Saturday, October 23, 2010

Ottawa Riverbank rich in inukshuks and fossils

What an incredible shoreline the Ottawa River has. How ironic that it's lined with fossilized patterns and creatures of older river beds. Every year in September, artists flock to the shore to make inukshuks with this fossilized rock. From what I can tell, the artists challenge themselves to choose oddly-shaped/weighted and fine-pointed rocks. In some close-ups, you can see that they've used tiny rocks to wedge/shimmy things into place.

On this visit, many of the inukshuks have fallen victim to wind and rising water. Unfortunately, I didn't think to bring my camera on my first visit and so aren't able to show you some of the more impressive ones that were such bold balancing acts that I was afraid my simple act of observing might cause them to collapse.
Millions of years from now, will paleontologists find these odd, anachronistic configurations of fossil and wonder what happened?
Wikipedia "Inukshuk"

No comments: