Stamps of the Day: American Records

A few years ago the US Postal Service issued a series of 40 stamps highlighting the places, animals, and plants in the US that were the largest, loudest, tallest, deepest, fastest, oldest, etc., called Wonders of America.   They also made a puzzle featuring the stamps (in larger than natural size, of course), and it is one of our favorite puzzles here at home.  Tonight when I sat and looked through some of my stamp images to decide which one to pick to write about, I realized that it is actually amazing how many of these record places and organisms I have seen or been to after living in the US for nearly 20 years (yes, it has been that long, incredible).  

So, here it goes, the list of American records:

You can see these in Central Park these days, the peregrine falcons are back!  But one of the best observations I had was in Yellowstone National Park.
(FASTEST BIRD - Peregrine Falcon)

There is nothing like bumping along an old railroad track in the American west over vast sage brush areas (Colorado to be precise) after a vintage steam train and look out the window and see a couple of pronghorn staring at you.
(FASTEST LAND ANIMAL - Pronghorn)

Ancient ruins at the mesas in New Mexico, such as Cliff Palace at Mesa Verde, makes me wonder what kind of threats made people live like this - with the whole village only accessible by ladders.
(LARGEST CLIFF DWELLING - Cliff Palace)

Oh, Mississippi - I love the name of that river.  4 s's, and 4 i's and 2 p's.  And a single M, alone in the beginning.  The delta at its mouth might be as large as half of Sweden, or something like that. 
And New Orleans is of course set in the middle of it.
(LARGEST DELTA - Mississippi River delta)

Just a bit south of where we live, a few hours, is a giant bay along the Atlantic coast... the funny sounding Chesapeake Bay, once full of oysters, blue crabs and fish, but now overpolluted and overnutrified. It is still gorgeous, but it needs to get healthier again. 
(LARGEST ESTUARY - Chesapeake Bay)

Oh, the bullfrog's noises in the night wakes you up in the early mornings around here on the mountain... It is like a giant toad, fat and fleshy, and rather pompous in its behavior.

(LARGEST FROG - American Bullfrog)

Buffalo, bison, same thing.  I have only seen wild bison in Yellowstone, and there we saw them really close, actually too close for comfort when they suddenly changed direction and went straight in among the parked cars where we stood photographing them crossing the road.  I had to jump into the back of a minivan.  Nobody was hurt, but it gives you a lot of respect for these animals. 

(LARGEST LAND MAMMAL - American Bison)

Alligator meat is not bad.  It is lighter-colored than beef, a little fishy in texture, but not taste, more like chicken.  They can move fast too - I have seen 8-feet alligator lay still for 20 minutes and then be gone in 3 seconds with a giant splash down the bank to the water. Never trust a reptile :)

(LARGEST REPTILE - American Alligator)

I have only visited Rocky Mountains in bits and pieces, here and there.  New Mexico (oh Taos!), Colorado (wow, it was incredible), and up in Yellowstone, of course.  But this summer I think we will see the real thing when we visit Idaho and Boise.  This is something else than the Swedish mountains called 'fjällen'. A bit taller, steeper, fiercer, and younger. 

(LONGEST MOUNTAIN CHAIN - Rocky Mountains)

Speaking about mountains, the ones on the East Coast are the sister mountains to the Swedish mountains, same age, formed at the same geological time, and even if maybe taller in the US with the same feel of a bit worn-down, eroded landscapes, and with sequences of ridges and peaks blueing in the distance.  

(OLDEST MOUNTAINS - Appalachians)

In Hawaii, the mountains are so young they don't exist yet.  They are being formed, right now, tonight and tomorrow.  I have stood and looked at the spouting lava at the Kilauea crater in Hawaii, using binoculars since you weren't allowed very close.  Magic magma, lovely lava, and deadly.  

(MOST ACTIVE VOLCANO - Kilauea)

Here is a manmade record piece, which is something you see if you arrive in New York by boat from Europe - the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge connects Staten Island with Brooklyn over the narrow sound (The Narrows) that leads into New York City.  They are starting to grow oysters again under the bridge.  In the past there were lots of oysters here, more than people could eat, but then they disappeared because of pollution.  Soon we might have New York oysters again! 

(LONGEST SPAN - Verrazano-Narrows Bridge)

No records without the most amazing geysers of Yellowstone.  When I was a kid I used to look in books at my grandfather's house, and he had a book on Yellowstone.  I couldn't imagine the hot water spouts, sulfuric ponds, or bubbling mud pits, but they fascinated me, and I hoped that one day I would be able to see this crazy place.  Geology in action, of the most severe kind.  Well, volcanos might be a bit more severe, but Yellowstone is actually a giant volcano, and it is about to erupt at some point... About ten years ago I got the opportunity to visit Yellowstone during a workshop, and it was as crazy a place as I had imagined, or worse.  It is like a place out of a movie.  Moose grazing grass next to hot water springs that are deadly.  Geysers spouting giant fountains of water and steam on schedule.  Day and night. Incredibly.  I need to go back! (My grandfather's Yellowstone book is now in my house too.)

(TALLEST GEYSER - Steamboat)

When we drove up on Mount Washington in New Hampshire in June or July, they still had snow on the top.  It is the windiest place in America, this curved tip of an Appalachian mountain, and it felt like it.  It reminded me of the Swedish mountains, except our mountains in Scandinavia doesn't have giant weather stations on them.

(WINDIEST PLACE - Mount Washington)

And finally, another manmade thing, and this one is of utter impracticality and uselessness.  It just exist because someone had an idea, made it happen, and now everybody comes to see it. (Brilliant tourist marketing!)  I have never been up in the Gateway Arch in St. Louis by the Mississippi, but I have seen it from a distance.  You can take a little elevator inside to go up to the top, but if you are claustrophobic and or afraid of heights it is better to stay on the ground and look up.  

(TALLEST MAN-MADE MONUMENT - Gateway Arch)

Poa volcano in Costa Rica

Yesterday I went up at 2600 m elevation and stood on the rim of the crater of the Poa volcano in Costa Rica.  The crater is 1 km across and the volcano is still active, with the latest eruption in 2009, but not much activity yesterday.  Just some steam clouds (fumaroles) and smell of sulfur from down in the crater.  It didn't rain, which it usually does at this elevation, and the forest on the volcano are deep, low, dark cloud forest, with some open areas at the very highest elevations. It was a gorgeous place, easy to get to, and fascinating - the opposite to tropical beaches and tall rainforest.  Here are some photos, more to come on Flickr later...

 Looking into the crater of the Poa volcano in Costa Rica, with steamy sulfuric clouds coming out from the bottom.

 Walking through the cloud forest at 2600 m altitude.  Fog from clouds, gnarly trees, and lots of wet, green mosses.

 A high-altitude lake has formed in an older crater on the other side of the active crater rim.  The giant leaves in the foreground are Gunnera, or 'poor man's umbrella', and the leaves can be up to 2 meters (6 feet across).

A squirrel had figured out how to beg for food from the tourists and then took up dining space on a tree branch.

Ferns, ferns!  Small, large, enormous, green, and brown and curled up when young.

Iceland tour II

Yesterday, many miles of stone, lavahraun and sand under the glaciers. The reward; icebergs in the lake Jökulsarlon. Beautiful views on Vatnajökull.

our pizza are like Yellowstone's boiling mudpots...

our pizza are like Yellowstone's boiling mudpots..., originally uploaded by Vilseskogen.

Just imagine these bubbles being replaced with hot mud, that is exactly how Yellowstone can be.  Except our pizza doesnt' smell like sulfur :)

Volcano alert: Grimsvötn

For our readers away from Iceland and Scandinavia, in case you haven't heard:

Large parts of Iceland are covered with ashes from the eruption at Grimsvötn on Iceland. The vulcano is located right under Europe's largest glacier, and once again nature shows its absolute power.   The ash cloud is on its way to Scandinavia and southern Europe. (some photos here)

Lava and smoke

exhibit about Hawaiian volcano eruption, originally uploaded by Vilseskogen.

A little corner exhibit at the Field Museum in Chicago tried to showcase the lava eruptions in Hawaii using darkness, glow lights and LED lights. Did they succeed? What do you think?

When I was walking these exhibits I was thinking that most of these dioramas are missing the impressions of so many of our senses - there need to be scents, sounds, winds, and the feeling of touch to really get the real experience.

Just looking doesn't really do it. But being in Hawaii and smelling the sulfur, stepping on crunchy lava cinder sand and feeling the warm wind is a different thing. Couldn't exhibits try to invoke some of this too? I am not sure how to do the noise and smell or the warm wind, but I bet in the future there will be movie theaters with smell makers, fans, and boxes you can put your hands into to feel any texture or surface (ick, imagine that, anything slimy or gory...).  Virtual but real.  Still, that wouldn't be the real thing.  But I have always thought that to teach history, an experience such as walking down the street in 1850s New York would tell you a lot more about history than any book. 

I love the animal dioramas with stuffed beasts and painted backgrounds with a few silk flowers at museums, but it only gives you maybe 10% of the experience of being outside in nature. It is great that parents take their kids to museums, but they should even more just take them outside to many different kinds of places (and not be afraid of rain, ticks, dirt, germs, and toxic plants). How can you describe something to a kid that has never had that experience? You can't describe sulfur smell, it is unknown to you until you have actually smelled the rotten egg smell from a stinking boiling pot in Yellowstone. So, let's get out more. And put a sulfur smelling station next to the lava exhibit.

Flying

Everything looks different from above.  You see both more and less, and things become flatter and larger and smaller... how does that work, really?  But in this new perspective, you get a better feeling for how small we are and how vulnerable the earth really is.  This is what I saw on my flight from New York to Liberia, Costa Rica. (Click on the photos for larger versions on Flickr and links to more photos.)

This is somewhere over the Caribbean, maybe Bahamas.  That color of the water is amazing.  I tried to find this on Google satellite maps, I thought it wouldn't be hard to find such a long bridge, but I am not sure what this is.  Just that it is north of Cuba and in the Atlantic.  This place looks horribly vulnerable to sea level changes and hurricanes, but gorgeous too.  Except, the southern island is mostly a city. 

Down there under the clouds is Cuba, a place I would love to visit some day.  See the mountains in the distance.

A vulcano on an island in the Lago de Nicaragua, near the northern border of Costa Rica.  At least I think it was on the island of Ometepe, because I tried to match my photo to satellite images on Google Earth.  Harder than it sounds.  Look at all those fields, so close to the volcano.

A strip of land, much wider than you think, between the Pacific coast and Lago de Nicaragua.  The smoke probably comes from sugarcane that is burning.  After the harvest they burn the leaves and also often part of the ground vegetation.

The northeastern Pacific coast of Costa Rica, maybe also Nicaragua.  Wonderful unspoilt beaches that probably will have big hotels along them.  Too bad. 

Kilauea Hawaii 2011 March

Picture from USGS, from the new eruption site on Hawaii in the Napau crater.

Hot stuff from earth in Japan

Today, 26 jan 2011, one of many Japanese volcanos had an explosive eruption, which is still ongoing. Amateur video of Kirishima here and here on youtube.

This mountain has been closed for hikers since the SO2-level has been high, according to a Flickr comment of a photo of the eruption, shown here.

More info on the Eruptions blog by Eric Klemetti

A white day in New Jersey

I woke up to a quiet world in white, just with some windy drifts of snow, but otherwise white, white.  Schools closed, and not many cars out.  Went for a walk down to the old bridge and met a few cars, otherwise just me, bluejays and some woodpeckers, and the sun on the snow and wind shifting snow off tree branches.  Here are some photos of our winter wonderland in New Jersey.

Even the mailboxes were snowed in.

Round barn.

Rock Brook bridge.

Fences and fields.

 

Just plain snow.

And right now, 49 of the 50 states in USA have snow at least in some places, even Hawaii. Over 70% of the land is white. The loner without snow is Florida, so it is an amazing winter.

In Europe, it is hotter, because Etna, the volcano in Italy, decided to start to spout out lava today (EH has web cam photos, hat tip to her for finding out first.)

Bits and pieces from the internet, solstice edition

There are many kinds of accidental mysteries out there. (Design Observer, always a joy to look at)

Isn't this a really cool bench? (core77, another internet place with fun stuff)

I still don't get why Swedish design magazines love black and white and not some color... (Sköna Hem)

This is one of my favorite photos of the year - you never feel as small and insignificant as when you stand next to something like this, right? (photo by Terje Sørgjerd)

Mount Merapi is blowing up...

Mt. Merapi, originally uploaded by Renee Picasso Manoppo.

...in Indonesia and our friend AP lives only 15 miles (c 20 km) away from this volcano. Keep safe, AP!

Demonstration of the force of Nature

Last night I was a spectator of one of Nature´s amazing displays, a volcanic eruption on Iceland on webcam. Eyjafjallajökull put up a show for real, see pics in my Flickr album.

I´m totally amazed, the lava eruptions was at least a 100-200 meters high.

Ice and fire in the time of volcanism

When you have gotten tired of your too colorful and contrasty screen background and need something black to rest your eyes on, try one of these.  I love the one with the black labrador and the waterdrop on the chrysantemum petal. I know some readers of this blog probably would pick the black LEGOs :)
This one called leafage is by (matt) on Flickr (creative commons license).

 The volcano on Iceland is still spewing out ash and probably soon more lava, they say.  Can you imagine the first vikings that settled Iceland from Norway over a thousand years ago.  They came from a solid-rock country of granite and gneiss and limestone, billion year old rocks carved by ice ages, and were faced with a living breathing geologic living thing.  The earth moved and trembled, spewed out lava, ash, and rocks, sulfuric water boiled in hot pools, and whole mountains exploded and cracked open.  If you were a viking that had never heard of such things, what would you have thought?  I wonder how much of these experiences influenced the old Norse mythology and especially Ragnarök, their Doomsday.  I am sure it provided vivid imaginary of hell, except Old Norse didn't have hell and heaven (well, they did have hel, but that had a slightly different meaning than the home of the devil), they had Muspelheim and Valhalla. I find it kind of ironic that a hot place like this island was named Iceland ("Island"), and not Fireland ("Eldslandet").  (In 1947 Hekla, another one of the larger volcanoes erupted, see today's stamp from Iceland). Was it just wishful thinking from the vikings?

More about the volcano eruption

A huge ash cloud is moving in over Scandinavia and Britain, and as of Thursday night all air traffic has been canceled in large parts of western Europe.  Check it out on this map of flights in the air. See, not one plane over Scandinavia and the British Isles.  The airplane's jet engines can get destroyed if they get volcanic ash, consisting of mostly glass, and etc, in them.  The sunsets are nice too because of the extra pollutants, here are some photos of the setting sun in Europe from today.

We live in interesting times, indeed.

Volcanic activity on Iceland- personal thoughts

The volcano under Eyjafjallajökull is erupting on Iceland. Jökull means glacier and the mountain is called Eyjafjall. I found a good site with pictures, here, thanks boston.com, and the picture on top of this post too.

Iceland is a country known to me. Here I have stayed under the shadow of this very volcano, for months I lived there. Some evenings after the sun had set, the ice cap of Eyjafjallajökull seemed to glow with an inner light. I have no other way to describe it. Every morning you looked that way to see if you could see the volcano or if it was hidden in clouds. On the old postcard picture LS published you can see Eyjafjallajökull, the snowcovered mountain on the right.

Volcanos are amazing, and I have never felt more aware of Earth as an everchanging environment than here, in Iceland (Ísland). Here I have swum in hot water in natural basins, under the stars under the volcano Katla and Myrdalsjökull and in deep caves at Myvatn. I have dug my fingers deep into the sand in active areas and felt the soil being warmer in the ground than on the surface (Landmannalaugar). I have walked on 10 year old lava-fields at Krafla, still wenting sulphuric gas (Myvatn) and seen the mud boil (Namafjall) and water gush from geysers ("geysirs"). For a Swede used to old rocks of granite lying apparently unchanged for eternity this is a totally different experience. The ground is alive, and earthquakes is part of normal life.

Volcanoes are also scaring, they can overtake a lush country with thick ash layers. I have walked and ridden through ash-covered barren lands, where nothing but a few bushes and grasses can live. The southern coast of Iceland is covered in mile by mile of black volcanic sand.

I want to go there again, and experience nature in constant change. I wish I had been there overlooking the volcanic eruption as shown on the pictures. Instead I follow the events on the internet, like at the Volcanism Blog.

Volcanoes and other odd and ends

I am sitting here at home with a sinus infection and in between doing work work, gardening, and walking on the road to get fresh air, doing dishes and drinking tea, and sleeping and sniffling with a headache, I find little gems online.

How about this modelmaker, using body parts as backgrounds: ski slope, paint job, and bee keeper?

And this old photo of a combined beer garden, barbeque joint and gas station from 1940's Louisiana? I bet that bbq was good, not so sure about the beer :).

And in case you haven't noticed yet, a volcano is erupting on Iceland, and the three last times this volcano has erupted it is followed by the giant and dangerous volcano Katla erupting under its glacier, which in the past has led to 'little ice ages' with very cold winters the following years.  Keep yourself posted on this... 

Katla was also the name of the fire-spouting fierceful dragon in the faraway country Narnia in Astrid Lindgren's book The Brothers Lionheart, a book I loved as a kid and still have in my bookcase.

The postcard is from 1918, the last time Katla erupted on Iceland.