The landscape collector

JULY 16

Spring altocumulus skies

If a wonderful sunset with altocumulus would deploy in the skies only once every generation, certainly it would become a major legend of our time. However most people hardly seems to notice the clouds, or these are seen as an impediment to that perfect summer day ... 

Yet, nothing in nature can compete with the variety and drama of the clouds ; nothing is as sublime and ephemeral a beauty ... 

life would be immeasurably poorer without them ...

Spending a few minutes now and then to watch the clouds can become a great source of pleasure ... 

We recommend the book: The Cloudspotter’s Guide, by Gavin Pretor-Pinney (2007)...

Red poppy fields forever

Novia del campo, amapola,

que estás abierta en el trigo; 

amapolita, amapola,

te quieres casar conmigo?   

Bride of the fields, the poppy,

You're open in the wheat;

Pretty poppy, my poppy,

do you want to marry me?

(J.R. Jiménez - 1881-1958 Premio Nobel Prize)

There are love stories that are like poppies, fragile , a slight wind , and still cling to the throat ... 

Among the intertwined fields of green and yellow of June , the red spots poppies are the protagonists , like in the Monet painting ... 

as in the Colonel Mc Rae's poem: "In Flanders fields the poppies blow..." 

Flower field per excellence: "más de campo que las amapolas..."

Monthly Geological Pics

JULY 16

The Montserrat Mountain (Barcelona - Spain)

The peculiar and attractive morphology of the Montserrat Mountain stands out in the landscape from a great distance ... sawed but rounded shapes, soft edged spiers and pinnacles,... Such is the most emblematic mountain of Catalonia. 

La peculiar y atractiva morfología de la montaña de Montserrat se destaca en el paisaje desde una enorme distancia… Formas aserradas pero al mismo tiempo redondeadas, agujas y pináculos, de bordes suaves… Así es la montaña más emblemática de Cataluña.

Este es el resultado de la erosión de las rocas, favorecida por la red de fracturas denominadas diaclasas. Pero, hagamos un ejercicio de historia geológica: 

Ø  A principios del Terciario, en el Eoceno inferior, cuando la pequeña placa continental ibérica colisionó con el continente europeo, en lo que ahora es Cataluña, la Orogenia Alpina empezó a levantar los Pirineos por el norte y lo que luego sería la cordillera Costera Catalana por el sur. Desde hace unos 50 millones de años y hasta hace unos 23, entre estas dos cadenas montañosas la zona central de Cataluña estaba ocupada por un mar que penetraba desde el Golfo de Vizcaya y que daría lugar a la formación de la Cuenca del Ebro.

Ø  Desde las montañas situadas al sur discurrían cortos y enérgicos ríos que se alimentaban con sedimentos  procedentes de estas montañas, en crecimiento por la orogenia alpina. Así, por delante del relieve se desarrollaron extensos abanicos aluviales en los que en las zonas más próximas, en donde el agua llegaba con más energía, se depositaban cientos de metros de gruesos guijarros y arena, mientras que en las más alejadas, los materiales eran progresivamente más finos. 

Ø  La desecación de la cuenca durante el Oligoceno dio lugar a una precipitación química de sales y los sedimentos compuestos por guijarros sufrieron una cementación carbonatada para dar lugar a una roca denominada conglomerado. Lo mismo las arenas dieron lugar a areniscas y los sedimentos marinos más finos a margas y a calizas. 

Ø  La evolución tectónica posterior dio lugar a una compartimentación de la cordillera costera en dos con una depresión intermedia. El hundimiento y levantamiento de unos y otros bloques y los cambios en la altitud del mar, dieron lugar a la posición actual de los relieves montserratinos...

Next Figure Left: Montserratian morphology is the result of the erosive action of water in joints, favored by the presence of a two orthogonal directions vertical fractures network NE-SW and NW-SE. Water infiltrates and slowly dissolves the carbonate cement along the fractures, individualizing columnar forms. 

Next Figure Right: Located north of the Fossa del Vallés-Penedés, from south to north, on the Montserrat mountain rocks Paleozoic metamorphic materials (1) outcrop, followed by Mesozoic material (2-5). Overthrust structure (B) put both in contact and defines the boundary between the Catalan Coast Range and the Ebro Basin. 

                             Tertiary materials are placed over an erosional surface. They start with clays, sandstones and reddish conglomerates (6), over which are the characteristic continental conglomerates of Montserrat (7). Northwards, this unit changes gradually to transition materials (8) and onto marine sediments belonging to the central Ebro Basin.

                   Montserrat mountain hides the long historic Saint Mary Benedictine Abbey, home to the black faced Catalonia Virgin.

La Muela de Cortes

La Muela de Cortes (Valencia)

La Muela de Cortes sobre todo es paisaje, un paisaje violento y desgarrado, como de tragedia romántica, o de revuelta morisca, de profundos cintos calcáreos, cretácicos…, una gran plataforma rocosa cuyo pie lo baña el agua turquesa del río embalsado, agua en desmesura, fecunda, que en el páramo reseco, de pinar y de desnuda y descarnada roca, asemeja a las cercanas calas de la costa del azahar y de la costa blanca… 

Yo, con la suerte de cara, no por casualidad y en días de bueno y venturoso recuerdo, he recorrido la Muela de Cortes, detenidamente, pacientemente, de abajo a arriba y de izquierda a derecha…, y la he paseado despacio y, en el intenso calor del día, le he respirado el aire cargado de balsámica resina, y le he escuchado el obsesivo y febril canto de las afanadas chicharras…, y me he dejado refrescar por fuera en las quietas aguas, claras y vivificantes del Júcar, y por dentro con el agua fresca, saciadora y saludable de sus fuentes. El invierno es otra cosa... 

Desde el cielo, contemplando la Muela de Cortes, rasa altiplanicie arrugada y tendida al sol , vuelven a mi mente parajes y lugares que me sorprendieron tanto, que tuve que volver y enseñárselos a los míos…

Delimitada, de Norte a Este por el curso curvilíneo del Júcar, que a poco de Casas del río ya viene con las aguas aumentadas por las del Cabriel, por los valles rectilíneos de Ayora al Oeste y del Canyoles al Sur, incluyendo a la abundosa y nutricia Canal de Navarrés, que entronca con el otrora aciago embalse de Tous, la Muela de Cortes se sitúa a medio camino entre la mancha albaceteña y el mediterráneo levantino. 

Con un lenguaje pedagógico, diríamos en efecto que, rodeada de “accidentes tectónicos y morfológicos”, la Muela de Cortes es un “área geológico-geográfica diferenciada”, una “entidad singular” en sí misma, pero es sobre todo un territorio aislado y poco menos que inaccesible, casi virginal e inmaculado, y un asombroso e insospechado exponente de ese con frecuencia desconocido interior de Valencia… la Valencia que es más que su costa mediterránea de sombrillas y chiringuitos, y más que sus huertas fructuosas y providenciales… 

En la Muela de Cortes es posible descubrir rincones tan impresionantes como lo son sus cortados, precipitándose al valle del Júcar, sobre uno de los cuales se erige altivo y decrépito, el castillo musulmán de Chirel.

En 1609, numerosos moriscos decidieron hacerse fuertes frente a su expulsión en la Muela de Cortes. Se les unieron, sin éxito, otros muchos procedentes de Jalance, Jarafuel, Cofrentes, Dos Aguas… El castillo moro, curtido en hazañas bélicas, vivió sus últimas escaramuzas. 

Desde hace cuatro siglos, el castillo de Chirel libra su última y definitiva batalla contra el tiempo… contra el imparable e inexorable embate del tiempo… languidece en el recuerdo de sus mocedades castrenses, y afronta, soberbio, la ruina progresiva de su abandono.

La llamativa balsa ovalada de regulación de la central hidroeléctrica reversible, llena a rebosar, limpia y ordenada, parece una ciclópea piscina prefabricada de catálogo, con su bordillo y su escalerilla, una piscina asomada al balcón de la Muela.

Aprovecha la energía sobrante de la central próxima de Cofrentes para elevar el agua pródiga y disponer así de electricidad en los momentos de mayor demanda.

El acceso al pueblo de Cortes de Pallás, cuando la construcción del embalse, requirió igualmente edificar un puente, un viaducto que es de línea sencilla, esbelta y pura, y que, encajado entre las paredes rocosas, cumple con una frase grandilocuente y hueca, pero que yo diría que aquí es cierta y que dice que "dignifica la intervención del hombre moderno en el paisaje".

Y la fosa de Sácaras, afluente del Júcar cuando lleva el agua que por lo común solo aparece en pequeños y brillantes rezumaderos, hendidura encajonada en la Muela de Cortes, es una notable representación de un llamado "dominio geológico estructural ibérico", en el que bloques hundidos y levantados están separados por fallas, como si fueran las teclas de un piano. 


http://geopiedra.blogspot.com.eg/2015/04/monthly-geological-pics.html



La Muela, por encima de las poblaciones, es propiedad del Estado, que en 1973 creó una Reserva Nacional de caza, con una extensión de 36.000 hectáreas y la sembró de monteses y de muflones para que los señores y los señoritos viniesen de afuera a cazarlos, y de adentro, los cazaran los furtivos.  

Ahora, la electricidad, que es un  maná obsequioso que, dejados atrás los seculares tiempos de la escasez y del abnegado trabajo sin horario, del olivo y el almendro, y de las ovejas y las abejas, ha dotado a Cortes y a las demás aldeas que rodean la muela de todo tipo de dádivas, y la caza está más al alcance.

On the fly / A vuelapluma

“Shooting birds on the fly”…    Take them very quickly, at the mercy of inspiration, without stopping to think, without hesitation or effort. 

Pin-tailed sandgrouse 

While driving slowly on a dirt-track, all of a sudden...,                  I notice something moving on the fallow fields... Pin-tailed sandgrouses (gangas)...

Binoculars are always at hand, so I quickly see a group of these beautiful birds, walking around, pecking grains and insects... two males and a few females...

Less rare than black-bellied sandgrouse (Ortega), still, in Europe this bird can virtually only be seen in Spain. 

A brief but rewarding session of photographs through the car window, before both: birds and I, continue with our tasks...  

             A male and a female, easy to identify through their back feather design.

La ganga

Se usa la expresión a vuelapluma, que indica que algo se hace deprisa y sin pensar:

...me sentí inspirado, cogí la cámara y fotografíe estas Gangas a vuelapluma...

Las gangas no son tan raras como las Ortegas (verdaderamente difíciles de ver) y aún así son aves esteparias cada vez menos comunes... 
las suelo ver bebiendo en verano en los charcones de algunas lagunas manchegas... por ejemplo en Pedro Muñoz...  

              In the first picture: two males...
           Second picture: a male, down and a female, up...
       Third picture: a male with two females...
  Fourth picture: again two males...

Copt Monasteries /Monasterios coptos

The Gospel says: "God has spoken many times and in many ways" ... (Hebrews 1:1)

According to the Christian faith, God is revealed in many ways, one through nature, expressing His will through the elected ...

Those phenomena in which God has appeared, and we cannot explain, we call them miracles and those men who have been instruments of his revelation, we call them saints.

At the origin of the Christian monastic activity, throughout this earthly world, God has used the symbiosis between a holy man and what perhaps could be attributed to a miracle ... I mean life itself of St. Paul of Thebes, or the Hermit  (228-342 AD), and a spring, just a trickle of water, which flows from the bowels of the earth in the arid Egyptian desert.

Church (up) and Monastery of Saint Paul (Egypt)

Of the Life of St. Paul, as well as that of his contemporary San Anthony the Abbot, I will not occupy in this post, nor about the history of the monasteries which for over seventeen centuries exist in the far corner of the world I have had the fortune to visit, or the treasures that they hide, not so material as spiritual and accessible to any visitor, believer or not, Coptic, Catholic or of other faith: peace, meditation, spirituality, history itself made environment ...

Entry to the church in Saint Paul's, cave of Saint Anthony and a street in Saint Anthony's monastery (Egypt)

Rather, I am going to focus on describing a natural fact, this "miracle of nature" ..., as long as the scientific man of the century we live in is unable to explain it. Let's see:

Let’s think of the hard, dry and inhospitable land of the Egyptian desert, among the fertile Nile Valley and the western shore of the Red Sea, actually, the eastern end of the very Sahara Desert, which extends into the Sinai, and after in the Arabian Peninsula. A territory in which it hardly ever rains, maybe once or twice a year, a few minutes, a few millimeters.

With this volume of rainfall, what water could there be in this space of hundreds or thousands of square kilometers? None, not superficial, of course not, nor a water table. And yet, at the foot of a mountain range near to the coast, several hundred meters above the sea, some small springs sprout with crystal clear water, drinkable and rich ... as fruitful as is the monastic history which originates in them.

Let's say that St. Paul spent 60 of his more than 100 years long life as a hermit, praying and meditating, united to his spring, as San Anthony to his, and as with other foundations, it was their followers who years after their death gave place to the monasteries that bear their names.

Spring of Saint Paul's monastery (Egypt)

The source of Saint Paul produces four cubic meters of water per day ... more than the hermit probably needed to drink and grow some food, have some dates and let the thirsty desert swallow the remainder, just a few tens of meters after the sprout.

Saint Anthony was luckier…, his source produces one hundred cubic meters per day. Its water in addition, unlike the first, is blander, since the first is a little salty. In both cases, the flow is constant all year round, every day of the year. Important as is water, while the monastery of St. Paul is small and modest, San Antonio Monastery is bigger and more apparent, although both equally remote.

Monastery of Saint Anthony (Egypt)

We know that the Nile, in its course towards the Mediterranean, transfers huge volumes of tropical rains water from the Central Africa highlands situated in the south. But the Nile is far, too far, and water that may infiltrate will never come to these springs, nor because of distance nor because of height. In addition, the flow of the Nile is not always constant, but fluctuates with its famous floods and then infiltration neither is, nor the result that this could lead to.

What can then be the source of water that flows in these places ...? condensation, capillarity from the Red Sea, ... or quite simply a miracle ...?

Monastery of Saint Paul (Egypt)

At this point, it could accept the divine origin of spring water, and what is even more miraculous ... that already in the third century, when there was barely anyone wandering around in the world, God guided the steps of Paul and Antonio to find these places, lost and hidden, and bring them to holiness ...

But I am a geologist, and curious by nature and profession, analytical and imaginative. Besides, I'm a lucky man: I do not watch TV, I have internet and I have traveled quite a lot... This leaves me precious time available and allows me to use my experience and my knowledge. So I think, I compare and if I find a better theory, I adopt it.

Monastery of Saint Paul (Egypt)

Well, in one of my countless trips to Algeria I found a fascinating book: "Lost civilizations of the Sahara". Today, satellite images have confirmed what was suspected for decades. Not so long ago in geological magnitudes, only a few thousand years ago, the territory of the Sahara was a green savannah with numerous lakes inhabited by all the wildlife that has been reflected in the paintings of the Algerian Tassili: hippos drinking water or wandering herds of elephants and giraffes, even astronauts ... 

Actually, for several hundred thousand years, the Sahara territory has gone through several stages of ancient desertification and other intermediate flowering. The last time the Sahara was green probably covers the period from 11 thousand to 5 thousand years ago. Mentioned paintings date from more than 15 thousand.

During the stages, let’s say green or wet, the immense surface of Sahara led to the infiltration of rainfall which resulted in huge reserves of groundwater. Reserves nonrenewable today. Fossil water. Waters which were rained down thousands of years ago ...

Waters which are largely lost in underwater springs in the Mediterranean or the Red Seas. Some others, however, spring in the surface. They are karst springs. Caves have been inventoried and studied in Egypt and Libya. They are unbecoming of currently existing landscape and for their formation water flow was needed.

Seen in a map and though from one to another monasteries there is a good roll to go with the car, the fact is that both are on opposite sides of the same Galala mountain range. 

In this massif, in the hyper-arid eastern desert of Egypt, some significant karstic morphologies have been identified. Although small, the caves that sheltered San Pablo and San Antonio have a great geological and cultural significance. The fossil water comes from tertiary sandstones of the Eocene out through small dissolution passages, favored by fractures in the rock. An inexhaustible water for now and which as not dependent of any seasonality, it does not suffer noticeable fluctuations.

Thinking about the lives of Saint Anthony the Abbot or St. Paul of Thebes in the desert, immersed in a heat and unbearable thirst, I imagined a world of blinding light where absolute deprivation lead to a harrowing experience of opposing views of demons and God ...

Under such conditions life is simply not possible, it cannot last. The reality is that even in the Eastern Desert of Egypt, temperatures are bearable in the shade, either that of a cave or the thick walls of a monastery and its palm trees.

Monastery of Saint Anthony (Egypt)

Hermits living in the wild desert, yes, but they established around areas of striking beauty, life and peace, protected from the elements. In both monasteries, the spring water has been channeled to create small oasis that although in the case of St. Paul is certainly very limited, in Saint Anthony keeps a beautiful garden.

Saint Paul and Saint Anthony chose these locations and monasteries were here founded, because here was a source of water ... the only water in a large region ...

Church in Saint Paul's monastery and Spring of Saint Anthony (Egypt)