I once worked on a phone campaign to disallow the trees around your crater from being cut down…
I am deeply deeply in love with you 💙 Thanks so much for your conservation effort!
It’s the small things we all do together that can make a big difference! 💙💙💙💙 And you’ve done it!!!
People just gotta know what Crater Lake and Wizard Island looks like
What in the Skyrim
been there several times. And yeah, Skyrim feels super duper Oregon in a lot of ways.
We gonna talk about Crater Lake, and Wizard Island and not mention the Old Man of the Lake?
The Old Man of the Lake is a log that floats around the lake. It is somewhat strange in that it floats vertically. It’s roughly 30 feet tall, with only about 5 or so feet sticking out above the surface of the water. It was first ‘offically’ recorded in the early 20th century, though there are oral reports of it as far back as 1896 (and likely earlier still given the cultural importance of Crater Lake to the Klamath tribe of that area.
The Old Man should have rotted away long ago or at the very least become waterlogged and sank into the water fully, but nope. Over a hundred years, and there is this log still in the water just floating.
So y'know how I said the fact that it floats vertically was 'somewhat strange’? Let’s get into some actual strange territory regarding the Old Man. It moves. Against the wind. It has been recorded moving in paths that do not make sense, never getting stuck on the shore of Wizard Island, nor the area of shore around the lake. Now that’s strange.
So now let’s get freaky: The free-floating Old Man posed a hazard to boats since it moves, and only a small portion of it was above water. (though personal boats are no longer allowed on the lake) Anyway, in 1988 a team was using a small submersible to explore the lake. The scientist figured it’d be a good idea to moor the Old Man near the coast of Wizard Island out of their way, for safety. So they tied some rope to it, to move the Old Man. As soon as they did so, the clear blue skies of a warm August day turned dark. The wind kicked up, bad, and it started to rain, then hail, then snow in the span of a few minutes…again in August. Now snow in that area is common, but not in the summer months. It gets super warm in that area in summer (like 70 to 90 degrees on average) So the scientists decided to nope the fuck out of the water, because of this freak storm. They unmoored the Old Man, preparing to get the fuck out of dodge of this summer snowstorm. As soon as the rope loosened and was in the water, as quickly as the storm had come on them, the darkened skies cleared and it was once more a fine sunny summer day.
As a kid, I spent my summers with my family who lives like… 40 some odd miles from Crater Lake National Park so I had this knowledge just kinda buried in my head somewhere.
I excitedly added a thing about the old man before I checked the notes so now I’m gonna reblog this great story instead but here is the old man!!!
“The Old Man floats vertically through the lake on a calm day”
“THE OLD MAN FLOATS. VERTICALLY. THROUGH THE LAKE ON A CALM DAY”
went to my best friend’s house last night and saw a little plushie dog and plushie cat that had been sewn together down the middle into a two-headed chimera. I said, “did you do that?” she said, “yes, I saved them.”
turns out at her old job when the last two plushies hadn’t sold and became deadstock, her boss told her to cut them up and throw them out. so she cut them each in half, preserved their heads, and then rebuilt them together.
cannot stop thinking about the way these little plushies were approached with the instinct of a Vampire or some sort of ancient god. “Let me save you [turn you into a monster].”
The fact that the beheading was at the order of a superior, and the solution was to create some sort of monster of disobediance to the letter of the law instead of just lying and saving them adds a certain mythological resonance.
Illustrations for one of the new SCURRY! adventures from Stout Stoat Press, now available on backerkit! If you ever wanted to play as a little woodland animal getting into big, big trouble, I highly reccommend this system and these stories!
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