Let me start off by saying that I miss rocks. I grew up on the Canadian shield, and granite outcroppings were a regular fixture of my childhood, along with mica-and-quartz hunting, breaking beaver dams and catching leeches in the pond.
And while I miss all of those things to greater or lesser degree, I wasn’t prepared for my own rather overly emotional response to seeing large pieces of rock (as in, cliffs and boulders you can stand on and not individual erratics but part of a mountain!). I went up the mountain in Macedonia expecting a nice view, but got a shoe full of quartz fragments (pocket, but nevertheless) and tears in my eyes. It was beautiful. Well, kind of dull and brown and grey, but beautiful.
And then! Coming down the mountain (I have a story about this but I will place it with some pleasant picture of flowers in a later post) I saw many more incredible rocky things that warmed the cockles of my heart. Behold.
This is actually the view that made me cry. Glorious, innit? ©rq, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
More after the break, but first, here’s your song.
A partial view, front and centre – outcropping!
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Close-up of some of that even more glorious quartz.
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Some mica, too.
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See the white bits? That’s quartz! Quartz intrusions!
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Sometimes rocks do funny things.
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Like get bent out of shape.
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The best thing since sliced… rock?
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Sometimes rocks just get in the way, but that’s not a real barrier.
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Scenes like this make me emotional. I just really like rocks.
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Oh rq,
I understand. I have the same feelings about this place. I started collecting rocks when I was just a little kid and I love the land and landscapes here. I love the rugged tenacity of life when it crops up in the most unlikely places, like trees growing sideways out of rock. Your photos look a lot like the Canadian shield. Even the light seems similar for this time of year.
Oh, so beautiful, all of it! I love rocks too and I am very lucky in that regard. I live between two rock formations: if I move east I can climb up a hill and it looks just like this, mica and quartz. If I move west I can climb a different hill and see limestone, calcite crystals and Early Jurassic marine fossils. I should do a photo series for both! *adds to to-do list*
Lovely craggy shapes.
Yes, I love rocks, too! Personaly for me, it was a very very close call between studying chemistry or geology, but in the end chemistry won*. You really need to visit the Mittelrheintal and Loreleys cliff should you ever find your self in Germany. So many beautiful rockfaces exposed by the river Rhine cutting through the middle mountains. Oh and lots of humans reducing the ragged edgy glory of natrual rock to dull blocky blocks and building castles.
I love how the treeroot seems to mimic the bent of the underlying rock (I am sure thats what it is! Geologic camoflaged tree! :D)
*As a true roleplayer, by diceroll. I just could not decide.
avalus
I suppose there was no combined geology of molecules, or chemistry of rocks you could have gone with?
(I hate making choices, though -- I had a similar dilemma when I applied for university, between biochem, linguistics and mathematics. I went with the biochem because then I could try for the forensics program, and figured I could do linguistics as a minor. It all sort of worked out -- I did get into the forensics program, but I was a couple of courses shy for the linguistics minor.)
One day I hope to visit Germany. Right now, I’m using conferences to tour Europe, and I must say, it’s been working out rather well, so far!
Makes me wonder what I would miss the most if I moved some place different, and I think it would be the woods. Right now they smell of autumn and endings and also laying the ground (literally) for a new beginning.
If you come here avalus and I can take you to the Palatine Woods. Lots of rocks there, I promise.
Beautiful! I’ve grown up in Maine, with its famously rocky coast, and enormous rocks are as common as trees and streams. I wonder how much I’d miss them if I spent a lot of time somewhere else.
@rq: Well there was later, General Geochemistry and Chemical Weathering.
Giliell is right! lots of wonderful red, orange and yellow sandstones!