Twice-Lit Sky

Most Content OC. Have a question about mushrooms? (Or anything else nature related) Send me an ask! Main blog: Stranger-Nights-Ahead

[miserable-n-stunning]

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False Prophet of the Sun

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As water flows across the beach, heavy black sand settles out as lighter sand is rinsed away. This leaves long bands of iron-rich sand flowing across the beach

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As above, so below. The same erosion taking place over thousands of years to the sandstone cliffs in the background can be seen over the course of minutes in the sand lining the stream in front of it

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Rocks like teeth across the horizon

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[halomancer]

Almost exactly three years ago, right before the first lockdown, I had my first experience with urban exploring. It was an abandoned building in a city I was visiting, and while incredibly cool, I didn’t have the rope and flashlight I needed to explore it properly

Well, now I live in that city and have all the supplies I need for urban spelunking, so…

Lower level 1– accessible from the outside. Lowest region fills with water at the highest tide.

Lower level part 2 is visible through a peephole, but not accessible.

The upper level contains a hole to the basement about two meters down. It looks like there used to be a ladder that rotted out.

Threw down some utility rope to get a better foothold, and in we go!

Peephole as seen from inside the basement

Loot included a fishing buoy, numerous rusted spray paint cans, and a Star Wars lunch box

[headspace-hotel]

I want to make people see how much has been taken away from them.

Did you know that there are dozens of species of fireflies, and some of them light up with a blue glow? Did you know about the moths? There are thousands of them, bright pink and raspberry orange and checkerboard and emerald. They are called things like Black-Etched Prominent, Purple Fairy, Pink-Legged Tiger, Small Mossy Glyph and Black-Bordered Lemon.

Did you know that there are moths that feed on lichens? Did you know about the blue and green bees? The rainbow-colored dogbane beetles? Your streams are supposed to teem with newts, salamanders, crawdads, frogs, and fishes. I want to take you by the hand and show you an animal you've never seen before, and say, "This exists! It's real! It's alive!"

There are secret wildflowers that no website will show you and that no list entitled "native species to attract butterflies!" will name. Every day I'm at work I see a new plant I didn't know existed.

The purple coneflowers and prairie blazing star are a tidepool, a puddle, and there is an ocean out there. There are wildflowers that only grow in a few specific counties in a single state in the United States, there are plants that are evolved specifically to live underneath the drip line of a dolomite cliff or on the border of a glade of exposed limestone bedrock. Did you know that different species of moss grow on the sides of a boulder vs. on top of it?

There are obscure trees you might have never seen—Sourwood, Yellowwood, Overcup Oak, Ninebark, Mountain Stewartia, Striped Maple, American Hophornbeam, Rusty Blackhaw, Kentucky Coffeetree. There are edible fruits you've never even heard of.

And it is so scary and sad that so many people live and work in environments where most of these wondrous living things have been locally extirpated.

There are vast tracts of suburb and town and city and barren pasture where a person could plausibly never learn of the existence of the vast majority of their native plants and animals, where a person might never imagine just how many there are, because they've only ever been exposed to the tiny handful of living things that can survive in a suburb and they have no reason to extrapolate that there are ten thousand more that no one is talking about.

It's like being a fish that has lived its whole life in a bucket, with no way of imagining the ocean. The insects in your field guide are a fraction of those that exist, of all the native plants to your area only a handful can be bought in a nursery.

Welcome to the Earth! It's beautiful! It's full of life! More things are real and beautiful and alive than a single person could imagine!!!

[headspace-hotel]

Look, I'm going to tell you some flowers native to the United States that you didn't know about

Ovate False Fiddleleaf, Rosy Twisted-Stalk

Cross-Leaf Milkwort, Blue Flowered Coyote Thistle

Gaywings, Michaux's Bluet

Redtwig Doghobble, Brook Saxifrage

Swollen Bladderwort, Two-Leaf Miterwort

I will happily keep going

[kirincult]

Here are some amazing native plants from the Willamette Valley you've probably not heard of before! All photos are from willamettewildlings.com where you can also find seeds, descriptions, and planting instructions for all these wonderful plants!

Common Camas, Tolmie's cat ear (a personal favorite of mine)

Douglas sagewort, narrowleaf milkweed

Ookow, dark-throat shooting star

Diamond Clarkia, large-flowered collomia

Elegant calicoflower, Oregon fawn lily

I've hit image limit, but remember! All these AND MORE can be found at willamettewildlings.com! If you live in the Cascadia region I would highly recommend checking them out and getting some wonderful wildflowers and grasses for your garden!

[halomancer]

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Thor's Well is a stunning sight on the Oregon coastline. It's created by a partially submerged basalt cave with a wide circular opening on top.

As waves crash into the tide pools around it, they're funneled up into the Well, rising high above the tide level or even erupting in a dramatic display as the tide comes in. As the waves recede, the water flows back through the caves, giving the appearance of a near-bottomless pit.

At low tide, a look into the Well reveals the cave walls, encrusted in starfish and mussels

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