Dump No Material Whatever

ERRATIC ADVENTURE
Sunday, June 5, 2016

So I got crazy inspired one day and I decided to go find all the erratics I could and I did so here they are:

My first stop was an erratic in a random North Seattle secret pseudo-park in Northgate, at the intersection of 17th ave and 104th st. It was on the bank of Thornton creek, the same creek that the water at the bottom of my ravine empties into. After heavy searching I finally found it, about 5 feet tall and covered in moss. It was p big but I'd seen bigger... Nothing special.

The second stop was a baby erratic (although I'm sure quite a bit of it is buried underground.) It was maybe three feet tall and had an awkward triangular shape. I knew this one well, it was in Wedgwood, right by a childhood friend's house, situated in the middle of the intersection of 31st ave. and 82nd street. Fun fact: the triangular block that houses this erratic is in fact the smallest park in the city: Triangle Park. I assume that the only reason it's here is because developers back in the 40s and 50s couldn't figure out how to remove the giant glacial rock so they just built around it.

The third stop was the classic: Wedgwood rock. Actually it's not in Wedgwood, it's more like Bryant/Ravenna area, right next to Eckstein Middle School on 28th ave and 72nd st, but nonetheless it is the pride and joy of the neighborhood I grew up in. It's truly magnificent, standing 18 ft tall it is definitely the biggest I've ever seen. In middle school, we used to climb the trees that surround it and hop over to get a view of the whole neighborhood. According to one website, 14,000 years ago the Vashon ice sheet pushed this huge rock all the way from Mt. Erie, on Fidalgo Island by Anacortes (https://wedgwoodinseattlehistory.com/2012/01/31/wedgwood-rock/.) Truly an amazing place.

The fourth stop was another giant, probably the second biggest I found. In the center of the Ravenna ravine, a huge erratic sits right along side the stream at the ravine's base. It has the perfect shape to be easily climable, and I actually had to wait for some children who were playing on it to leave before I took my picture (didn't want to come across as a creep...) According to the Northwest geology press, the erratic is made of granodiorite, a type of stone common in the mountains of British Columbia (https://nwgeology.wordpress.com/the-fieldtrips/glacial-erratic-field-trips/seattle-area-glacial-erratics/ravenna-park-granodiorite-erratic-seattle/). It must have made an incredible journey to get here.

The fifth and final stop at first seemed anticlimactic, but turned out to be the most interesting of them all. It was in Leschi park, near the central district of Seattle and not too far from I-90. I'd never been to this park, so it took me a ridiculously long time to find the erratic among the twists and turns of the various trails. It's a classic random Seattle park– underutilized, beautifully preserved vast stretches of woods like this are every where. When I finally found it in the side of this hill, It was barely bigger than the one in triangle park and I was dissappointed. But when I looked closer I realized that it was covered in fossils– remnants of mollusk animals from an ancient ocean floor. According to the Geology press the source of the erratic and the reason for all of the fossils is disputed (https://nwgeology.wordpress.com/the-fieldtrips/glacial-erratic-field-trips/seattle-area-glacial-erratics/the-fossil-rich-erratic-at-leschi-park/.) It's an unsolved problem that makes the weird, beautiful network of Seattle parks that much more interesting.