To me, she looks like Queen Victoria wearing a voluminous skirt and surveying her realm. In the littoral zone closer to shore is Grandmother Rock, named for its shape that is vaguely reminiscent of an imposing woman, some twenty feet tall, looking out to sea. The island, accessible only at low tide, is an adventure to climb, but it is not unknown for the Coast Guard to rescue climbers who have not paid attention to incoming tides. The largest is Pewetole Island, which looms over the others at a hundred and thirty feet tall, crowned with Sitka spruces ( Picea sitchensis) how these trees maintain a foothold on this nearly barren rock is a feat of determined roots. Some are large, some small, and some in between. Today’s younger sea stacks at Trinidad, California, stand in the ocean like a family of sentinels guarding the coast. Western columbine ( Aquilegia formosa) backlit by the sun, against a fern covered sea stack Having proven their fortitude by resisting the onslaught of waves that have eroded the coast around them, they now provide a secure and attractive setting for house and garden. A few of these ancient sea stacks have been incorporated into the structure of the house outdoors, they provide home for both native and non-native plants. In addition to present-day sea stacks where native plants predominate, there are the sea stacks of sixty thousand years ago (when the sea level was higher), some of which now rest in people’s gardens, more than a hundred feet inland from the current shoreline. The Pacific Coast is rich with sea stacks, from California’s Big Sur to Oregon. Sometimes sea arches are formed where waves have hollowed out a line of weakness and created an arched opening sea stacks can also form when the roof of a sea arch collapses. Relentless pounding by ocean waves erodes the softer, weaker parts of the rock first, leaving harder, more resistant rock behind. Sea stacks begin as part of a headland or sea cliff. Sea stack gardens? Aren’t sea stacks those rocks near the coast that stick up out of the ocean? How can they have gardens? Photographs by Ted Peaseįrom “Sea Stacks of Kerry,” Richard Hayes Phillips, 2001 Pewetole Island at dawn, with Sitka spruce ( Picea sitchensis) on its crown at high tide, Pewetole is an island.
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