The Felsenmeer Files, Part 1: Welcome to Hickory Run State Park, Pennsylvania, USA

Taken some distance into this strange natural rock collection. Looking northeastward, up its longest axis.

First, let's disambiguate the geo-lingo. Felsenmeer is a German term that translates literally as "sea of rocks." I love it. It's pithy, descriptive, and poetic.

And when I was young it was what American geologists, then not as allergic to foreign languages as they are now, used for this amazing type of landform. Obviously it was some Teutonophone geographer or geomorphologist who first coined the term in the Old World, and we over here in the New happily accepted it, too.

Now, however, various other English-language synonyms are supplanting it. These include boulderfield (reasonable but boring), stonefield (ditto), and blockfield (just utterly blockheaded).

This particular felsenmeer is one of the most famous in the United States. Situated on a glaciated portion of the Appalachian Plateaus province, it covers an area approximately 1800 ft long x 400 ft wide by 12 ft deep (549 x 122 x 3.7 m), But when you first come upon it and see it stretch into the distance, it seems even larger. And it has a rather surrealistic, dreamlike aspect, as though it were hell's own parking lot.

The boulders it contains are a grayish-maroonish sandstone of the Duncannon Member of the Devonian Catskill Formation. They're thought to have been formed by extreme and deep-penetrating freezing and subsequent thawing of nearby ridge bedrock during the Pleistocene ice age. Eventually the loosened stones moved down the gentle slopes and congregated on this lower ground.

All this much to the delight of modern kids, who love to strand their floundering elders at the felsenmeer's edge, while they gleefully scramble over the rocks and disappear into the mazelike terrain.

To see the other photos and descriptions of this series, visit
my Felsenmeer Files album.

Taken in: United States / Pennsylvania / Kidder Township / Spilt Rock (show map)

Taken on: July 28, 2004

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Camera:	Sony CD MAVICA
ISO:	200
Flash:	No Flash
Exposure Program:	Program AE
Metering Mode:	Spot
White Balance:	Auto
Color Space:	Uncalibrated
Software:	Inpaint
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