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June
2004, On the Oregon Trail
Our first outings at our new location in
central Oregon have been to the nearby desert.
Having grown up near the deserts of
southern California and Arizona, the desert has always been a
destination for day trips, or short camping trips, mostly to
look at and gather “rocks.” These mostly consisted of lava, pumice, petrified wood,
jasper, agates, chalcedony roses, quartz crystals, rocks
associated with copper, and others that I could not identify.
I never joined a club, or investigated further.
It was enough to just have the pretty rocks. Most of these were small, and were kept in a container of
drawers usually reserved for nuts and bolts and things. The larger rocks were scattered throughout my flowerbeds.
However, after
six major moves in the past five years, and no rock hounding, my
collection of rocks had disappeared, and I was looking forward
to finding more.
In the two short trips that we have
taken in Oregon, so far, I am finding the deserts to be very
interesting. This is an extremely volcanic area; so much so, in
fact, that the soil in our yard is not regular soil, but is
classed as fine pumice. We
have noticed that at every building site in Bend, there are
piles of lava that have had to be jackhammered away before
building can take place, and there are two national monuments in
the area featuring lava.
As you drop down from the basin in
which we live, to the desert, the scenery of pines changes to
junipers, taller than those I am accustomed to in California…
these are true trees, and the shrubbery changes to a large
variety of sagebrushes, and other small desert plants.
There are wide vistas of valleys with buttes and mesas,
and odd formations jutting up here and there, and much of the
desert has been tamed with water, and now is farmed with hay,
alfalfa, and other such crops.
Cattle are raised in various locations, and we’ve even
seen a few sheep.
 One
of the odd formations we visited first is called Fort Rock, and
this area was the site of early man’s home in the area.
Investigating on the internet I learned that the eruption
of Mt. Mazama, the volcano that formed the home of Crater Lake
in southern Oregon (near Medford), is what overlaid this entire
area in cinder, ash and pumice, and they believe it has covered
much of the evidence of early man in the area.
There are only a couple of locations where sites of a
certain age have been discovered, and Fort Rock area is one of
them.
Photo:
Fort Rock dominating the skyline
Fort Rock juts up out of the flat
plain, in a circular formation of rock that is eroding away, and
is several hundred feet high in some places.
It looks almost man made, and would be very defensible,
as the center is hollow. At
the time that Fort Rock Cave was inhabited, which appears to be
about 9,000 years ago, the high desert surrounding Fort Rock was
a large inland sea, and the formation was on an island.
Access was by canoe.
Sagebrush sandals are among the artifacts found there,
and tours of the cave can be reserved during summer months.
Jim and my sons went fishing on Memorial
Day at East Lake, near Paulina Peak, which is part of the
Newberry Caldera, a large volcanic formation created by many
eruptions over many years. Below is an article describing the area, found at www.sciencedaily.com:
Newberry
Caldera
is the caldera
on Newberry
Volcano, a shield
volcano in central Oregon.
The
caldera is oval-shaped and four by five miles (six by seven
kilometers) in diameter (with its major axis trending
east-west). Within the caldera there are two lakes
(Paulina Lake and East Lake), many cinder cones, lava
flows, and obsidian
domes. The land area of the caldera is heavily forested except
in areas where there are more recent volcanic flows and
features. Paulina Lake is drained by Paulina Creek, which passes
through a narrow gorge through the western part of the caldera
rim. East Lake does not have a known outlet and is thus 40 feet
(13 meters) higher than Paulina Lake. 6700 year-old basalt
flows separate the two caldera lakes. Rising 700 feet (230
meters) above this flow is the Central Pumice Cone. Both lakes
have hot
springs and drilling in 1981
found that temperatures in the caldera reach 280° Celsius
(510 degrees Fahrenheit)
at 3057 feet (941 meters) below the caldera floor. This is the
highest temperature ever recorded at a dormant Cascade volcano
(higher than even The Geysers of California, the world's largest
producer of geothermal
power).
Geology
Newberry
has had a caldera for possibly as long as 500,000 years, when a
large Plinian eruption sent so much pyroclastic
material gushing from its vent that the then emptied magma
chamber collapsed. This was repeated for several
eruptions; each forming a slightly smaller caldera. The
half-million year old (estimated) Teepee Draw tuff covers much
of the volcano's shield and was from an eruption with an
estimated volume of 10 cubic miles (40 cubic kilometers). This
is thought to be the first in a series of caldera-forming
eruptions that issued from Newberry's main vent system. One of
the later layers is cut by Newberry's only stream, Paulina
Creek. Subsidence of the caldera through time has been partly
offset by the deposition of tephra,
lava flows, and lake sediment. The USGS
has drilled 950 meters (3000 feet) below the present surface of
the caldera and has found that:
- First 950 feet (290 meters): Dominated by airfall pumice,
obsidian
flows, and under-water erupted ash.
- 950 to 1180 feet (290 to 363 meters): Lake-bottom
sediments.
- 1180 to 1640 feet (363 to 505 meters): Thick layers of
pumice-rich ash and breccia.
- 1640 to 2449 feet (505 to 754 meters): Rhyolitic to
dacitic lava flows.
- 2449 to 3057 feet (754 to 941 meters): Basalt
to basaltic-andesite
lava flows and breccia.
There
are several large flows of obsidian in the caldera, one of
which, Big Obsidian Flow, was created around 1400 years ago and
is thus the most recent caldera eruption. This particular flow
erupted from a vent or fissure near the southern wall of the
caldera and partially engulfed the Lost Lake pumice ring.
Reference
- Fire
Mountains of the West: The Cascade and Mono Lake Volcanoes, Stephen L. Harris, (Mountain Press Publishing Company,
Missoula; 1988) ISBN 0-87842-220-X
Since our trips to
the desert, we have obtained some permits from the local USFS
office in Bend. When
the property for our home was cleared, all but trees were
removed. I have
been looking at what grows naturally around the area, and
learned that a permit was available to gather plants for private
use. I was also
interested in gathering some of the plentiful lava for
landscaping, also.
So, for $20 we have obtained two
permits; one to gather plants, the other to gather lava, for
personal use. The lava comes in black and in a deep red, and there are
separate locations for gathering each kind.
You must be site specific when requesting lava.
The plants can be gathered from any USFS land, in the
amounts specified on the permit, within the allotted time.
The permits are valid for about three months.
Native plants are always a good idea,
as they are suited to the soil, the weather, and are usually
very drought tolerant (unless the area where they are located is
wet). Since we are
at a higher elevation, and live in a very difficult zone to
garden, using native plants is even more attractive than it
normally would be. We
can get frost any day of the year here, and the climate is
classed as only one zone less restricted than the area we lived
in, in Interior Alaska.
We have a one-acre lot, a size that
is fairly common here, and most of it is in front of the house
and is wooded. It
will remain that way, and we will concern most of our
landscaping efforts (there is presently no landscaping of any
kind) to the back yard. This
only consists of an area about 60 feet deep, and the width of
the lot. There are groups of a few trees here and there in the yard,
but the bulk of it is open and sunny.
This area is to the south of the lot, and the direction
all our windows from the family room, dining room and kitchen
face. This is our
view from indoors, most of the time, as these are the rooms in
which we spend most of our time.
There is a group of five pine trees
just about 30 feet from the back of the house, and under these
trees we have a bird feeder hanging, a container of cracked corn
on the ground (mostly for quail), and a container of shallow
water for the birds to drink and bathe in. To that we added a dead juniper limb… one that curls up in
the middle, forming a high place where a quail can stand
sentinel, and several lava rocks clumped together, where the
mourning doves who spend most of their time here, can bask in
the sun and soak it up.
We still have work to do on this
area. We plan to
add a birdbath, and some shrubs so the birds will feel more
comfortable here, but it is already accepted by a fairly large
group of wildlife. We
found that a young adult jackrabbit who came across the cracked
corn thinks it is a delicacy, and makes regular stops now to
have some, and drink from the water.
We have squirrels that Jim battled with for quite some
time, but they seem to have admitted defeat now, and accept what
food falls to the ground. They
also like the cracked corn.
We have two pairs of bluebirds, which we had not seen
before, and are beautiful.
We have robins, beautiful bluejays, who are not as noisy
and are not nuisances, as they often are in southern California;
we have several pair of the mourning doves, but one in
particular is here most of the time; we have a number of the
fattest mountain quail you’ve ever seen.
A woodpecker that is different from any I am familiar
with, and then we have chickadees, and a number of small birds
that I have not identified as yet.
 One
feeder that the squirrels almost demolished, Jim saved by
removing it from the tree, and put it on a “shepherd’s
crook,” something usually used to hold hanging plants.
It sits just about 6 feet from the window over Jim’s
desk, and Missy, the cat, loves to watch the small birds that
climb inside it to eat. She
also has a favorite, and that is the female mourning dove, who
often comes to eat the dropped seeds below this feeder.
She knows Missy is watching her from above, but she also
knows she can’t get her; and she’ll turn her head, cock it
and she and Missy will have staring contests. This is Missy’s favorite bird to watch. Although the quail are plumper, they do not often come that
near to the house.
We all get a great deal of pleasure in
watching all the wildlife that comes to feed and drink here, and
plan to optimize our landscape to bring more of them.
Photo:
Mr. and Mrs. Bluebird basking in the sun on our shepherd's
crook.
Because we don’t have any dogs, and
because Missy is an indoor cat, we are attracting all the
neighborhood cats, who fancy all the birds we attract.
However, Missy bores into them with her intent gaze, and
once they meet her eyes, it’s all over.
She wins every staring contest, and they turn and leave
the yard. We have
one fairly small stray cat who comes to eat the cracked corn now
and then, and we see her often sitting in wait at a brush pile
on the lot behind us, hoping in vain for a quail she can catch.
One cat had two kittens in our brush
pile, and we were alerted to that fact by the neighbor’s dogs.
Something happened to the mother and one kitten, and the
other kitten was left on her own.
As soon as she came out into the open we rescued her, fed
her, and Jim took her in to the Humane Society for adoption,
after talking to them on the phone.
Jim and I have joined a local
treasure hunting club, and many of the members are rockhounds.
We are soon going on an outing with the club to a place
called “glass butte.” It
is a good site for collecting obsidian, which comes in several
shades at this location. I can begin my new collection, and will write up the trip
afterward. We have
bought a small camping trailer, and this outing will be short
enough to be a good shakedown trip for it.
We will also be making a trip near
the end of the month, over to the eastern edge of Oregon, and
cross over into Idaho. We
plan to visit friends in Sumpter, Oregon, and to visit the John
Day Fossil Beds at this time. I have wanted to visit this area for quite some time.
It is a large area, encompassing some 14,000
acres, and there are several sites that include fossil beds and
painted hills, and interesting geological formations, so I am
looking forward to that. Starting
after that we’ll be making some prospecting trips, and hope to
make at least one trip over to the coast to stay in our trailer,
and visit more with Callie, our granddaughter.
We love the southern Oregon coast.
Photo: Painted Hills at
John Day Fossil Beds National Monument
Keep checking back to see the additions to
this section of our website.
June 2004
Marcie
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