Acadia's landscape had its beginnings long before sunbeams first caressed the slopes of Cadillac Mountain. About 500 to 600 million years ago, nameless rivers transported sand, silt, and mud onto the floor of an ancient sea. These sediments built at a rate of about one inch every hundred years until they accreted to depths of thousands of feet.
Pressure and heat transformed these sediments into the earliest bedrock. Next, titanic forces lifted and warped the bedrock of the sea into a mountain range, a range perhaps as mighty as the Rockies. But inexorably, the forces of air, water, and gravity ground these mountains down until little was left.
Today, only schists and gneisses, rocks of the Ellsworth formation, remain as testimony to those mountains of long ago. The mountains were built up by tectonic and volcanic forces, and scraped down and shaped by a succession of glaciers. The land sank beneath the weight of mile-deep ice as glaciers inexorably ground their way toward present day Georges Bank, Long Island, and Cape Cod.
As the glaciers receded, they filled a vast valley surrounding the mountains with meltwater, creating the Gulf of Maine. Relieved of the great burden of the ice, the land slowly rebounded. These processes, over the eons of time, created the landscape of which Acadia National Park and its mountains are a part.
The shoreline is also a work in progress, constantly being shaped and reshaped by waves and wind and storms. Slowly the ocean works away at the hard edges of the island, carving sea stacks and leaving pockets of beaches filled with surf-rounded cobblestones.
Place-Acadia national Park, ME, Camera-Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT with 28-90 Canon lens
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10 comments:
loved the post, a-X......it's always interesting to see the world and learn through other's travels.....:)
And beautiful pictures :)
Gorgeous photos! Thanks for the information too. I've only been to Acadia once and I thought it was amazing!!!
@Moi:
yup...agree with you! and this blog-world is the best place to come upon first hand experiences/stories n all kind of knowledge..:)
@Lori:
isn't that amazing place lori :)
thnaks for revisiting...!
just a li'l note: i think Maine is abbreviated as ME and MN is Minnesota...I may be wrong though.
@Moi:
oops..
you are right Moi..Thanks for the correction :)
Thanks for adding me to your blogger buddies!!
I think you have taken these shots in adverse lighting conditions. Last shot could have been much better if you had got cross light. Information is superb.Try once again in good lighting conditions.
I remember standing at about the same location where you took the last two photographs when I was last at Acadia. It is truly a magnificent place.
This is a great thumbnail explanation of the historical geology and geomorphology of Acadia. Are you also a geologist? If you had the opportunity to shoot Bass Harbor Head Lighthouse while you were at Acadia, you'll see a great unconformity and formational contact between the beautiful light pink of the granite (which comprises most of Acadia) and the dark gray of a basaltic dike at that location.
I really like the compositions of your photos, but I have to agree with Pradip, the lighting was not the best. But, you have to take what you can get sometimes when you're on vacation or visiting a distant location and only have a limited time to make your photographs.
Hi Russ,
You have noted very competently. I thank you for your kind comments.
It is a pleasant surprise to know that you had shot at the same location. I remember you mentioning Bass harbor before too…I was not lucky to explore that part, but I can imagine the incredible formational contact of pink granite and basaltic dike…if I happen to visit there in near future, I will certainly make a point to discover that.
I spoke with Pradip uncle recently, and agree that adverse lighting condition make you handicapped. Apart, I have very cheap lenses with limited AV (doesn’t go below 4.0)…! I hope one day I could buy those A class dream lenses….:)
and yahh, I am not a geologist…am an architect..:)
Haunting & striking @ the same time! great shots!
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