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#Thor's well #pacific ocean #oregon coast #tide pools #crashing waves #stormy sea #pacific northwest #photography #oc

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#tide pools #pacific ocean #sea anemones #crashing waves #sea life #oregon coast #ocean life #tidal pools #photography #oc #pacific northwest

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#tide pools #sea life #sea anemones #sea grass #tidal pools #photography #oc

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#sandy beach #pacific ocean #oregon beaches #oregon coast #photography #oc

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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

#oregon beaches #oregon coast #pacific ocean #pacific northwest #sandy beach #photography #oc

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#sea life #sea birds #ocean sunset #sunset #pacific ocean #pacific coast #oregon beaches #oregon coast #photography #oc #oceanphotography

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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

#erosion #soil erosion #pacific ocean #oregon coast #sandstone cliffs #pacific coast #photography #oc

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Rocks like teeth across the horizon

#pacific ocean #oregon beaches #oregon coast #pacific northwest #oregon #photography #oc

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#sea life #sea anemones #sea animals #tide pools #tidepool #pacific ocean #photography #oc

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#pacific ocean #ocean waves #stormy sea #crashing waves #pacific northwest #oceancore

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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

#urban exploring photography

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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!!!

#I know I usually just post pictures #but if you want to help restore native habitats where you live #finding websites like these is a great start #if you have any property you can start planting native flowers and grasses on it #which will in turn attract native insects #if nothing else you should at least check them out and see what incredible plants grow near you

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#I haven't been posting here a ton #but I'll try to start again soon #I have a bunch of pictures to share #until then please enjoy some pictures from one of my favorite nature blogs #and if you enjoy mushrooms definitely check them out and give them a follow

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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

#Thor's well #oregon coast #tide pools #oceanphotography #ocean #ocean waves #pacific ocean #photography #oc

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#waterfall #pacific northwest #waterfalls #nature #pnw #cliffs #photography #oc

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Fun fact: many polypores are “indeterminate”, meaning that instead of obstacles making them deformed, they grow around them

You can often see twigs or grass lodged in normally-shaped polypores. In today’s case, the fungus encountered some English ivy

and just… ate it. Native fungus supremacy!

#shelf mushrooms #mushrooms #fungi #pnw #mycology

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Lichenomphalia hudsoniana

Arctic mushroom scales lichen

It has been a great while since I featured a basidiolichen! L. hudsoniana has a squamulose thallus made up of rounded, ear-shaped lobes that have white, in-rolled margins. They are connected by a loose network of hyphae. The surface of the squamules in bluish-green, and slightly dusted in pruinia. And instead of apothecia, this lichen produces toadstool fruiting bodies! These basidiocarps are pale yellow or white and waxy when grown, but are often a more pale lilac-white when first developing. They grow 1-3 cm tall. L. hudsoniana is circumpolar, and can be found in cold montane regions on heaths, humus, and peat-soils in partially shaded areas near or above the treeline. A small portion of lichenized fungi are basidiomycetes. The taxonomy of lichens and fungus is still under much scrutiny and revision, but essentially what it comes down to is that the ability to lichenize evolved separately in two different fungal subkingdoms, and that’s pretty rad. No matter where it falls, this lichen is beautiful and pure and I love it.

Follow for more lichen info!

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