Uncategorized

Short-Timer
Cathedral Gorge, Nevada
2019

The first day I was in Cathedral Gorge, it was experiencing a mix of rain and snow and also the last of water runoff from 6″ of snow it had received a week earlier, so the erosional forces that continually shape the place were in full evidence with muddy rivulets flowing out of all the drainages. That gave me the impression that this tree standing on the edge of the gorge would not be maintaining its commanding position that much longer. In reality, the area is quite arid so the rate of erosion in the soft bentonite clay is measured in inches or fractions of inches per year. So the tree has some time left to flourish.

Breakthrough
Cathedral Gorge, Nevada
2019

Erosion has worn a strangely square hole clear through this thin fin formation.

Coming Apart
Cathedral Gorge, Nevada
2019

Cornered
Cathedral Gorge, Nevada
2019

Little Landscapes #5
Cathedral Gorge, Nevada
2019

Little Landscapes #4
Cathedral Gorge, Nevada
2019

Little Landscapes #3
Cathedral Gorge, Nevada
2019

Little Landscapes #2
Cathedral Gorge, Nevada
2019

Little Landscapes #1
Cathedral Gorge, Nevada
2019

Hiking around Cathedral Gorge, I was reminded of how often closeups of desert terrain can look just like large-scale landscapes that one might see from the air. I’m sure at least a passing explanation for this can be found by appealing to the recursive quality of the Mandelbrot set (a special set of complex numbers) and more generally, fractals. Per Wikipedia:

…a fractal is a subset of a Euclidean space for which the fractal dimension strictly exceeds the topological dimension. Fractals appear the same at different levels, as illustrated in successive magnifications of the Mandelbrot set; because of this, fractals are encountered ubiquitously in nature. Fractals exhibit similar patterns at increasingly small scales called self similarity,^[5] also known as expanding symmetry or unfolding symmetry; if this replication is exactly the same at every scale, as in the Menger sponge, it is called affine self-similar.

(The relevant part of this quote is in the second sentence. I threw in the rest for the math majors out there–and just to spread the confusion around that I experience every time I try to delve into this level of theoretical mathematics or physics!)

Inside Out
Cathedral Gorge, Nevada
2019

Standing inside the “cathedrals” at Cathedral Gorge, looking out. The meltwater from the recent snow they had made for muddy walking in the wet areas. That’s not usually a problem in the desert.