Recent Road Trip on 8A: Agoraphobia?

Water in the desert at 12:30 pm: Seyler Reservoir, looking north up Big Smoky Valley.

I took a road trip last week, south into Big Smoky Valley (MSRMaps), in order to grab a few photos from areas I visited in 1976 while on my thesis hunt.

I started fairly early in the morning while the weather was surprisingly cool — though the day warmed towards summer as the road dropped elevation to the south. I stopped for lunch at Carver's Station (sometimes called Carver's, or even Carvers), after making a brief run up Kingston Canyon to look at a cabin I used to stay in way back when. (It's still there, a different color, but still there.)

The trek from the Peavine Campground turnoff to the Pole Line Road, and then back again, on varying types of dirt roads — all the while making assorted turnarounds to check things out and to, well, turn around — took about two hours. (See my Pole Line to Belmont post for the route.)

Mirage in Big Smoky Valley, looking north from about San Antone Ranch, at 2:30 pm.

I had started out the day feeling anxious, agitated, or rushed — though sometimes merely intent and interested — and I went in and out of these various phases as I zoomed down Big Smoky Valley, actually achieving nearly laid-back feelings during lunch repasting. I kept thinking that the agitation and anxiety might be echoing the way I felt back then, back in '76, when I took off down roads I'd never seen before and went to places I'd only heard of.

Big, wide Big Smoky Valley looking north, also at about 2:30 pm.

I'm not sure why I was feeling that way last week while driving roads I'd been on and going to places I'd been to (although some places I hadn't seen in a couple or three decades). It felt a little like overdrive, like I had decided to try to get it all done in one day, therefore I had a deadline and had to rush to meet it. It also felt like agoraphobia: the wide, open, bright blue sky getting larger and brighter the farther south I went and the longer I stayed on the road. I'm sure that banging up and down and across bright beige, washboardy to nearly washed out roads didn't really help matters. I barely stopped anywhere for photos; took most of them on the run.

A closer view of the east side of the southern Toiyabe Range.

I realized later that I'm better off going somewhere — some place, a pre-identified, pre-chosen place — arriving there in the mid to late afternoon or early evening, getting a room (yes, that's right, a motel room, not a camp spot for my truck). Settling in calms me down from any overdrive or hyper-roadness I've accumulated while being wired for driving; I can walk around, get some dinner, have a beer (or not, as the case may be), sit in an air-conditioned room (rather than running through the summery desert and steppe in a hot, non-AC truck), and chill. That way, the next morning I can calmly — after breakfast, and after getting some lunch fixings — get in my truck and drive to a few specified (or even impromptu) areas or roads or towns or whathaveyou.

The same mountains at about 4:30 pm, from just north of the Manhattan turnoff.

Anyway, the glaring, not-yet summer-hot sun can be a detractor while trying to remain calm in desert conditions, and wide-open spaces can be counteracted by spending a couple days indoors doing paperwork or staring at a wall. They can also be relieved by days spent in amongst trees, even those as small as found in a typical piñon-juniper forest. Tall trees are even better. Tall trees and cool water.

A cool-looking ranch on the range-front at Pablo Canyon.

Hmm... what am I doing here? Well, it would be a 16-hour round trip and about $120 in gas just to escape to the lake for the weekend. Or, it could be a similarly long round trip and about $??? in an airplane to get away to that cool north country known as Alaska.

(Oh. And on the way back, before even making it to Carver's Station, the battery gauge started reading lower, and lower, and lower, and... )

Detachment Quotes

Savahia Peak in the Whipple Mountains, CA.

Here are a few detachment quotes, including the one from my blog header. The last two are paraphrased from long ago. I've posted some of these quotes on my Quotes page, under "A few quotes about detachment." (I have pages now!)

...reality can be attained only by someone who is detached.

Simone Weil

An old thing becomes new if you detach it from what usually surrounds it.

Robert Bresson

The detached observer's view is one window on the world.

Kenneth L. Pike

To be consistently effective, you must put a certain distance between yourself and what happens to you on the golf course [or in the field]. This is not indifference, it's detachment.

Sam Snead

Every scene, even the commonest, is wonderful, if only one can detach oneself, casting off all memory of use and custom and behold it, as it were, for the first time.

Arnold Bennett

I have, I admit, a low tolerance for detached chronicling and cool analysis.

Leslie Fiedler

I live in a bus and go from place to place and sometimes feel very detached from what's going on.

Gavin DeGraw

When he has the power to see things detached from self-interest and from the insistent claims of the lust of the senses, then alone can he have the true vision of the beauty that is everywhere. Then only can he see that what is unpleasant to us is not necessarily unbeautiful, but has its beauty in truth.

Rabindranath Tagore

Are you feeling detached yet?

One geologist to another while standing

at the base of the Whipple Mountains.

Is it detachment or ennui?

One geologist to another on a particularly long stretch of road

Enargite from Goldfield

I've got a couple final mineral pictures from Goldfield, NV. The first two are of enargite and pyrite in a quartz matrix, with a fair amount of iron-oxide and possible jarosite.
Enargite is metallic, often dark gray, and it's orthorhombic — although the crystal form doesn't show well in these examples, and instead the enargite masses look almost globular. A key feature with these enargite specimens are tiny little pyrite crystals, the pyrite being in a bipyramidal (octahedral) form. Our field trip guide said that the occurrence of bipyramidal pyrite at Goldfield was often related to enargite, and that when one sees bipyramidal pyrite, one should start looking for enargite and other ore-related minerals (and gold).
Here's another example of what the enargite looks like, this time without much (or any) pyrite.
Enargite is a copper arsenic sulfosalt sometimes found at porphyry copper districts and at high-sulfidation epithermal gold districts like Goldfield (also see this report on a high-sulfidation system in Mexico).

High-sulfidation epithermal gold deposits used to be called quartz-alunite deposits, because of their dominant alteration minerals. "High sulfidation," which is really an adjective but is sometimes used as a noun, isn't something you can necessarily see in the field (it doesn't always indicate the existence of a high percentage of sulfide minerals, though abundant sulfides are common in high-sulfidation systems), so I prefer the old term, quartz-alunite. That preference definitely dates me as an oldtimer.

The opposite of quartz-alunite is, generally speaking, quartz-adularia (or quartz-sericite); the opposite of high-sulfidation epithermal is low-sulfidation epithermal. The former classification system is based on descriptive field terms; the latter is ultimately chemical or geochemical.

First Cactus of the Summer

The first cactus of summer:                                                         a prickly pear.

Seen recently while up looking at the lower of three-in-a-row old mine entrances.

One & Two Years Ago Today: Trips to the Ovens

Signs: Nevada Historic Marker #184 and Mining Charcoal
(Click to enlarge)
One year ago today, while some family types were visiting, we all packed up and drove to the Ward Charcoal Ovens, which are inside the Ward Charcoal Ovens State Historic Park, and aren't far off Highway 50 on a good, sometimes washboarded, graded dirt road.
The ovens, built in 1876 out of blocks of nearby quartz latite ash-flow tuff, are partially fenced, and it's difficult to get good pictures sans fencing. You can see some of the ash-flow tuff behind and between the two ovens. There are six ovens, here I'm only showing two. (More will be shown later.)
Looking closely at the first or easternmost oven, I spot something growing part way up the right side. What is it?
Maybe it's a weed?
Closer... It's a wildflower!
This is the kind of flower growing in between the blocks of the charcoal oven, a Penstemon, possibly this one.
The rest of our short visit became an excuse to take pictures of the penstemons, at least for me.
And more...
...and even more.

I've visited these ovens several times over the last three years, and have taken many pictures. In fact, one such visit was exactly two years ago today, when other family types were visiting. There must be something about June!
The lighting is usually a factor in the kinds of pictures one can take, and I'd say that morning and afternoon are probably best, rather than high noon. Fall before the snow flies might also be better than mid-summer, especially because the heat can seem hotter at the ovens than elsewhere in Steptoe Valley. Note another hill of ash-flow tuff behind the ovens; these hills are fun to hike.
It's difficult to get photos inside the ovens without using a tripod, but here are two of my best shots.
Charcoal darkens the walls, and there's been a little oxidation over the years.