Springtime Birds

Here are a few photos from a short trip I made during the middle of last month's work stint. The weather had just warmed up, at least for that one sunny morning, and birds came calling to two birdfeeders in NJ's backyard. I saw my first Lazuli Bunting. I saw several, in fact: a whole flock. The males have a distinctive, bright turquoise head. Quite beautiful. I really didn't expect to see these birds at a feeder in Nevada, but shouldn't have been surprised (range map).
The female of this pair made a few brief appearances, and I caught her hovering over the closest birdfeeder, trying to find a space at the yellow birdfeeder, crowded by at least one Goldfinch and an unknown and slightly larger brownish bird partly hidden behind the feeder.
The male now has the closer birdfeeder to himself.
A pair of American Goldfinches have now taken over. According to my bird list, these were my first Goldfinches, though I find that hard to believe — probably I had forgotten to mark them down on my incomplete life list.
Look who's been watching! No luck for the watcher, the would-be pouncer: all birds flew away.

Megabreccia III, the Continuing Saga

You'll have to see the second post in this mini-series on the Titus Canyon megabreccia to get a sense of scale (or the first, or see the next to last photo of this post). Very roughly, the horizontal fracture or shadow above the wash (most of the center of the photo, a quarter of the way up) is 3 to 4 feet high (that's at about the same level as the top of the lower right rectangle). First we'll look at the area shown by the large rectangle in the upper left, then we'll look at the area shown approximately by the smaller rectangle in the upper left, an area which goes farther left than the rectangle indicates. After that, we'll zoom to the lower left rectangle, then to the lower right.

Location Info: Titus Canyon general location; Titus Canyon narrows; megabreccia location. The megabreccia is in the first major bend of the narrows (first if traveling from the east), the first of two bends that define the southernmost latitude that Titus Canyon reaches. Also see Google Maps.
This is the one area where I could see the somewhat diffuse contact of the breccia with the carbonate wall rock. Contacts elsewhere were obscurred or I missed them (very possible — there is a lot to see!). I have no idea whether the contact is always gradational like this, or whether it is in some places sharp or some places irregular. Fracturing and incipient brecciation — sometimes in the form of crackle breccia, sometimes in the form of calcite veins or small masses — extends upward into the wall rock about 4 or 6 feet past the contact. The calcite veins might tell quite a story about any stresses affecting the rock during the fracturing and brecciation episode. (I'm taking the view that a tectonic origin is likely for this breccia, although one non-geological website was postulating a cave collapse origin.)
Moving into the breccia from the gradational contact (the smaller of the upper left rectangles), we see that breccia fragments decrease in size toward the more solid rock in the upper right, and it looks like it would be fairly easy to put the fractured rock back together in the zone right near that boundary.

Speaking of putting the pieces back together, I'm not sure of the exact definition of jigsaw breccia or jigsaw-fit breccia: some pictures I've seen seem to indicate a breccia that has gone just a wee bit beyond a crackle breccia in that the fragments are mostly matrix supported but the pieces would still be easy to fit back together; other pictures or descriptions seem to indicate *any* angular, matrix-supported breccia. Because of the confusion (which may entirely be mine), I'm not using jigsaw breccia as a descriptive term here (or jigsaw-fit or mosaic), although I suspect this breccia qualifies as a jigsaw breccia, at least in places.
Now to the lower left rectangle. The large white calcite mass in the left center is shaped roughly like a large breccia fragment and appears to show some sub-horizontal grooves. I think this calcite mass is a thin matrix zone that once cemented a fragment, now eroded, to the rest of the breccia mass. The upper edge of the large calcite mass bends outward, towards us, as if it were about to wrap around a large rock fragment; the lower contact with dark rock is quite sharp, possibly the edge of the now eroded fragment. The grooves may be a tectonic feature or may be something else, for example, grooving related to large boulders going downstream during huge flash floods. I favor the tectonic idea, but haven't examined the area enough to back up this hypothesis.

A second calcite mass to the right of the first one can be seen to be wrapping around the dark fragment below it — the large one a third of the way up the photo, a little right of center, which is casting an angular shadow downward — and you can see that the calcite seam looks relatively thin, although an unknown percentage of it has been eroded during formation of the Titus Canyon narrows.
Now on to the rectangle in the lower right. This part of the breccia is composed of subangular to rounded fragments of the white calcite that forms the matrix of the bulk of the breccia. Note that the white to cream-colored calcite is fractured and cut by hematitic veinlets; also note that many of these fractures formed prior to calcite brecciation but that some didn't. These calcite fragments are floating in a dark mass that is composed, at least in part, of sub-rounded to rounded fragments of carbonate wall rock and other carbonate material, including white unfractured calcite fragments, and possibly including carbonate rock flour. This is a dark breccia matrix for the brecciated calcite that is usually the light-colored matrix of the darker breccia fragments.

So, we've seen that the megabreccia of Titus Canyon is a multi-stage breccia. The most often reported causes of brecciation (tectonic of unknown or vague origin combined with phreatic or hydrothermal action and related brecciation) don't surprise me in the least after looking carefully at these many types of textures. Breccias can fool a person, however, and I haven't seen any detailed reports about the breccia or maps of the area showing the breccia. I spent a very small portion of a day snapping photos; would love to spend more time examining the breccia, even mapping it, though much of the terrain is precipitous.
If you want to see this breccia, besides driving one way into Titus Canyon on a long, narrow, one-way (open only to east-to-west traffic), sometimes rocky dirt road that may require 4WD or a high-clearance vehicle (I'd want both to dodge the rocks sticking out of the road uphill from Leadfield), you can drive to the Titus Canyon alluvial fan from the Death Valley side and walk in from there. It looks like it's about 1.5 to 2 miles in, and probably a magnificent hike. (Google Maps Location and additional photos).

A Few Links:
Introduction to Faults, p. 54 - the Titus Canyon megabreccia is shown as an example of a cataclastic rock, from the ES406 Structural Geology Lab of Dr. Stephen Taylor at WOU. (That is to say, the breccia is a product of brittle tectonic deformation.)

More photos of Titus Canyon and the breccia.

Virtual field trip guide to the geology of Death Valley - including the Titus Canyon megabreccia - Lots of information about Titus Canyon and Death Valley.

Titus Canyon Mini-Series:
Carnival of the Arid #4 is Up! - and Titus Canyon
Things You Find in the Field: Leadfield
Some Thoughts on Weirdness, and A Picture (or Two) (or Three)
Megabreccia II: More Photos
Megabreccia III, the Continuing Saga (this post)

Smoke and Old Memories

When I read this post by John Fleck two nights ago, my window was wide open, and the smell of smoke from wood-burning stoves was seeping in — not strongly, because it was only mildly cold and most neighbors have ceased wood burning in favor of hoping for summer. As the faint scent crept in with the wonderfully cool air, I realized that I too love the smell of smoke on the wind, even though large range fires irritate my eyes and nose, even going so far as to sometimes make me sneeze.

As I sat there, reading and breathing it all in, I felt some connection to previous brush fires (one in the Trinity Alps in 1981 specifically jumped into my memory), and some connection to other smoky times, such as when thick smoke hovers near the ground on cold wintry days and nights at our lake house — a pleasant connection because I love winter. The smell also brought back the many campfires of my childhood, particularly a campfire in the woods of Pennsylvania or New Hampshire (really, I'm not sure where it was, just that it was north of Virginia), and another one from high in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Other camps and other places were all mixed into this one mental ball of smoky associations, and pulling them out individually required a bit of effort; sometimes the pulling resulted in views and visions of big redwood trees, sometimes meadows and valleys, other times the waterfalls of Yosemite, and then again a campsite (or two) of reveling geologists. This mental ball of smoke evoked marshmallows, field days and nights, hilarity, song, and laughter. It evoked being warm while out in the cold, not-quite wilderness.

...

I'm not sure why the fire near the Trinity Alps sticks in my mind. My field assistant and I were staying in the smallish, semi-touristy town of — pause while I go look this up on Google Maps — Weaverville, CA, working up Highway 3 in the Trinity Mountains on the east side of Clair Engle Lake (AKA Trinity Reservoir), along or near the Trinity-Shasta County line. Or at least that's where I think we were, although I haven't quite been able to place the area on a topo map.

There were two ways into the submittal or follow-up property we were evaluating. Our main route came in on paved Highway 3 on the west side of the lake, crossing over the northernmost arm of the lake on a small bridge. At some point, we exited pavement for logging roads that then took us eastward into the hils. I only vaguley remember the second way in: possibly we never went that way at all.

Smoke came up that one afternoon, maybe it was the first or second day we were there. To us, the source was unknown, and though it wasn't the first unknown fire we'd experienced that summer, the effect was, as ever, the same: my adrenaline shot up and I wanted to go for high ground to try to determine the location of the fire. When not knowing the direction or distance to a fire, I prefer to leave the area. But which way do you go?

We had a second route out of the area if we conintued on dirt or pavement to the south, a way we had possibly already come in on, a way we may have never taken. I don't recall our decision that day, but do know that we decided to go in the next day — we had found out while in Weaverville that evening (firefighters were everywhere) that the fire was west of Highway 3 and west of the lake — and we figured the lake was a good fire barrier.

So we went back, the second or third day, driving up the west shore, across the northern arm, into the property. The air was heavy with smoke and distinctly reddish to yellowish orange. Standing trees (those that hadn't been felled by logging) were hazy, even when close at hand. The ground itself, littered with clinkery rock fragments (probably of meta something) was reddish to orangey brown from alteration or weathering, adding to the red-yellow nature of my memory. We had, the previous day or two, investigated and walked the lower hills, seen some half hidden old mining shacks and relicts in the green, damp depth of the uncut areas; we had tried making our way through one of the clearcuts to find any outcrops or float that might extend the area of known mineralization (gold, I would think), hauling ourselves laboriously over slash piles, stumps, and downed logs.
Although it was cool in the lower uncut trees, up on top — where the old workings and gently dipping silicified or mineralized zones were sticking out in plain sight, where the trees were thinner even without logging — it was hot. Damp and hot. Sunny and hot. The smoke from the Trinity Alps fire (I don't know the name of the fire, anymore, and can only find vague references to fires possibly in June or August – and I'm pretty sure it was August) — the smoke didn't cool things off: even though it shaded and cut the sun, the smoke just made the air thick and the breathing a little more difficult. And even knowing we were most likely safe from the fire jumping the lake, we worked as hard as possible, took as many samples as fast as we could, and didn't go back the next day, even though we hadn't gone around that last ridge.

I've always wanted to go back. The area holds a still-unknown potential. California's requirement to completely reshape all mining areas to the original contour makes open-pit mining nearly or entirely impossible. After taking out some ore-bearing rock, where does one get the dirt and rock for complete recontouring? Scrape it from some other hillside so as to merely shift elsewhere the need for recontouring? Buy it from some limestone company in southern CA and have it hauled in at great expense? Consequently, I won't be going back, even though the area might hold some underground potential and even though the price of gold is up. No one wants to mine in CA anymore, only a few counties are at all predisposed or amenable toward mining, and no major companies will even look at CA submittals. I guess we had our chance back then, and even then the area was difficult, being always too close to wilderness areas or wilderness study areas; always too close, no matter where in CA you happened to be working.

...

And somehow, that's where @jfleck's post and a hint of wood smoke on the air at night took me: deep into the past, deep into forests hazily, yet intensely remembered — into the color and sound of rocks, the dips of grey, silicified beds, and the ridge around the corner of the hill: what was around that bend, anyway?

Our 2011 Garden

We got a later start on our garden this year, and although I'm really not sure about the relative timing of plants getting into the ground with respect to last year, this year's plants were started later indoors and may have been smaller when we put them in the ground. We had to get them on a drip line before we went on a road trip at the end of last month.
The chocolate mints, in two pots, are growing like crazy, and we're thinking of starting more pots so we can give some away.
We've planted fewer vegetables this year, partly so this squash can have more room than last year's had, partly so the chard can have more room, and also so we can plant more flowers.

Friday morning, a little more than a week after the squash photo was taken, the temperature dropped below freezing, and currently the little guy doesn't look so hot: leaves have wilted and dried some. The squash, basil, a newly planted melon, and oregano were covered last night, and we'll keep covering until we get some summer-like temperatures (even spring-like temps would be helpful).
And so, this is how the back garden looked on May 27th, just after the drip line went in. There are little chard plants, the squash, two or three tiny tomatoes, green bean seeds against the far wall, and lots of flower seeds scattered everywhere.
A little more than a week later, yesterday afternoon, the back garden has larger chard plants (still hard to see but on the left), and the tomato plants look like they have survived all the chilly mornings. The larger plant towards the back, behind the pot of chocolate mints, is the honeydew melon MOH planted after we came back from our late May road trip. No seedlings have sprouted.
Here's the front garden as it looked on May 27th: a chocolate mint pot, two tiny basil plants almost drowning in the water of the newly re-established drip line, and lots of flower seeds in the ground.
And here's the front garden yesterday afternoon. I've taken matters into my own hands and planted a few nursery flowers from the big city — marigolds, a lavender, some little daisy-like flowers, and the some oregano. Possibly some little seedlings have sprouted; probably they are common weeds. Across the street in a barren spot, I threw out some wildflower seeds: Cosmos and bachelor buttons. These aren't on a drip line, and will require watering by hand.

As it turns out, we needn't have bought plants from the out-of-town nursery — a local hardware store has put in a couple greenhouses and has quite a nice supply of flowers, herbs, and vegetables (and other things including trees). We had lost our only nursery last year to the go-out-of-business demons, but now we have a replacement. I hope it does well.

In the meantime, MOH has started new squash seeds indoors in our heated seedling mat, along with seeds from our ballon flower.

Megabreccia II: More Photos

Because breccia is one of my favorite rock types, I've got a few more photos of the Titus Canyon megabreccia from our Death Valley and Mojave trip in 2009. In this first photo, the large breccia fragment in the lower left of the canyon wall is about 5 to 6 feet high (scale here and here). Looking carefully at this face of the Titus Canyon narrows, you can see that the breccia extends quite a ways up the canyon wall, into the darkly stained area where textures are difficult to see. The often angular clasts of the dark gray carbonate rock are angular to subrounded, and they are usually matrix supported by white to very pale orange to cream-colored calcite. In places, some of the fragments could easily be put back together, as if they were part of a jigsaw puzzle; in other places, the breccia pieces don't seem to fit.

Within the stunning exposure area in the canyon narrows, the breccia shows quite a bit of variability.
This one face of the canyon wall — man's hand on the right for scale — shows a lot of the white calcite that often forms the breccia matrix. There is seemingly more matrix than usual, although a large fragment or two could lie just behind the rock face, changing the apparent fragment:matrix ratio.
We'll zoom in on the area almost obscurred by the hand in the previous photo. Above the two large dark fragments, we see a large mass of the white calcite.
Looking more closely at the area above the two dark fragments, the main calcite mass can seen to be fractured and brecciated. But there's a complication: a heterolithologic breccia of dark carbonate rock and white calcite is shooting through the rock just to the right of my hand. This second breccia has subrounded to rounded clasts, and appears to be cemented by a reddish, hematitic material (possibly consisting of ground up pieces of both the original dark wall rock fragments and the secondary calcite cement).
This photo of the breccia provides some scale, by way of my truck, for the next photo, which is just to the left of this one.
What I see here is a relatively narrow banded zone that may be a calcite-cemented or calcite-filled fault, dipping off toward the left. Is it a fault? The answer appears to lie upward, requiring rock climbing, or finding a way around to the top from some other direction. Note the diffuse contact between breccia below and fairly solid rock above, just left of the banded zone. We'll zoom in on that...soon.