At last, today brought clear skies and much warmer weather (into the 40s), which also brought the demise of the recent snow. I took this afternoon’s photograph when much of the snow had already melted along Piney Woods Church Road, with vestiges remaining in the most wooded areas. One such bit of snow still covered the edge of an old loblolly pine stump. The stump’s interior has rotted away, leaving behind bark layers around the edges. These layers have flaked apart, producing something that evokes a rock outcrop in miniature, with metamorphic layers of slate or schist that have been tilted upward by tectonic forces. Nunataks are isolated rocky areas, rising above the surrounding glaciers, found in polar regions such as Greenland and Antarctica. The term popped into my head as fitting this image well, perhaps because I was remembering back to how cold it was yesterday morning. As a geologist who loves the stark rocky landscapes of the West (especially the Colorado Plateau), I rarely encounter anything similar in the Georgia Piedmont. Except, maybe, for this.
