“stick your foot somewhere & see what you can see”

“In some ways this is a meditative exercise. In others, an unconventional form of yoga. Either way, it's surprising what you can see if, for a moment, you stand still and refuse to move.” –Lucy Corrander

Earlier this week, on a bright fresh morning, I performed the mind-expanding exercise of foot-sticking, following Lucy’s directions from years back: “… plant your foot firmly in a roughly random place and see what you can see without moving. Best is when you plant both feet. If you are on a slope or some other kind of difficult ground you may need to move the other foot for the sake of balance - but you mustn't move the 'stuck' foot. You can bend your body this way and that. You can lean forward and twist at the waist - but you mustn't swivel that stuck-foot.” So I didn’t.

However my place was only barely “roughly random.” It was in a flat area near my campsite where wildflowers grew, as I knew from a stroll the night before. I walked to the first big opening and stuck my foot on an old anthill. It was nearly level with the ground but still obviously an anthill. The particles were well-sorted, forming a patch of fine gravel surrounded by rock fragments in dirt.

In gravel I saw old dried rabbit poop (did you notice?). The nearby dull flat rock fragments are more interesting than you might think. Just that morning I had read that 500 million years ago these rocks were sediments on the bottom of the sea off the west coast of young North America. Now they lie 8000 feet above sea level.

It was still early in the season, so only a few plants were blooming. I twisted around far enough (only one foot was stuck) to photograph some tiny white flowers. Is this a cryptantha (borage family)? That’s what the coarse hairs suggested.

A penstemon in bud was hiding in the shrubbery, visible below as blueish gray leaves. I saw a lot of herbaceous plants growing "in the protection" of shrubs that probably provided shade for the seedlings in this harsh environment. Sorry for the lousy shot but then I didn’t pick the spot for outstanding photo possibilities …  well, not totally.

A few feet away, I spotted a prickly pear cactus (Opuntia sp.) with long spines, unlike the ones I know from Wyoming. Then I noticed that the anthill wasn’t abandoned after all!

Almost done, guys, I’ll be outta here soon.

The most common blooming plant by far was a wild buckwheat (Eriogonum) growing low to the ground—a true cushion plant. From the anthill, it appeared as gray and yellow mats. The yellow flowers, sometimes tinged with red, were in flattish clusters typical of many eriogonums.

I had to unstick my foot for some close-ups, for this was quite an elegant little eriogonum! A vague memory surfaced—“eriogonum caespitosum”—after all, it’s definitely caespitose (botanese for growing in dense tufts).

With Google images now available, I searched and was astonished by what I found. Jim Morefield had shared a photo of Eriogonum caespitosum and it looked really similar to the plants I saw, including growth form and even the rock fragments nearby. Then I noticed … it was taken in the same mountain range! Did fate smile today?

Mat buckwheat in the White Mountains; courtesy Jim Morefield.

Now back to the anthill. Looking up, I was surrounded mostly by sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata) with occasional snakeweeds (Grindelia squarrosa). Singleleaf pinyon (Pinus monophylla) and Utah juniper (Juniperus osteosperma) grew on the slopes above the sagebrush.

Sagebrush is blue-gray-green. Snakebrush is bright green in comparison.

The more yellow-green trees are junipers; the rest are pinyons.

I was able to twist around far enough to catch a sign by the side of the road. It recommended 4-wheel-drive, in faded hard-to-read print (even up close).

Finally, I looked west toward the great Sierra Nevada, still snow-covered thanks to California's stormy winter and a spring blizzard just ten days earlier.

After unsticking my foot, I walked the 4-wheel-drive road to an overlook with the views for which Grand View Campground is named. The Owens Valley below is 4000 feet elevation. The crest of the Sierra Nevada is 13,000+!

View from the White Mountains west to the Owens Valley and the Sierra Nevada beyond.

"Sierra Nevada" means snowy range (Spanish).

A little juniper, and a bit of sage ...

Evelyn Mervyn at Georneys is hosting this month’s Accretionary Wedge -- the topic is Field Trip/Camp Moments:

“Share a fun moment from geology field camp or a geology field trip ...”

Having just returned from a road trip, it’s not surprising that the memorable moment that comes to mind is a recent one -- a night last week in the White Mountains of eastern California.  Amazingly, there was no fire ban in effect, and I foresaw an evening around the campfire, with dancing flashing light and comforting warmth.

Wandering up the slope behind camp, I picked up small juniper branches and a bit of sagebrush too.  Juniper burns hot and flashy, and both are sweetly aromatic.  Just a small fire is enough to keep the dark and cold away, to provide an added measure of security.  The sweet smoke seems to free deep memories ... maybe even hard-wired instincts of ancestors long ago for whom fire was so important, far more than just a pleasant addition to an evening in the mountains.

Stack twigs, then small branches.  Set a match to the wood.  Feed the little fire occasionally.  In the safety of its bright crackling warmth, let the mind drift.

After an afternoon communing with ancient bristlecone pines on really ancient dolomite, I had much to contemplate.  Some of the bristlecones have been growing for over 4000 years.  The dead go back even further, to almost 10,000 years ago.  Who was wandering through these mountains and building evening fires when these trees were young?  Surely people were gathering piñon nuts -- cones were abundant where I camped.  But would they have continued on up to 10,000 feet elevation, to where there were only stunted trees with tiny seeds?  I’m guessing not.  Contemplation of nature for its beauty and amazing stories must be a modern luxury.  We had to wait -- for both leisure time and the insights of science.

Two dead bristlecone pines on slope in mid-distance.  Dense bristlecone wood decomposes very slowly in this cold dry environment.  The dead may stand for thousands of years.

Of course, lifespans of even the oldest bristlecones are but the most fleeting of moments compared with the ages of the rocks around them.  The sandstones and quartzites of the Deep Springs Formation are ca 550 million years old.  The calcareous muds that became the Reed dolomite accumulated even earlier ... maybe 570 million years ago.

Quartzite of the Cambrian Deep Springs Formation.

Bristlecone pine on Proterozoic - early Cambrian Reed dolomite.

These rocks aren’t just old.  They’re special in that they were deposited at a time not well-represented in the rock record -- late Proterozoic and early Cambrian.  This is the gap that we in the western USA know as the Great Unconformity.  Seas had retreated westward, leaving much of western North America exposed to the elements.  Nothing was deposited, and erosion wore away at the landscapes, sometimes all the way down to Archean basement rocks.  But not here.  Today’s eastern California remained inundated in early Cambrian time, being west of the shoreline.  In fact, one of the most complete early Cambrian sequences in the world is found here in the White and nearby Inyo Mountains -- on the order of 20,000 feet thick.

Crest of the White Mountains -- high, dry and with lots of early Cambrian rocks.

Why are Paleozoic rocks so often described as “drab”?  They’re not as colorful as the sandstones of the Colorado Plateau, it's true, but the patterns and arrangements are quite striking.  I was easily lost in shooting them.

Back to the fire -- I occasionally added more wood, and let my mind drift.  Just imagine a sparkling shallow ocean in eastern California, with low hills barely visible on the horizon to the east in Nevada.  Strange little creatures wriggle in sand and mud that will become rocks of the Reed and Deep Springs formations in 550 million years or so ... wow, what a view!  As always, I was struck by the adventures that our minds can create for us.  We may not have complete stories of how these landscapes came to be, but take the information we do have, add a bit of human imagination and ... voilá! ... such wonderful experiences materialize!  I’m grateful to all the botanists and geologists who have helped tell these stories.

I am indebted to two authors in particular for making my recent trip so enjoyable.  Frank DeCourten’s Broken Land, about the Great Basin, is packed with pleasure for both the mind and the spirit (or soul, as DeCourten says).  Ronald Lanner also conveys a strong sense of love and amazement, as well as knowledge, in his wonderful Bristlecone Book.

For more on the ancient bristlecone pines of the White Mountains, see but there s life in the old dame yet, a post I put together after a visit there last spring.

Ancient Plants on Ancient Rocks

Several days ago I posted a short quiz featuring a mystery plant and a mystery rock.   Congratulations to Lockwood for highest score.  He named the bristlecone pine as well as the subsection of pines, the Balfourianae.  This is a really interesting group that I learned of just recently -- very cool, so extra credit Lockwood!  He also got the location (White Mountains of California).  Second place goes to Ronn, who identified the Great Basin bristlecone (Pinus longaeva) growing on dolomite, but had the unfair advantage of knowing the location and purpose of my expedition :)

The Plants

The Great Basin bristlecone pine, Pinus longaeva, is one of three species in subsection Balfourianae, the Foxtail Pines.  The others are the Rocky Mountain bristlecone pine, P. aristata, and the foxtail pine, P. balfouriana.  All three grow at high elevations in harsh conditions, and are extremely long-lived.  The Great Basin bristlecones are the most ancient -- "Methuselah" is thought to be the eldest, at least 4600 years of age.  Many of the stunted bristlecones in the photo below are 3000-4000 years old.

In spite of the habitat similarities of the three species, their ranges do not overlap.  Maps below are modified from Tree Species Range Maps (USGS); accessed May 2012.  This website includes both P. longaeva and P. aristata in the distribution map for the latter (corrected below).  At one time they were considered a single species, but Bailey (1970) provided convincing evidence for recognition of two species.  Current distribution information is from Lanner 2007.

The two disjunct clusters of foxtail pine shown above are recognized as separate subspecies:  ssp. balfouriana in the Klamath Mountains (including a population in extreme southern Oregon not shown), and ssp. austrina in the Sierra Nevada to the south.

The Rocks

In the White Mountains of eastern California and western Nevada, bristlecone pines grow on thin, nutrient-poor soils that develop from the Reed dolomite.

The Reed is massive, white to buff, fine- to coarse-grained dolomite (dolostone) that “weathers to form white, angular to spheroidal, resistant outcrops riven by joints of various attitudes” (Ernst et al. 2003).  It often is assigned to the Precambrian-Cambrian transition ca 600 to 520 million years ago.  Corsetti and Hagadorn (2003) consider it to be late Precambrian based on more precise dating of the PC-C boundary.

Why is it that such ancient trees are found in such extreme environments?  Even more impressive, the oldest bristlecones grow on the harshest sites!  This intriguing situation has puzzled people since the antiquity of the trees was first discovered, and has been the stimulus for a lot of research.  We now know quite a bit about bristlecone pines, though not enough to explain away all the mystery.  You can read more of their strange story at but there s life in the old dame yet.

Literature Cited

Bailey, DK.  1970.  Phytogeography and taxonomy of Pinus subsection Balfourianae.  Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden 57:210-249.

Corsetti, FA.  2003.  The Precambrian-Cambrian transition in the southern Great Basin, USA.  The Sedimentary Record 1:4-8.

Ernst, WG et al.  2003.  Relationships among vegetation, climatic zonation, soil, and bedrock in the central White-Inyo Range, eastern California.  GSA Bull. 115:1583–1597.

Lanner, RM.  2007.  The Bristlecone Book.  Missoula MT:  Mountain Press Publ. Co.