AMERICAN DIGEST: On the Land Archives

On the Land

KA-BOOM! What a difference a day makes

MAY 17, 1980

MAY 18, 1980

On May 18th, 1980, thirty years ago today, at 8:32 a.m., the ground shook beneath Mount St. Helens in Washington state as a magnitude 5.1 earthquake struck, setting off one of the largest landslides in recorded history - the entire north slope of the volcano slid away. As the land moved, it exposed the superheated core of the volcano setting off gigantic explosions and eruptions of steam, ash and rock debris. The blast was heard hundreds of miles away, the pressure wave flattened entire forests, the heat melted glaciers and set off destructive mudflows, and 57 people lost their lives. The erupting ash column shot up 80,000 feet into the atmosphere for over 10 hours, depositing ash across Eastern Washington and 10 other states. Collected here are photos of the volcano and its fateful 1980 eruption. -- The Big Picture

The finest, clearest days in Seattle are those when the inhabitants remark, "The Mountain is out." The Mountain is Mount Rainier, a peak so looming and solitary on the edge of the Puget Sound basin that it makes its own weather. Here's a peek at the mountain I took last week from I-5 inside Seattle city limits.

Continued...

Posted by Vanderleun at May 18, 2010 12:48 AM | Comments (18) | QuickLink:

Landscapes

Laguna Beach, California

Posted by Vanderleun at Jul 29, 2004 5:52 PM | Comments (1) | QuickLink:

The Wasteland

Yellowstone

Posted by Vanderleun at Jul 29, 2004 5:46 PM | Comments (0) | QuickLink:

The Faultline of the World

Click to Englarge

I heard they exploded,
The underground blast,
What they say's gonna happen,
Gonna happen at last,
That's the way it appears.
They tell me the fault line
Runs right through here.
-- John Hartford

PERHAPS GEOGRAPHY IS DESTINY AFTER ALL, as the subtext for this otherwise bland caption for a startling image indicates:

The Sinai Peninsula, located between Africa and Asia, is a result of those two continents pulling apart from each other. Earth's crust is cracking, stretching, and lowering along the two northern branches of the Red Sea, namely the Gulf of Suez, seen here on the west (left), and the Gulf of Aqaba, seen to the east (right).

-- From NASA's Shuttle Radar Topography Mission

Posted by Vanderleun at Jun 18, 2004 6:33 AM | Comments (1) | QuickLink:

When "Product Placement" Goes Too Far

Posted by Vanderleun at Jun 12, 2004 8:27 AM | Comments (1) | QuickLink:

Two American Landscapes

Eadweard Muybridge
American (1830--1904)
The Domes from Merced River, Yosemite Valley, c. 1874
albumen print
George Eastman House

Carleton E. Watkins
American (1829-1916)
Cape Horn, Columbia River, Oregon, 1867
albumen print
George Eastman House

Posted by Vanderleun at May 9, 2004 10:47 AM | Comments (0) | QuickLink:

The Arctic photographs of Subhankar Banerjee

Unnamed Lake
"The refuge is so remote and untamed that many peaks, valleys, and lakes are still without names and shall remain that way. Marsh fleabane cluster along the lakeshore, while Nichenthraw Mountain and spruce trees are reflected on the calm water of early morning."

From: Pressing Forward: Arctic Refuge Photographs by Subhanker Banerjee at Orion.

Posted by Vanderleun at May 4, 2004 7:03 PM | Comments (0) | QuickLink:

Crater Lake, Oregon

On the Road, 1973

Posted by Vanderleun at Jan 29, 2004 9:01 AM | QuickLink:

The Big Tree

(Scroll down. It's a Big Tree)

Posted by Vanderleun at Dec 3, 2003 11:31 AM | Comments (11) | QuickLink:

Never Eat at a Place Called...

Mom's Cafe in Salina, Utah.
Best Chicken Fried Steak on Planet Earth

Posted by Van der Leun at Sep 21, 2003 3:56 PM | Comments (1) | QuickLink:

The Big Machine

From the terse but always interesting Muxway "Very Big Machine"

Fair warning: the image is about 1.6 megs in size and, broadband or not, will eat your browser.

Posted by Vanderleun at Aug 22, 2003 11:52 PM | Comments (2) | QuickLink:

Something Has Eaten the Northeast

The blackout as seen from mid-heaven.
Click for larger image.

Via Junkyard Blog

Posted by Vanderleun at Aug 21, 2003 10:04 AM | Comments (1) | QuickLink:

The Bedrock of the United States

Click for larger image.

Geology of the Conterminous United States at 1:2,500,000 Scale

The present Geologic Map of the United States follows the same format as the preceding Geologic Map of the United States of 1932. Ideally, both have been designed to represent the geological features that the user could find if he should visit any locality within its limits, that is, the bedrock formations that lie at the surface at that locality. In many parts of the country, especially in the arid regions of the Southwest, this is literally true. In other parts of the country there are lesser or greater departures from this ideal, owing mainly to concealment of the bedrock by surficial material.

Posted by Vanderleun at Aug 13, 2003 11:39 AM | Comments (0) | QuickLink:

Big Daddy: World's Biggest Sand Dune

James M. Clash's Forbes article Namibian Giant, is not about some future draftee for the Celtics. It's a fascinating item about taking on a pile of sand so vast it can hardly be imagined.

Wait 30 million years and you get Big Daddy, one of the oldest sand dunes on the planet and thought to be the biggest. A ziggurat of red sand, Big Daddy rises 1,200 feet from the parched African earth of the Namib Desert. Above is the deepest of blue desert skies; at its base is a sea of golden, talc-like clay. The sharp contrast of the three colors reminds one of a giant Rothko painting.

Climbing Big Daddy, however, is not like climbing a Rothko, which would be a great deal easier. First you've got to get yourself to Namibia, in southwest Africa, sandwiched between Angola and South Africa. We flew 15 hours nonstop from New York to Johannesburg, connecting there to a two-hour flight to Windhoek, Namibia's capital. From Windhoek it's still another hour in a small charter plane to Sossusvlei, but the ride, with the sea of dunes undulating below, is supernaturally beautiful.

Posted by Vanderleun at Jul 15, 2003 6:19 PM | Comments (5) | QuickLink: