Waypoint: Miller Canyon Alluvial Fan, Sevier Valley, Utah
After a warm day of landform reconnaissance in the Great Basin of western Utah, I camped in a small back-berm playette on the broad alluvial fan of Miller Canyon extending from the House Range in western Utah. The playette – a miniature dry lake – formed behind a relict gravel berm of pluvial Lake Gunnison, building over thousands of years as loessic alluvium scoured from the hillslopes settles behind the abandoned berm. This is the modern setting on the expansive alluvial fan – a small dry lake nestled behind a beach long after the once vast pluvial lake faded and dried, its lakebed shrinking to the playa of the Sevier Basin. The berm provides a stage for photographing storms that try and fail, evaporating into the evening skies of the Great Basin. The variegated color of a juvenile Brown-headed Cowbird greeted me as I rolled out of my sleeping bag the following morning. Altogether, a somewhat typical experience during geoarchaeological fieldwork in the Great Basin Desert. Keep going.
[2024.05.15 — Bonneville Basin Recce with Brian Codding (Univ of Utah) and Daniel Contreras (Univ of Florida); aka, The Strandline Society].
“These images and words are a reflection, simply and wholly, of my respect for our public lands and the public science and occasional art I am, and we are, able to do there. Our ability to create and think are not trivial, and wild space and healthy ecosystems nourish such things. It is here that we will find our better selves, even as the misdeeds of a few threaten much that, until recently, provides for our common good. Keep going.“
Please respect the natural and cultural resources of our public lands.