Large Things and Small Things On the Columbia Plateau

Let's start big. Millions of years big. Thousands of square miles big. Between about 17 million and 7 million years ago, one massive eruption after another flooded lava across what is now eastern Washington. The lava flows piled up to thicknesses of more than two miles in places, and covered some 63,000 square miles. Then, some fifteen to twenty thousand years ago, enormous floods repeatedly washed across the lava flows. At least 40 times an enormous glacial lake in Montana escaped its dam and spilled across what is now eastern Washington, tearing away at the ancient lava flows.

In late March, we went on a geology field trip with Bruce Bjornstad, a geologist who has written extensively about the ice age floods. We hiked into the  the Columbia National Wildlife Refuge until we reached this.


As basaltic lava cools, it sometimes forms vertical columns like these. These columns tower 50 feet, and  represent one lava flow. The ice age floods eroded away some of the lava, exposing this cliff. On the top, you can see the near-hexagonal shape of many of the columns. 


Of course, on the hike I was as always also looking for wonderful small things, and I found a number of sagebrush galls. Galls are plant tissue that forms as a reaction to certain insects laying their eggs on the plant. The eggs of a different insect species will form an entirely different looking gall, even on the same plant. The galls tend not to be harmful. My favorite sagebrush galls were the medusa galls (Rhopalomyia medusa) with their curling, snaking hairs.

 

I also quite liked these wooly little puffs of galls, called sponge galls (Rhopalomyia pomum), which felt as velvety as they look.

Both medusa and sponge galls form from when tiny midges lay their eggs on the leaves or stems. There were also dried galls. I'm not sure if they are different type, or perhaps dried out sponge galls. Exit holes were visible in these.

And one last neat small thing from the hike: another member of our group found a praying mantis egg case; I'd never seen one before.

The hike was part of the Othello Sandhill Crane Festival. And yes, we also saw sandhill cranes: hundreds out in the stubble fields, and thousands flying in to their night time roost. It was altogether wonderful.

"The more we know to look for, the more we look and the more we see."
                                                        - Tristan Gooley, How to Read a Tree

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