Little Landscapes #40
Washburne State Park, Oregon
2021

Little Landscapes #39
Washburne State Park, Oregon
2021

Little Landscapes #38
Washburne State Park, Oregon
2021

Little Landscapes #37
Washburne State Park, Oregon
2021

In a similar process to the way various hoodoos, balanced rocks, etc. are formed in the desert southwest, the strong winds on this beach created miniature fins of sand under bits of detritus scattered around. I did wonder why the wind didn’t just continually blow the sand out from under the detritus bits, leaving them lying flat on the surface. My original theory was that the bits of detritus shade the sand under them, creating a bit of wet sand while the sand around them dried out in the sun. The wind blew the dry sand away but not the wet sand. Of course you have to wonder why, when the wet sand was exposed to the wind by the dry sand blowing away, it didn’t just dry out and blow away too. Perhaps a simpler, more plausible explanation is that each bit of detritus causes enough turbulence in the air around it to reduce the local wind speed enough to prevent the sand from blowing away. The length of the fin behind the detritus bits shows how much reach the turbulence has behind the object. Yeah, I like that theory better.

Little Landscapes #36
Washburne State Park, Oregon
2021

Turbulent Flow
Washburne State Park, Oregon
2021

The grain pattern of the wood on this stump mimic the tumbling and crashing waves that washed it high on the beach during a storm.

Dazed and Confused
Washburne State Park, Oregon
2021

Going With the Flow
Washburne State Park, Oregon
2021

I’ve been to the coast many times and I’ve seen the sand dunes and the trees that grow bent inland from the strong winds that often frequent the area. But I’ve never been on the beach during such winds before. I quickly found you don’t really want to walk into the wind unless you’re looking for a facial scrub and you definitely don’t want to photograph into the wind. Even shooting downwind, I ended up having to carefully go over my camera with a brush to remove all the sand from the various nooks and crannies. Off the beach even a few yards into the trees it’s quite calm by comparison so I walked to the beach on one trail from our campsite, walked with the wind down the beach and back up into the trees at another access trail and then back to the campground in the trees. That worked quite well.

Little Landscapes #35
Cape Kiwanda, Oregon
2021

This is actually a combination of both little and big landscapes. There is the big ocean in the back ground and the tall cliff in the upper right framing the small water channel on the beach I was kneeling down in to take the photo.

Little Landscapes #34
Cape Kiwanda, Oregon
2021

Up close, a giant driftwood log becomes a barren, terraced landscape.