You tell me what it means when a satellite photo induces an overwhelming, visceral longing in me.
Bonus points to the first person who can say what this photo portrays. (Beware trickery!) Double super secret bonus points if you name a native beetle and edible-rooted endangered plant in the area covered by this photo.
And Ron is disqualified, because I already know she knows.
It looks like the big island
My guess is the mouth of an active volcano (either that or the red is vegetation rather than heat) — though which one, I’m not sure (assuming I’m correct, and I’m prepared to be very wrong!). Recent activities at Mt. St. Helens?
Well, you know it’s somewhere in the neighborhood of baja california, because it’s in the middle of the desert and it’s south of the ruler-straight USA border. I had to cheat and do a search for volcanos in northern mexico to figure out what it is.
Embarrassingly for someone who lives 70 miles away from an erupting stratovolcano, I couldn’t name more than about 5-6 of the volcanos that litter the western edge of North America.
pinacate clowns eat sand food among the hia’ced o’odham in the papagueria
I guessed Inyo Craters near Mono Lake, until I cheated by zooming out and looking at the big picture. And I still don’t know what the thing is. I know where it is, but not what.
We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto.
Click on “map” and Google says, “We could not understand the location kansas.”
Neither could I, actually.
I got as far as Parque Natural del Gran Desierto Pinacate in the Sonoran desert in Mexico, just south of the Arizona border, but I haven’t got the faintest idea what we’re looking at. Since I don’t read Spanish, all I could get out of the park website were “unusual star dunes” and “lava streams”; “translate this page” gave me the following gem:
The reserve across uses a regional and international ample perspective when collaborating with protected areas adjacent of the border between Mexico and the United States —el National Monument Organ Pipe, the Natural Refuge of Wild Life Dark Head and the field of practices bombing Barry Goldwater — in order that their activities of conservation have the greater possible impact.
Aha — It all makes sense now — It’s the Barry Goldwater Bombing Range, and all those little brown things are bomb craters.
not only can one zoom out, one can click on the “hybrid box in the upper right corner and get a map overlay. not that any of that helped me decipher the image.
How about:
“an area unique in all the world, with its moon like craters over a mile wide, lava tubes, ‘moon-scapes’, black pumice soil, cinder cones and sleeping volcanos.
Pinacate’s Reserve currently encompasses over 600 square miles, 400 cinder cones caused by ‘exploding volcanoes’, along with tunnels, ash & rock that can be observed scattered for miles in the area.” (http://www.puerto-penasco.com/pinacate.html)
Sounds like a place our Chris would like.
What? You don’t think the Barry Goldwater Bombing Range would evoke a visceral longing in Chris?
A visceral longing for the days when US reactionary wingnuts were real, honorable people rather than the advance guard of our soon-to-be insectile overlords, perhaps.
Tis a sad day when were alll sitting around thinking about the good ol Goldwater days, ain’t it?
Uh, so what is this place?
The answer is given in the next post.
Really, Roxanne. Who would have thought those days would ever seem benign by comparison — not that they were.
Insectile — I like that, Chris.