What were the weirdest things you saw in the desert?

Well, finding a colonial root cellar was pretty strange.  

I did not take a picture but I was noticing a badger hole and then spotted a metal tag, glued to a nearby small rock. It said "1530" on it. I have no idea why someone would go around gluing metal tags to rocks but imagined it was some kind of badger tracking system.

Here is a story: I drove with my friend Dave Larson along a dirt road, under power lines and up to a pass between the hills. I thought it might be a way to spot game trails and somewhere to look for arrowheads. We parked at a turnaround that was covered with shell casings, shotgun shells, broken skeet, and broken glass. About twenty yards out we also saw Coke Cans that were still unbroken and I came across a Corona beer bottle that still had beer in it. I popped it open and enjoyed a wind cooled free beer in the middle of the Nevada desert. You had to wonder why, after missing their shots, they did not go collect the unbroken Coke and Coronas. They could have been distracted or just been too drunk.

[When I told this story to a barmaid at the airport, she started worrying it was going to be a scary story, as soon as I mentioned "middle of nowhere" and "gun". When I got to the end she supplied the phrase - "finding a beer in the middle of the Nevada desert". In fact, I was dehydrated and it was delicious.]

Oh yeah! That WAS a glacial lakeshore.

I am smacking myself in the forehead for not realizing I was exploring exactly the kind of glacial lakeshore early-man site that I wanted to find in Nevada. Better late than never.

On the other hand, I am patting myself heartily on the back for picking a place to explore that has perhaps the highest concentration of lithic debris in the whole valley. The dark brown crescent at the southern end of the chert outcrop is darker than any other of the patches. Having been there on foot, I can tell you what these different features are:

The amazing thing (I'll write about this more on Rock Piles) is that the darker patches are a heat map. I am now looking at aerials of the whole valley (called Hidden Valley on the topo map) and not only is my hill the best place to look (the darkest) I can also see other specific places I should have gone here and there - because they also have dark brown patches. How cool is that! 

Random thought from my trip to Nevada

Gosh there are so many different little thoughts from my trip to Nevada. Like this one I just had about the dark brown rock that is the commonest tool material on my little hill. I looked up "chert" and it is the perfect definition for this material, as far as I can tell. This is gratifying for several reasons. One is that I had almost figured out a material with nodules in some places and layers on other places, would have to be like an accreting flint but also -somehow- sedimentary. Well, what do you know, they suspect that diatomaceous layers were the source of SiO2 molecules which migrated around to form chert.

And I was trying to resolve the difference between white chalcedony [??] and brown chert. It is OK, they are compatible as different varieties of mixture between trigonal and monoclinic  forms of SiO2 crystal. Don't ask me what that means. 

But here is the little thought: I had decided that the brown chert and the white Chalcedony could not be the same material because the chert remains shiny when underground but the white material become crumbly like chalk. So you pull a fragment out of the ground and expect the white stuff to have deteriorated but the brown stuff to be like new (at least visually).

Cedar Swamp

 

I have tried many times to capture a little of the gloomy mood of the cedar swamp by Nobska Rd. This try is closer than most.

Getting rid of "search". How 'bout internet standardized directories?

Looking to eliminate search algorithms. "How ever am I supposed to find what I am looking for?"

One answer is to reject the idea of internet platforms picking winners and losers that do not show you what you want anyway. So how about standardized subject directories, where a content creator decides how to list links to their content. The trick would be to assign a "1" to each source of content, and divide that weight up - however the creator wishes - across the directories. You could put all weight into one sub-directory, or divide it up a bit here and a bit there. People trying to be listed everywhere would get less weight. The weights would determine list order within the sub-directory.

People who should know better did not notice how exact string matches stopped working in Google and the other search engines circa. 2014. That is when search started to suck. Now it it effectively a catalog designed to optimize shopping - with search weight determined by a platform pretending it is not a publisher or editor [hey Supreme Court: they obviously are, because they edit the 'table of contents'].

Today's search AI is garbage. Here is how I know: I am looking for fruit sock - bags to protect fruit, ripening on the tree. All I can find on Google is links to regular socks with pictures of fruit. Same when I try to find mathematics about language. All Google will show me is content about how mathematics is a language. I want an internet that understands prepositions! Too bad search engines cannot tell fruit pictures on socks, versus sock for fruit. But let's not ask for too much. 

Anyway, if a content creator decides to classify their content - then that sounds like a better system. Save the AI garbage for finding people whose content does not belong in that category - a policing activity that should be public, transparent, and using open source algorithms. In case of ambiguity, go with the opinion of the content creator. 

Would that work?

Signs of Spring - February 2023

First crocuses in the yard: Feb 11

First red-winged blackbird calls: Feb 20

[Added later] I want to say the first ospreys were around March 20.

Also, first swallows April 14. first hummingbird April 25; first goldfinch April 26

Quartz concave base point - Massapoag

Went with Barb to Ward's Berry Farm, an Audubon Society property in Sharon, and found a fine quartz point.

I did not see much and was going to give up on the place, when I saw this little quartz tip sticking out from the side of a rut. Now I know this place, with a rather vast array of fields, is a place worth spending quite a lot more time.

Update: Except, maybe not. I spent maybe more than 3 hours there a few days later and saw almost nary a flake of quartz. It is possible this was an isolated arrowhead? The water weathering on front and back are peculiar, since the edges are still sharp.