacially perfected sand which graces the Michigan shores of Lake Superior.  Most iconic images of the beach will show the typical sunset shot overlooking the mouth of the Miner river, which flows into the lake in a wonderful channel of golden brown water amidst the sands.  Other pictures might have the lake being a bit bluer and brighter, showing off the Caribbean impression that summertime Lake Superior can manage to pull off.  My visit was a bit less glamorous, but certainly more appropriate.

 The day was quite overcast, a little on the cooler side for most people (upper 50s), and while the lake was showing off some teals and pastel blues, they were muted and offset by the dominant bluish grey that one would expect from a Canadian Shield body of water.  This is not to say that I was in any way disappointed, because the whole scene felt very much how it should for being in this sacred part of the world.  The grey soil covered in pine needles, cones, and broken roots which extended into the forest from the beach only added to the northern charm of the place.  The dwarf Balsam fir (Abies Balsamea) added a more intimate touch to an otherwise exposed location at the edge of the inland sea.  Steady medium-sized waves rhythmically washed onto the sands despite the stillness of the air; Lake Superior, after all, is assuredly much more of a sea than a lake.

 For a moment, walking along the beach felt like being on some quiet reach of a tranquil, northern lake.  The trees, gentle landscape, and intermixing of grand and diminutive scales were quite deceptive.  Indeed, if it were not for the sheer cliffs at either end of the stretch of sand, one might never know they were in an area of towering dunes and breath-taking cliffs.  Again, this is a lake shore, but it is also the shores of Lake Superior.

 In fact, Miners beach and river are not a few hundred yards away from the photogenic Miners Castle, one of the great scenic natural monuments of Michigan.

 I was just there, among the small crowds that had come to take their obligatory photos before moving on to the next tourist spot.  While the rocks were definitely a sight worthy of repeated visits, and yes, a future post (when I can show pictures of the place in different light conditions), the beach provided for a stronger memory.  The lapping waves, wonderfully smooth yet gritty sand, towering pines, and all those wonderful smells of the boreal northern world conspired to outdo the featured attraction.  Maybe the cliffs were a bit alien to the concept of the northern landscape.  The rocks here are mostly layered sandstone, rather than the granite and gneiss one can find in neighboring Ontario, Wisconsin, or even past Marquette.  The beach, however, had the fortune of being mixed up and tossed around by glaciers, and presents the walker from such places with a more familiar landscape.  My biases are showing through once more!

In any case, this beach has it all: scenery, forests, tranquility, grandeur, surf, sun, and even clams.  Those looking for great, open vistas and miles upon miles of water can find it on one side:

 While turning back, they can find it again in towering forests of Eastern White Pine (Pinus Strobus) which greet the sands in no less a dramatic fashion than the waves:

At the same time, the saplings, lichens, and damp, dark, green closeness of the forest reverts the scale back to our level, as does the foam and bubbles that the even the mightiest waves become.

The best way to experience Miners beach, of course, is to experience it with one's own senses.  As with any place in "le Nord", I highly recommend it.