Hoodoo

(1) Also known as: goblin, tent rock, fairy chimney, earth pyramid.

(2) A hoodoo is a finger of rock or hard soil that pokes upward from an arid landscape. Hoodoos range from around five to 150 feet (1.5 to 45 meters) in height.

They form when relatively soft rock, topped by harder rock, erodes away, leaving behind the typical columnar formation. Usually the softer under-rock has a sedimentary or volcanic origin. The hard stuff on top forms a "cap rock", which is like a protective, stony cap on top of the hoodoo.

Hoodoos mainly form in desert or hot, near-desert areas such as the U.S. Southwest's Colorado Plateau and the Badlands regions of the Northern Great Plains.

Two weathering processes create hoodoos: frost wedging and rainfall.

Frost wedging happens when liquid water seeps into cracks and freezes, usually at night. Freezing expands water by about 10%, prying open cracks and splitting rock.

Liquid water washes away loose soil and loose stone, and is also slightly acidic, so it can eat away at certain types of stone over long periods of time..

Different kinds of minerals within different rock types in hoodoos are responsible for horizontal bands of varying colors.

The average hoodoo in Bryce Canyon (known for its hoodoo gardens) erodes at the rate of two to four feet (0.5 to 1.5 meters) per 100 years.

(3) A jinx (originally from baseball slang). A charm. A spell.

"The jinx [is] that peculiar hoodoo which affects, at times, a man, at other times a whole team. Let a man begin to think that there is a jinx about, and he is done for for the time being." (Technical World Magazine, 1911)

Like this: "Don't try no voodoo near them hoodoo. They can fall on you head an give you a good jinxin' fer sure, Ed."

 

---

Have anything worth adding? Then try sosayseff@nullabigmail.com
Me? Still got a pointy head, me.

 

Etc...

so says eff: sporadic spurts of grade eff distraction
definitions: outdoor terms
fiyh: dave's little guide to ultralight backpacking stoves
boyb: dave's little guide to backpacks
snorpy bits: nibbling away at your sanity
last seen receding: missives from a certain mobile homer
noseyjoe: purposefully poking my proboscis into technicals

Glacial Drift

Ice dandruff. Frost droppings. Phase-change dust bunnies.

What glaciers leave behind when they become airborne.

It can be anything, but — wouldn't you know — it's most likely to be sand, gravel, gritty sludge, cobbles, small boulders, medium boulders, large boulders, and giant boulders.

Some of this stuff comes from whatever it is that a glacier is pushing around, some falls into streams flowing under a glacier, some collects in ponds or lakes near or beneath a glacier, a certain amount comes from a glacier's back, and, well...like that.

"Glacial till" (another name for this stuff) falls directly out of the ice (as it melts, just before it gets all liquid and runs away downhill or before it evaporates into the sky and flies away on teenytiny molecular wings), and so glacial till isn't nicely layered or sorted by size and weight the way stream debris is by water flowing at different speeds.

And, what's more (Yay! Love this stuff! Free facts!), even in otherwise glaciated country there are areas without drift, such as the southwestern quarter of Wisconsin, a pretty heavily glaciated state (and home of the Ice Age Trail, for crying out loud). There, in the southwest, undisturbed streams have sluiced, ice-free, for hundreds of millions of years and have cut the landscape into myriads of narrow ancient valleys and ridges. And there is no glacial drift at all, because the land there has never been invaded by glaciers. True! Ever so true!

Wow.

 

---

See tabs at the top for definitions and books.
Have anything worth adding? Then try sosayseff+eff@nullabigmail.com
Me? Just got my semi-annual scraping. Feels good.

Seismic Wave

Did the earth move for you? Well that was a seismic wave. They are complex buggers so we'll lump them all together here in one definition to make it even more confusing. Give you something to work out on your own, so you don't get bored with life.

OK then.

First, you got yer body waves and then yer surface waves. The body waves travel through the earth's body like lunch travels through yours. Surface waves on the other hand are more like creepy caterpillars inching along your skin.

Body waves not only travel through the inside of the earth but they move in every possible direction, all at once. They get called a lot of names. You have yer p-waves and yer s-waves to start. And maybe some others, unofficially.

"P" is a primary, longitudinal, irrotational, push, pressure, dilatational, compressional, or push-pull wave.

"S" is a shear, secondary, rotational, tangential, equivoluminal, distortional, transverse, or shake wave.

Now for yer P think of a slinky toy on a table, with you pushing it back and forth, away from you and toward you. Compression and rebound. Fine and dandy.

For yer S, think of a wave on water, only real s-waves can't travel through liquids or gases (or the liquid core of the earth), but they would look like water waves if you could see them. Hot waves. Real hot waves. Prolly spicy too, as far as rock goes.

Now then that leaves surface waves. They are different from body waves. They don't travel through the earth but stay on top where it's more fun and they can watch stuff happen if they get bored.

Oddly enough, surface waves and the s-wave type of body waves are the strongest, at least at the surface, and cause the most damage as they vibrate around and do what-all. This is how buildings fall down. Good time to be somewhere else, as so often happens in life.

And if you're wondering what the heck this has to do with backpacking, well it doesn't, unless you get (un)lucky and wake up on top of an earthquake. This is so you know. You get to decide if it's fun or not, your ownself.

So if you wake up and it feels like the earth is one big snake wiggling around underneath you, that's a p-wave down there, coming up for air. On the other hand if it feels like you're getting booted in the gut or the butt (depending which side you sleep on), and you seem to be bouncing all over, and you actually are all alone, and it's the earth what's doing stuff with you, well that's an s-wave or an uppity surface wave dropping by to say hello and give you a few kicks just for fun. I can still do that part.

Enjoy if possible.

As for me, all my references have gone dead, so I can't prove any of this. Time to sit back, have another beer and do some kitty tickling, I guess. I can still do that part.

 

---

See tabs at the top for definitions and books.
Have anything worth adding? Then try sosayseff+eff@nullabigmail.com
Me? Recently bumped by something that went by real fast. Think it said "Wheeeee!" But maybe not.

Definitions: Boulder Hopping

(1) Hiking from rock to rock without touching the ground in between.

Dangerous. Tricky. And small rocks don't count.

They should be too big to step over. Boulders. Got it?

(2) Somewhere in the deepest wilds of ancient, uncharted Scandinavia there was once a large stone. A very large stone.

There are many there still, the stones, and there are stones in other places as well. Stones are common, but this stone was not. This stone was completely different. This stone had a voice.

It used its voice to sing.

It sang not well as the short, evanescent lives of humans tend to judge these things, but you know what they say about talking dogs. Anyway, the stone sang.

People came from every farthest corner of the known world to wonder at this stone, as it sat centered in a small, vigorous stream. A stream that any man could throw his sword over (and some children as well), but yet too fiercely, aggressively vigorous to cross.

So there sat the stone. Solid. Unmoving. Endlessly singing to itself in one warbling roaring bass note.

The "Bullra Sten", the "Noisy Stone" it was named. So it was called. So they called it. And it sat for ages, just there, unmoving, in that one solitary place.

For ages. And ages untold.

And whenever a few gathered and drew near, or even one alone it seems, the stone sang directly to them, or to that one person, in its profound deep voice. It sang of the day and it sang of the night. Of the seasons, and of the snow, and of the rain. Of the light and of the darkness. Of eternity.

The stone sang of loneliness and of lost love and war and of the peace that follows death.

The stone sang to no one, but yet it sang to all — to itself, by itself, and all who came and heard the stone were certain that it sang for them alone, to them only.

And when these people returned to their homes, many returned not always buoyant, not always cheerful, not always smiling, not always feeling awash in sunshine and light, but reassured somehow. Always reassured that no matter their fate, no matter what the stone had told them, still it was ultimately for the best, and that all would be set right during the final tally at life's end.

Tales of the stone, the Bullra Sten, the Boulder Rock, the Singing Earthstone, the Fate-stone, the Divider of life and of death, these tales spread far and wide.

Many wished to visit the great stone but few could manage the difficult journey to such a remote location, or even could manage to learn where it lay. In any case the stone seemed to take notice of none. It did not care who came and who went, many or few, or when. The stone sat, through the ages, and only sang its song.

And then one day, one day seemingly like all the others, the stone was there no more. No one had seen it go. It had not rolled. It certainly had not walked. It was too massively great to have been carried off, and no one would have dared try.

But it was gone, and its voice as well was gone. The stone's massive throbbing voice filled the valley no longer, leaving a great empty void.

The voice of the stone was now silence itself, if there can be a sound emanating from a thing not there, and perhaps there can, for the silence itself became a great looming presence.

But people still came.

People came to the very same spot that they had always come to, and they stood, reverently, and gazed at the place in the stream's bed where the stone had sat. Where it had sat since before the forefathers of their forefathers or the mothers of their greatest great-grandmothers had walked the earth.

The people came, and stood in reverence, and it seems, at whiles, that some, the quietest and most reverent, could still make out the distant echoes of the stone's now silent song. So they honored the stone, even in its absence. They celebrated.

At midsummer, in the farthest reach of the coldest wasteland where once had stood the singing stone, a few gathered and celebrated even in the midst of their sadness for the missing stone.

And on the very peak of the arching forehead of a nearby stone, a stone almost - very nearly - a sibling of the original but yet some distance from the stream, they hung garlands of hops, and bathed that stone with flagons of ale, in worshipful memory of their lost singing stone. This then, this ceremony came to be called Boulder Hopping.

In recent years, boulder hopping has become a major party-time blowout and Trans-Euro televised sporting event.

Hot babes in bikinis, motocross races, championship soccer, and scores of food stands fill the valley for two crazy, fun-filled midsummer weeks every June. Get two of anything on a stick for the price of one, and any tattoo imaginable While-U-Wait. No problemo, come one come all. Bring cash.

Come early, stay late. Day and night, 24 hours without end. All partying all the time.

Toke up on local herbs and chill out in the neon green fiberglass pagoda (fully climate controlled) built exactly on the spot where the original Big Mutha Rock used to sit, and wait for word from the Other Side, thru your own ear buds. (And there's an app for that too. Great!)

Buy your admission by the day or get a two-week Full-On Full-Throat Event Pass and save big. BIG!

You won't live forever so Don't Miss It Again This Year!

Even bigger, even better than ever before!

More babes!

More food on more sticks!

More of everything!

Don't miss the greatest next, greatest ever EuroVent! You Will Not Regret It!

Definitions: Cap Rock

(1) A hoodoo hat, or...

(2) As used by trail builders, this term means: A rock or course (layer) of rocks laid as the finishing touch on top of a structure such as a stone retaining wall. This layer may consist of larger stones than those below, and may overhang them a bit, simulating a railing if this layer is carefully made and continuous, or those stones may be just a collection of rocks sitting on top.

(3) Cap rock as used by recreational geologists: In recreational geology a cap rock is one that is sitting on top of another rock just for your amusement.

Sometimes things really do work out this way. The rocks involved in this sort of relationship aren't any two ordinary rocks that happen to find themselves together. No indeed. They are special. In fact the thing that is being sat upon may not be a rock at all. How crazy is that?

But the cap rock is always a rock, and it's always on top, like a cap.

Thing as we use it here to denote the thing that is being sat upon is a general term, but not too general. This thing is a thing that can stand on its own, so it's got some backbone, and if it is stone then it has lots of backbone, but not too much, because.

Because normally the cap rock is a hard stone, in the sense that it doesn't weather quickly, while the stuff under it (which might be only a firm sort of soil) is relatively susceptible to weathering. And that there is your secret.

This relationship is one that blossoms only in dry climates which see episodes of infrequent but sometimes intense weathering. The cap rock was once loafing around innocently like any ordinary rock on the surface, and the surface was one great piece of level land, and then along comes time. Lots and lots of time. Ever so much time.

And time brings its close friend weathering. After much time elapses what we see is what's left of the landscape. All of the level land that went on almost forever, remember that? Well it weathers away and washes down the drain, and the only part left is that rock and the stuff under it that the rock has protected from the elements.

This one piece of landscape that's left often takes the form of a pillar wearing a cap. The cap rock is that cap. No one actually knows what recreational geology is, so take this all with a pinch of dust.

(4) Cap rock as used by petroleum geologists: In grownup, boring geology a caprock (i.e., our familiar little cap rock) is an impervious layer of rock that lies over an oil or gas deposit deep underground.

This is important because the caprock keeps all that oil and gas from shooting upward and getting all over your nice clothes if you're an urbanite, or your cows if you're a rancher, or into your bowl of noodles if you're a backpacker who finally got a chance to sit down and prepare lunch.

Keep in mind that caprocks are under a lot of pressure, even though technically they sit on top of the pressure rather than actually being under it. Figure of speech. But pressure. It's pressure all the same. A lot of pressure. You have no idea how much pressure. Only baffling quantities of complicated numbers can even come close to describing it.

In fact it's only because this is all deep underground and there are thousands and thousands of feet of rock and dirt and groundwater and accumulated gopher poop above the caprock layer that the whole arrangement doesn't spontaneously explode and blow itself all over the landscape.

That's where you come in.

See, all these layers got laid down little by little over eons and it was only later, long after all these random layers drifted in that all the ratty old dead dinosaurs and creepy fallen giant tree ferns and big and little things with and without eyes or feelers or chlorophyll gradually squished together under it all in a big mooshy mess and had their juices pool and ferment into oil and gas and built up insane amounts of bubbly pressure.

This is dirt after all, along with a few rocks, and none of it was designed to work in a high pressure environment so generally it's pretty fragile, and all it takes is one idiot on his day off, stomping around and yelling or even playing his radio too loud and that might be enough, just that one little extra tickle of vibration, it might be just enough to set the whole thing off, so be respectfully quiet out there, walk softly, and chew those noodles carefully.

Innocent bystander spotted along the Maah Daah Hey trail.