Exploration of Place - My Inspirations
Oregon's Great Basin
Oregon’s Great Basin is a landscape of exposed geologic activity and long human habitation. Located in the northwestern portion of the Great Basin, It is a rich site for archeological studies in the arrival of homo sapiens on the North American continent.
Applegate Valley, OR
The Applegate Valley in Southern Oregon is part of the Klamath Knot biosphere, a unique and diverse ecological area that is part of the Cascade Siskiyou ecoregion. The convergence of the ancient Siskiyou and Klamath Mountains with the younger volcanic Cascade Mountains creates an intersection and connectivity corridor for these distinct ecoregions to blend. Located in the Southwest corner of Oregon and Northern California, you can find more than 300 species of birds, mammals, reptiles, and amphibians —many of them rare or endemic — that depend on the ecological integrity of the Cascade Siskiyou national monument to survive.
Southern Oregon Coast
Oregon’s Coast Range ecoregion is made up of unique and diverse habitats from sandy dunes to lush forests, from tidepools to mountain streams, from grasslands to oak woodlands. It encompasses a rich coastline, temperate rainforests and steep mountains.
The Southwest
The Southwest for me is the Colorado Plateau and the San Juan Basin. The Colorado Plateau is largely made up of high desert, with scattered areas of forests. In the southwest corner of the Colorado Plateau lies the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River. Much of the Plateau’s landscape is related to the Grand Canyon in both appearance and geologic history. The nickname “Red Rock Country” suggests the brightly colored rock left bare to the view by dryness and erosion. The San Juan Basin is an asymmetric structural depression in the Colorado Plateau province, with varying elevation and nearly 3,000 feet in topographic relief. Its most striking features include Chaco Canyon and Chacra Mesa. The basin lies west of the Continental Divide, and its main drainage is the southwest- to west-flowing San Juan River, which eventually joins the Colorado River in Utah.
