#Mountain People

[mournfulroses]

Velimir Khlebnikov, from The Collected Works of Velimir Khlebnikov; “Mountain People,”

[rachel-sylvan-author]

"The Shepherd of the Hills" by Harold Bell Wright

[evilladybug]

been reading a folklore book made about my hometown :)

[lifewithaview]

Helen Mundy in Stark Love (1927)

Dir.Karl Brown

A young boy named Rob Warwick reads chivalrous books about how women should be treated better than how he grew up in the mountains. He goes to the city to get an education. While he is away, his father and a close neighbor friend have made his life change drastically. Rob must defeat is personal demons (or someone else must) for him to be free of the stereotypical life of a mountain hillbilly.

*Filmed entirely with a non-professional cast. The two leads, Forrest James and Helen Mundy, were from Alabama and Knoxville, Tennessee, respectively, but the rest were authentic mountain people from Virginia. Despite their involvement as actors, these people had no interest in films, and never saw the movie after it was finished.

[professionalchaoticdumbass]

(2012 minecraft parody voice) I am mining... there are no blocks of sand.... you are digging down with me.... hand in unbreakable hand... and I hope we mine.... I hope we both mine.......

[xtruss]

Researchers studying living pine trees near the Bankso, a ski resort in the Pirin Mountains of Bulgaria, found evidence of dozens of large avalanches that struck the area over two centuries. Credit...Bartek Wrzesniowski/Alamy

Centuries of Avalanches Are Stored in Tree Rings

Discovering Evidence of Deadly Deluges of Snow From the Past Could Help Protect People on Mountains Around the World, Researchers Say.

— By Katherine Kornei | July 10, 2024 | The New York Times

A rumble, a deluge of snow and then silence — avalanches can be deadly, but they often leave behind little enduring evidence of their passage. Now, researchers have turned to tree rings to reconstruct records of avalanches past.

By analyzing the wood of hundreds of living pine trees near a ski resort in Bulgaria, a team of scientists found evidence of dozens of large avalanches that struck the area over two centuries. Understanding the frequency of potentially destructive avalanches can inform risk-management efforts and land-use planning, the researchers suggest. They published their results in the journal Dendrochronologia in June.

The Pirin Mountains in southwestern Bulgaria are home to old-growth forests of pine and fir trees. Many of the trees have been standing for centuries, but some have steeply leaning trunks while others bear conspicuous scars such as broken branches.

“They have certain signs that they were damaged in the past,” said Momchil Panayotov, one of the authors of the study and a dendrochronologist at the University of Forestry in Sofia, Bulgaria.

That damage, many researchers believe, was inflicted by avalanches. The mechanical impact of snow rushing downslope can severely damage a large tree and even uproot it entirely. But visible damage doesn’t reveal when exactly an avalanche occurred, which is important for reconstructing records of the dangerous events. To determine when and where avalanches have occurred in the Pirin Mountains, Dr. Panayotov and Nickolay Tsvetanov, also an author of the study and a dendrochronologist at the University of Forestry, turned to tree rings.

Trees that experience an avalanche develop telltale signs in their rings, Dr. Panayotov said: “The survivors keep the record.”

In 2020 and 2021, Dr. Panayotov, Dr. Tsvetanov and several students collected samples of wood from hundreds of pine trees in the Pirin Mountains that had signs of damage. The team focused on three known avalanche corridors in the Bunderitsa valley, home of the Bansko ski resort. The researchers used an instrument called an increment borer to manually extract pencil-width cores from each living tree. Back in the laboratory, Dr. Tsvetanov dried the cores, mounted them in wooden holders and then sanded them down to reveal individual rings. “It’s a very long process,” he said.

The team then compared those tree-ring records with sequences of rings obtained from nearby undamaged trees. That cross-dating allowed the researchers to pinpoint the timing of unexpected features like suppressed growth, scars and missing rings.

“Trees are amazing recorders of past disturbances, including geomorphic hazards such as snow avalanches,” said Allyson Carroll, a dendrochronologist at California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt, who was not involved in the research.

Dr. Panayotov and Dr. Tsvetanov found evidence of avalanches that took place as far back as the 1600s. But definitively concluding that an avalanche occurred that long ago is challenging, Dr. Panayotov said, as relatively few avalanche-affected trees survive for centuries. The team therefore opted to focus on more recent avalanches.

The researchers inferred that over 20 large avalanches had occurred since the mid-1800s. Some of those events can be linked to historical records — for instance, the avalanche that appears in tree rings dating to 1963 is probably a documented event that occurred on Feb. 12 of that year. But other avalanches seemingly rolled downhill into oblivion. “We don’t have written histories of these events,” Dr. Panayotov said. “We can only rely on tree rings.”

By analyzing the spatial positions of the affected trees, the researchers could also estimate the approximate size of each avalanche. For example, they found that the avalanche that occurred in 1969 was unusually large; it reached high up one of the corridors’ banks. The team also noted that avalanches struck across all three corridors in 1963 and across two corridors in 1931, 1987 and 1996. “There was some specific meteorological situations that favored big avalanches in those years,” Dr. Panayotov said, like strong storms in the wintertime.

But reliably predicting that avalanches are more likely in certain climatic conditions will require more data.

“You need time series that reach farther back in time to get good correlations between climatic conditions and avalanches,” said Markus Stoffel, an environmental scientist at the University of Geneva who was not involved in the research.

Dr. Panayotov and Dr. Tsvetanov hope that their results will contribute to keeping winter-sports enthusiasts safe. Both researchers have a vested interest: Dr. Tsvetanov is a snowboarder, and Dr. Panayotov is a skier who participates in mountain rescue efforts and helps oversee avalanche education and safety at the Bansko ski resort. “I’m a regular over there,” he said.

[applestruda]

little group design thing i wanna do for them

[barghest-land]

drawings from paleo expedition to dagestan, done right on the trip. sometimes messy when it was cold and rainy, but i won't correct it. i think it's cool to leave it just the way it was done, and not retouch it after. there will be more drawings later, but those will be done from home

[sitting-on-me-bum]

A Rare Sight

An Ethiopian wolf sits among purple flowers in Ethiopia’s Bale Mountains National Park.

by Axel Gomille

Wildlife Photographer of the Year People’s Choice Award

[morganbritton132]

Eddie, to his Tiktok following: Do me and Steve do couples costumes for Halloween? Great question. One of us does.

Eddie: But-

Eddie: *holds up a picture of Steve and Robin dressed up as Princess Leia and Luke Skywalker*

Eddie: Not-

Eddie: *holds up picture of Steve and Robin dressed up as Mulder and Scully*

Eddie: With-

Eddie: * holds up picture of Steve and Robin dressed up as Mal and Kaylee from Firefly*

Eddie: Me!

Eddie: *cuts to Robin picking Steve up for work today. They’re dressed up like Woody and Jesse from Toy Story*

Eddie: You’re welcome, bisexuals.

*video ends*

[chillyfeetsteak]

I first became fascinated with it a few years ago when I noticed it out an airplane window on a flight from Texas to Southern California. In an expanse of endless desert, suddenly, a vast body of water. When I got home, I immediately looked it up on a map. The Salton Sea.

It’s the largest landlocked body of water in California. It sits right on top of the San Andreas Fault at over 200 feet below sea level. It is more than twice as salty as the Pacific Ocean. It is completely toxic. And I had never heard of it before then.

(photo essay under the cut)

In the early 1900s the Colorado River was diverted through a series of irrigation canals in order to provide water for the farmlands of Imperial Valley. One of the head-gates broke during a flood, and the desert basin filled with water for 2 years before it was fixed. The unexpected lake soon became a popular vacation destination; it was stocked with fish, and resorts and hotels popped up along its shores. It became known as a great place for sport fishing, waterskiing, and yacht parties. Big name celebrities visited. At one point, it had more annual visitors than Yosemite.

Salton Sea has no outlet, and is only filled via agricultural runoff. As the water evaporated in the hot desert sun, the lake became more and more saline. Chemicals began to build up from the run off causing toxic algae blooms, and mass die-offs of fish and birds started in the 80s. By the 90s, the beaches were littered with fish gills and bird bones and the resorts were abandoned. The lake began to dry up as irrigation run-off was diverted away. The exposed lake bed is also toxic, and the high desert winds kick up the dust, making the air poisonous. 

Despite the unpleasant odor, the noxious air and the summer temperatures regularly reaching 120°, a renaissance of sorts began in the early 2010s. Artist and nomad colonies began to spring up around Salton Sea. Bombay Beach, once a popular resort destination, is now mostly a ghost town, but the folks who remain have turned the ruins on the shores into an outdoor art installation gallery where the found-art sculptures are cyclically destroyed by the elements and then replaced with new ones. Many of the houses and RVs in town are themselves art pieces.

In nearby Slab City, a settlement of off-the-grid lifestylers, you can find even more folk art. Salvation Mountain is a manmade hill painted with bright colors and bible verses and maintained by a community of volunteers. East Jesus is a sculpture garden and art installation. 

This past weekend my partner and I finally made the pilgrimage to the Sea. California has the benefit of being home to a huge array of biomes. In just a couple of hours you can travel from snowy mountain peaks to lush oases to endless sand dunes. Driving the hour or so south from Palm Springs towards Salton Sea is like driving towards the end of the world.

Bombay Beach especially enamored me. The beach is crusted with salt and millions of tiny shells and bones. It smells awful, like sewage and chemicals and low-tide and rotting fish. You drive out onto the beach and park anywhere amongst the sculptures and deteriorating resort ruins. The art feels raw in a way I haven’t experienced before. It reminds me of seeing paleolithic cave art. Humans made this, with no motivation other than to create something intriguing or beautiful or sad. Not much can live out here, but what you find fills me with a great adoration for humanity. Despite the asphyxiation of the natural world, the human spirit persists.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Flower Empowered.

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[zooophagous]

As much as we Americans give guff (and rightfully so) to Europeans for being so weird about nature, let's not forget that Americans are super not immune to it either.

Americans insist constantly that coyotes are going to attack children (your child is exponentially more likely to be seriously injured by their own dog) or that coyotes lure dogs to their deaths by leading them into the waiting pack (your stupid idiot dog with no recall chased a pack of coyotes that fought back and suddenly the coyotes are at fault here?)

But the one that drove me insane the most was the guy who shot the first opossum to be documented this far north in hundreds of years because he was afraid that a 3 pound opossum was going to kill his dog.

It's barely bigger than a guinea pig I promise you it's not going to eat your fucking husky you brain dead idiot loser. Stop being such a mindless coward.

[visenyaism]

me: this test is due at 11:59pm but please do not do anything insane to get it in on time if something comes up for you. if it’s not looking likely just let me know

students in my email inbox at 11:58:

[carebeardean]

Charles has always left Edwin little notes slipped between the pages of his favorite books, in his science equipment, places he knows Edwin loves. Just silly things—post its that say “hi Edwin :)”. doodles of Edwin with his nose stuck in a book. reminders to stock up on wolfsbane. but.

Then, post canon, Edwin tentatively starts dating people. And it’s ridiculous, because Edwin’s right there, all the time, but Charles..misses him a bit. And his heads a mess, and he can’t sort out what the hell he’s feeling most of the time, and whenever he tries to say any of it out loud it comes out rubbish.

So. He writes down some of the shit he can’t say right, and because he’s a coward, hides them so he doesn’t have to see Edwin’s face when he reads them.

then Edwin starts writing back.

Neat lilac blue little envelopes appear in Charles coat pockets. In his bag. Once, in his shoe? Some nights, Edwin will clear his throat and mention something from a letter, offhand, like they’re just picking up conversation, and Charles can pretend they are. That they always have talked about the basement, the belt, the nameless fear that chokes him every time Edwin walks out the door with someone else on his arm.

Sometimes he can’t. The words get stuck in his throat. Edwin’s not mad, he’s maddeningly, stubbornly kind about it, which is worse.

Some nights they trade. A secret for a secret. Charles learns about the novels Edwin used to hide under his mattress, about all the lonely years before Charles got there. About Simon.

Meanwhile, Edwin is losing his mind, because Charles has accidentally stumbled onto what was a fucking courting ritual in his time. Love letters were something engaged couples treasured for years, kept and reread over and over. (Edwin does. keep them in a special box, will take one out and trace the words, tuck it in his breast pocket for courage).

Edwin would rather have to reattach a limb again than lose Charles trust, all the dark and beautiful things he shares with Edwin only. He knows—knows Charles doesn’t mean to make him fall more in love with him.

[wishfulsketching]

The monsters are out and proud