#eastern Oregon

[bettergeology]

As seems to happen fairly regularly, I found myself in the John Day Fossil Beds again, leading and helping out with geology hikes through the hills.

The particular topics I wanted people to get out of this hike was the relationship between rock strength and landscape shape. See the round, symmetric hill in the center of the above photo? It is made of almost unconsolidated (soft) clay and silt with very low strength. Below it is a cliff ledge of much harder rock, an ancient lahar (volcanic mudflow) which turned to concrete-like stone after flowing down an ancient river valley. This harder rock sits directly below the soft clay, holding it up.

Even in places where rocks and hills all look roughly the same, as in this part of Oregon, there is often incredible nuance to be found within the landscape.

[rebeccathenaturalist]

This was part of my drive back home after the conference last night; not a bad commute if you ask me. (Oregon 197 a little south of Maupin.)

[jadeseadragon]

Eastern Oregon - hoarfrost on a foggy afternoon. The photos near the Owyhee River were taken from a moving vehicle.

[whywishesarehorses]

Cow Horse Mustang - with W Spur Horsemanship

[ivankosovan]

The mist rolling through the forest.

[burnsoregonphotoblog]

BURNS, Oregon-EARLY STREET-SCENE- Date Unknown

[folsomchauser]

[marseesthisway]

show off

[great-wonder]

Wallowa ‘24

[barrywone]

DSC_0954 (2) - Wallowa-Whitman National Forest.

[bettergeology]

Colorful Clays of the Painted Hills area

The Painted Hills are one of the most popular and well-known of Oregon's scenic treasures. The towering ridges of yellow, red, and black clays reveal part of the complex geologic story of Oregon when the area was a tropical rainforest, or a hardwood temperate forest, or a volcanic hellscape at different times. The different bands and layers are folded, warped, and faulted by complex plate tectonics. Here though, at Painted Cove just behind the main Painted Hills viewpoint, the story is just a little different.

Painted Cove is a couple of shallow gullies linked in a loop by a boardwalk and trail. In here, you pass through areas of bold red and yellow clays before reaching a gully flanked with a light purple rock. The light purple is of a completely different origin than the clays, which are effectively fossilized soil layers.

This is a weathered outcrop of rhyolite lava, a lava composition that is mostly quartz by mass. This area grades from purple to brown to red. This is an actual preserved soil horizon. If you dig a hole, you go through different soil horizons - or chemical and physical conditions - before you reach bedrock. Commonly these are O (for organic-rich), A, B, and C. B and C are closest to bedrock and include chunks of weathered, eroded source rock. Here, the purple is that C horizon, then the brown layer is B, and the red is an A horizon mantling the rhyolite lava flow. This whole stack of soil is somewhere around 25 million years old!

This is one of my favorite rock outcrops in all of Oregon because of how elegantly and simply it displays soil development processes from more than 25 million years ago!

(A note for other geologists: my soil horizon analogy isn't completely accurate since these paleosols have different classifications than regular young soils do, and I'm not very well-versed in those at all)

If you're in to photography, these are (with the exception of the 2nd to last shot) shot on Fuji Color 400 with my Nikon FM2.

[erkmurray]

Pit stop at my favorite viewpoint in Eastern Oregon

Insta

[jadeseadragon]

Twilight with Geese, Eastern Oregon

2025-01-28

[mel-smeld]

I love you Earth, I love you Sun, I love you stars.

Aurora borealis at Hat Rock State Park in eastern Oregon.

[oregon-art]

Charles Erskine Scott Wood, Untitled (On the Snake River), 1906, oil on canvas, 25"x30"

C.E.S. Wood may have been the most influential cultural figure in Portland in the forty years surrounding the turn of the twentieth century. He helped found the Portland Art Museum and was instrumental in making the Multnomah County Library a free and public institution. He secured the services of his friend Olin Warner, a nationally known sculptor, to design the Skidmore Fountain, and his words "Good citizens are the riches of a city" are inscribed at its base. The Portland Rose Festival was his idea. He numbered among his friends Mark Twain, Emma Goldman, John Reed, Clarence Darrow, Lincoln Steffens, Ansel Adams, John Steinbeck, Charlie Chaplin, James J. Hill, and Langston Hughes. Soldier, lawyer, poet, painter, raconteur, bon vivant, politician, free spirit, and Renaissance man, Wood might also be the most interesting man in Oregon history.

via

C.E.S. Wood on the Oregon Encyclopedia

[burnsoregonphotoblog]

Watering Hole Near Burns Oregon 1910