Dancing in the Dark
You might remember the original photo from my earlier post “Dandelion.” I started playing with the image in Picasa….
Springtime on Little Cottonwood Canyon Stream
The trail alongside the stream that runs much of the length of Little Cottonwood Canyon has become a favorite hiking destination of mine since I moved to the Salt Lake City area almost two years ago. While there are things about the trail that I find to be less than wonderful (being able to hear the vehicle traffic that also goes up into the canyon, being a wide enough trail that allows for mountain-bikers to come flying around a corner with but a second’s notice, and being close enough to that same roadway and the nearby city so that idiots with cans of spray-paint can come out into the beautiful wild and tag the cement water-courses and picnic pavilion), there are more than enough awe-inspiring views and soul-fulfilling experiences to be had, that those detractors quickly fade into the background and become non-issues. It is literally a 15 minute drive from my house to the trail-head that leads to this natural wonder…and I simply cannot get there often enough.
Vintage Pipe Repair
There is a water pipe, or two of them maybe, that run(s) from two water collection points in Little Cottonwood Canyon and down into the greater Salt Lake City metropolitan area, where the water that it transports is treated and then used in the municipal water supply. Sometimes the pipe is underground, sometimes running directly next to the stream on the bank, crossing the stream suspended by steel cables, on pylons from one creek bank to a nearby hillside where it disappears again, or somewhere else between stream and trail, tucked away among the various trees and brush that populate the wooded area on the mountain-side. I’m not sure when the water collection points were built, but it appears to have been several decades ago.
On one of my hikes this past winter, I found a sheet of muddy ice that extended down the trail for 30 or 40 yards, until it veered off into the brush. Continuing up the trail, I discovered that the pipe had burst and the water ran unchecked for some time. I don’t know if the controllers at the main water collection point downstream noticed a decrease in pressure, or if a hiker notified the authorities that they had sprung a serious leak, or what, but I saw that the pipe had been repaired, and after examining it, didn’t think much more about it. The technicians used a novel method that did not involve removing the split pipe and replacing it with another section. It was composed of a metal band that appeared to press a rubberized material against the gash, all bolted down secure and working as designed.
So…where am I going with all of this? A couple of weekends ago, one of my older sons and I were returning from a hike up into the canyon and my son happened to see a large section of pipe that had been removed from the main pipeline. It had been tossed into the brush and allowed to remain there…for what appears to have been many, many years. The section of pipe was likely removed because of a leak that refused to remain repaired…. The failed old-school repair has provided a beautiful nursery for life….
And lastly, this is the repair from winter of 2011…quite an advance in pipe-repair technology….
Scale…or perspective….
It’s nice sometimes, and necessary at other times, to take a step back…or up, to get another view of the objects of our attention…. It’s amazing what we can see when we’re not so focused on the one single thing…but on the whole and big/huge picture…. I hope you’ll enjoy these photos of one of my favorite places here in the canyons and mountains near Salt Lake City, Utah, USA….
This is what appears to be an old water-wheel house on the banks of the stream in Little Cottonwood Canyon. If you were to peer inside the window, you could see the old spooned wheel that used to turn with the flow of water to generate electricity many years ago.
Here’s another view from a little farther away…. I’m actually standing in the middle of the stream-bed taking the picture. The stream is empty right now, as the entirety of the water is being captured upstream and diverted into the water supply for the metropolitan Salt Lake City area. It will be flowing bank to bank in a couple of months when the water from the snow-melt is running.
This shot is from the slope heading up the side of the mountain that is on the south side of the canyon…you can see the empty stream-bed.
And lastly, this one is from way up on the side of the mountain. You can see the wheel-house on the stream bank near the lower right-hand corner of the photo….
Antelope Island – Part II
There were too many photos from our field-trip to Antelope Island to share in one posting. I hope you’ll enjoy the second batch, as well.
Years ago, I had the opportunity to drive the bridge that spans Lake Ponchartrain in Louisiana…and I’ll have to admit that it was rather un-nerving…nothing but water on both sides for 24 miles. Traveling the causeway that leads to Antelope Island out in the Great Salt Lake was very different. I don’t know if it was that there was literal dirt and earth beneath the roadway, or what…but the seven miles out to the island seemed no different than driving on a regular road out in the city or across the country…it was just a road.
I thought the layer of haze would negatively impact the result of the photos when I was out on the island, but when looking at them later, I find that I actually like the way it causes the mountains to almost appear to be rising up out of the lake.
My younger daughter looking out at the lake. I believe those are the visitors’ center buildings in the distance.
I love the sweeping earth tones, but am excited to see the island in the full green of spring and summer.
There were several horse trailers parked down by the bay on the west side of the island. These were the only riders we saw out on the trails.
I love the fence rails and the golden hills…. It’s almost hard to believe that all of this is on an island.
There’s something about this view…kind of stunning…beautiful.
Field Trip to Antelope Island
It’s always pleasing when a recommendation (direct or otherwise) from a friend results in a rewarding experience. About two weeks ago, Fergiemoto commented on my Salt Lake City Seagull post and mentioned that you can see LOTS of sea-gulls on the causeway that leads from the mainland to Antelope Island out in the Great Salt Lake. As I have lived in the Salt Lake area for just over a year and had not yet ventured out to visit the lake up-close and personal, let alone traveled the 40 miles north of the city to visit Antelope Island, it seemed like a good time to do so. It was a rather chilly and windy February morning and afternoon, and while there were plenty of birds flying about and resting in the lake’s water, I have to admit that I didn’t take particular notice of the gulls…there were too many other things that captured my attention and begged for me to stop the truck and take their pictures. Anyway…thank you, Fergiemoto, for your recommendation. It was a wonderful day-adventure. 
Antelope Island is about 15 miles long and 4.5 miles wide and is the largest of the six or eight or more islands that exist in the Great Salt Lake. This photo was taken on the road that lies on the eastern side of the island and leads out to a farm/ranch near the north end of the island that was originally established in the late 1800′s. Even though the island is smack-dab in the middle of a lake that has greater salinity than the oceans, there are more than 40 fresh-water springs on this eastern side of the island that serve as water sources for the natural and imported wild-life. Aside from the prong-horn antelope, from which the island gets its name, there is also a herd of more than 600 imported buffalo, or American Bison, that roam freely over the island. There are also long-horned sheep, mule-deer, bob-cats, coyotes, and many ducks, gulls, other water-birds, and raptors. The state-park literature also reports that Bald-Eagles frequent the island during their seasonal migrations.
We didn’t spot this antelope until we were actually leaving the island. As I got out of the truck to take the photos, I heard him making some barking-type sound…almost like he was calling to his friends to come back. A cyclist who had also stopped to look at the antelope and listen to his calls said that this particular antelope was a male, as only males have the black cheek markings and a bit of a mane that runs down the middle of the neck.
I think it’s remarkable that we could be on an island in the middle of the Great Salt Lake and see buffalo resting in the tall and winter-dried grasses.
The boys were eager to get out of the truck and climb the rocks…having fun with their own little adventures and seemingly mindless of the chilling wind. There was a bit of haze on the lake…maybe an inversion layer of vehicle particle emissions…or salt dust carried in with the winds from the desert south and west of the lake. Those are the Wasatch Mountains in the background.
I’ve seen these deer in the mountains of Colorado and in the mountains and canyons of Utah and Arizona…but on an island in the middle of the Great Salt Lake? Yep…
When I mentioned in my earlier post, Mass and Form, about trying to get a good profile shot of the bison/buffalo, this is the closest and best that I could get. He kept moving in circles away from me….
Everyone had a nice time driving and walking about the island…even my 3yo grand-daughter. This last photo was taken near the farm/ranch on the north end of the island. You can see that the winter grass has been mown beyond the fence.
Salt Lake City Sea-Gull
When I was settling into my new digs here in Salt Lake City, walking to and from Liberty Park during my lunch-hour, driving around the city, and hiking on the weekends, it struck me as strange that there would be sea-gulls as part of the natural fauna for this mountain area…even with the Great Salt Lake being present. My life experience, to date, involved gulls only existing or living near the oceans. While it is no longer unusual, to me, to see them flying about, even with snow blanketing everything during its season, it still seems a bit strange….
In an effort toward learning more about my new home-town, I read a couple of books on the history of the Salt Lake area and the Mormon pioneers. One of the books, The Great Salt Lake, by Dale L. Morgan, detailed the “miracle of the gulls,” and the almost revered place the birds hold with the faithful of the Mormon Church. Long-story-short is that the Mormon settlers’ crops were being destroyed by crickets, the gulls suddenly appeared one morning and dropped out of the heavens by the tens and hundreds and thousands and consumed the crickets, the crops recovered, and the people survived…and the Mormons blessed and praised their god for his providence in rescuing them from crop-failure and certain starvation. There is a monument memorializing this gull-salvation in the form of a giant and open-winged gull perched on an arch at State Street and South Temple in downtown Salt Lake City…only a couple blocks from the temple. Morgan also tells us in his book that, while there is a local taboo against causing any harm to befall the birds, it is also against the law.
Faces of the Falls
This is from my first visit to the Bells Canyon’s lower falls in October 2010…
…and five months later in March 2011….
…and in July 2011 at the height of the snow-melt…it was hard to photograph any closer because of the spray….
…in September 2011…
…and a couple months later in November 2011….
…and now in January 2012…the only time I’ve seen it frozen-over…. I could barely hear the water trickling beneath the ice….
It still thrills my heart to live in a place where there are significantly changing seasons…different times of the year when the natural world puts on another face and shares a side of herself that we would miss if we didn’t visit her often….
Lines and Shadows
One of the remarkable things about being the first person out on the trail after a snow-fall is that the first visage with the unblemished snow will not exist again until it snows significantly enough to cover all the tracks…and that might be months or a year away. So it was with a bit of reluctance, then, that I continued along the trail, being the one to mark-up the perfect snow-fall…the one to taint the treasure that only existed for a few hours. Here’s some mind-boggling beauty for you…
The photos were all taken along the Pipeline Trail in Mill Creek Canyon, Salt Lake City, USA.
Good Morning, Moon
The trip was unplanned this time, but I brought the camera along anyway…and so glad I did. I tried to capture the layers of color that my little one asked me to photograph a couple weeks ago, and I think it worked better this time…and then the moon was still there, so it was too good to resist.
Ice Embryos
I will grant that this is an unusual reference for the literal substance that will follow in the photos, but I was struck by the parallel when looking at the images by themselves. The forming ice actually has the appearance of cells…me thinks…and the accompanying photo array demonstrates the allegory or likeness of life forming in a womb.
If the page you are viewing has the graffitied water chute with the beautiful ice formations in the header photo, the “nursery” for these ice babies is located toward the far right side of that picture, at the bottom of the smaller water fall…
I suppose I should add a photo of the graffitied chute in case it doesn’t randomly appear when you’re viewing the page…so here it is…or a large portion of it…the part that I’m referring to anyway….
…and then this is the close-up of the nursery itself….
This next photo has the appearance of the inside of a fallopian tube where the wonder of fertilization takes place…you can almost imagine the cilia inside the tube pushing the little egg along on its journey…
…and these could be little ice cells dividing and making more of themselves, stem-cells that differentiate into their programmed forms…
…with the mass developing into tissues that will flesh-out the body in whole…
…until we can see it in embryo-form…
…and lastly the little buds where the limbs will grow…
…or maybe not…but that’s what came to My mind the first time I looked at the photos.
to be alive
I think it’s incredible that plants can live and thrive on the side of a rock. It’s more believable, I suppose that they can live on the side of a tree, but I suppose when I consider it all together, there are minerals and salts and whatever else might be needed in the both of them…and with the abundant moisture on the often wet rock and trees, I guess everything is there.
Water and Ice
Somehow the element of it being really cold doesn’t play into the equation when viewing this natural beauty…except when standing and kneeling next to the edge of the stream…or leaning over it to take the picture, and hoping that I don’t slip and fall in….
These were taken over a stream near Church Fork, just down the hill a little ways from Pipeline Trail on the way to Burch Hollow and Elbow Fork…curious names of places in Mill Creek Canyon, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA.
Ice Tube?
I believe I mentioned in an earlier post how the stream in Little Cottonwood Canyon is greatly diminished during the winter months when the annual snow-melt is finished and when most of the remaining water is diverted into the local cities’ water reservoirs. To take these pictures from the front angle, I was stepping/crouching on rocks that were in the middle of the stream bed. You can tell from the pictures that the stream is not flowing with any significant force or quantity of water. During the rush of the snow-melt months, the stream is usually flowing with several thousands of cubic meters of water per minute…and it would be impossible to capture pictures from the middle of the stream during those times.
When I first saw the ice formation from the side of the stream, it appeared to just be a bunch of ice that had formed near the flow of water. The closer I was able to make it to the actual waterfall, the more I could see that ice had formed in the shape of a tunnel or tube and the water was channeling through it from the rock above and into the little pool beneath…another crazy little marvel of nature…and a beautiful one at that.
It seems that the flow on the left is forming another tube…with the outer edges eventually coming together to completely enclose the water channel…maybe. It would be interesting to return in a few weeks and see if it happened…provided nothing destroys it in the interim.
This last picture is my favorite….
