Disorientation
One thing that bothers me about the remediation project to slow the advance of Mount Baldy at Indiana Dunes National Park is that they cut the tops off a bunch of trees I'd been using as landmarks for the last 16 years. This not only makes this side of the dune look extremely bare, but it makes it near impossible for me to tell where I'm standing relative to where I was standing before. I think I'm a little to the right and a bit closer to the dune from where I was when I took this picture in 2022. I think the severed trunk with the leftward lean around the left third of the image is part of the tallest tree emerging from the dune in the linked shot. I thing the three stumps set close together toward the right of this picture are part of the tree partially obscured behind a living tree toward the right of the linked picture. I think the leaves in the upper righthand corner of this picture are part of that living tree.
Either way, the last time I was here in February of 2025, all the asphalt seen up ahead was beneath the dune, and the dune's farthest reach was right around where that picnic table sits. The park service moved a lot of sand. Habit almost made me say they moved a "ton of sand" as a qualifier, but that measurement likely underestimates reality by at least three orders of magnitude.
Fun Math Fact: An "order of magnitude" is just a fancy way of saying a multiple of 10. So "three orders of magnitude" would be a multiple of 1000 ... 10 X 10 X 10. I suspect there are probably a lot of people who don't remember that from school.
Disorientation
One thing that bothers me about the remediation project to slow the advance of Mount Baldy at Indiana Dunes National Park is that they cut the tops off a bunch of trees I'd been using as landmarks for the last 16 years. This not only makes this side of the dune look extremely bare, but it makes it near impossible for me to tell where I'm standing relative to where I was standing before. I think I'm a little to the right and a bit closer to the dune from where I was when I took this picture in 2022. I think the severed trunk with the leftward lean around the left third of the image is part of the tallest tree emerging from the dune in the linked shot. I thing the three stumps set close together toward the right of this picture are part of the tree partially obscured behind a living tree toward the right of the linked picture. I think the leaves in the upper righthand corner of this picture are part of that living tree.
Either way, the last time I was here in February of 2025, all the asphalt seen up ahead was beneath the dune, and the dune's farthest reach was right around where that picnic table sits. The park service moved a lot of sand. Habit almost made me say they moved a "ton of sand" as a qualifier, but that measurement likely underestimates reality by at least three orders of magnitude.
Fun Math Fact: An "order of magnitude" is just a fancy way of saying a multiple of 10. So "three orders of magnitude" would be a multiple of 1000 ... 10 X 10 X 10. I suspect there are probably a lot of people who don't remember that from school.