MittenButte Archives - Bliss Photographics

Posted on May 31, 2020May 22, 2020 by Frank Bliss

Mitten Rainbow Tree Frame

I find you are where you are when rainbows pop out of the sky. All rainbows are on the opposite side of the sky as the sun as they are reflective. The light hitting the water droplets in that rain shower reflected back to my camera in a classic ROYGBIV (Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo and Violet) order.

Finding a frame that “fits” the situation is of course always the problem. It’s easy to take a photo of a rainbow. IT’s harder to take a frame around the rainbow when there are two trees within a mile radius… Spring green grass below mixed with the golden stalks remaining from last year. Soon the green will overtake the gold with the grasslands brown season ending. The Cottonwood Trees in this small draw frame “Mitten Butte”. Famous in my world, the Monadnock / erosional remnant is 300 feet higher than the surrounding ground. I’ve been over it and on top of it a few times. The view is good up there but it’s a long stairway to be at just at the right time for chasing light. It’s a long walk down in the dark and then there is the 2 mile two track road to/from it lol.

Mitten butte has been famous in my narratives having been a volcano a time or two, a local Mt. Fuji in geofiction. Backdrops for hundreds of images. Here it’s accumulating Skittles™ in it’s saddle or so it appears… 😜🤔📷

Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands (Wyotana)

Title: Mitten Rainbow Tree Frame

Posted on April 28, 2020April 21, 2020 by Frank Bliss

Mitten Butte Tree Frame

Locally this “Pyramidal Hill” is called Mitten Butte. The orange Alpenglow behind on this Frosty Morning was saturated. Taken a more than a week ago.

Tree frames are elegant in their forms. Smooth curves mixed with contrasts and details. The landscape curves blend themselves into the frame with the silhouettes / negative space bordering the color from the long traveled sunlight. Dropping away to expose the sun rising up, the horizon moves closer to the light.

The actors of this stage show had only one in the audience. Sometimes dramatic plays happen overhead taking over an hour from start to finish. I have a tough job watching entire sunsets and sunrises as they mutate from second to second. I might take 800 photos of a particular sunrise as this. Only 3 or 4 images from this twilight my be worthy of finishing from that pile… None the less, you have to be there to capture the image.

More images from after sunrise of this morning with different frames were equally as dramatic. Skies as above are not rare but the high ridges I work have their share. Dozens of decades under the trees “belt”. It’s perspective far exceeds our own limited memory with short existence on earth (It’s comprehension might be a bit challenged though lolol). The complexity of our thought the tree can not conceive, but the perspective it has is beyond our comprehension. Being a tree it has ultimately a figurative and literal connection to the land lol. I would like to think it is deeper than that.

There is much more connectivity between living things and the environment than we give them credit for occurs I feel. Even disconnected to nature by nurture human/me, can feel things happening an orderly manner here in the highlands. It’s probably my own psyche settling into the cycles, the yearly natural event of this place in space and time.

Twilight Landscapes are all dark…because they were/are 😁

Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands.

Title: Mitten Butte Tree Frame

Posted on January 30, 2020January 23, 2020 by Frank Bliss

Wetlands Under Crimson Twilight

Living up on a high ridge allows for local streams / drainage incise (cut down) and make deep gullies. This dam was built some time in the last 100 years. I have heard no oral history of it’s timeline. This is on State Land adjacent to my ranch. A pretty good sized lake sits just above this first ridge. The lake pictured here is a wet area below that lake. Soaking water through the sands leaking onto this ground. The water level in the ground is high here. Traveling through this backcountry is a challenge to say the least ….

Mitten Butte, the pyramidal shaped butte sitting right frame . It is not a volcano though we have some volcanic necks in this country (Devil’s tower and Missouri Buttes). Formed because of a resistant to erosion cap rock protects all the rocks under it. There is about 400 feet between this drainage low area to the tip of that hill. 40 stories of topographic relief here. Following this deep gully up stream is indeed an interesting 4 wheel drive as that country is BIG back there. Lots of ups and downs and few straight paths. You have to drive the “topo lines” a lot of the time and go way around things. It’s 10 miles to the nearest ranch in that direction. This is very much hard to travel across this scar in the hillside.

I often drive up into remote topographic cul-de-sacs. I’ll start out, go into an area to travel through, but the ground is such that “you can’t get there from here”. lolol.

Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands.

Wetlands Under Crimson Twilight

Posted on January 27, 2020January 20, 2020 by Frank Bliss

Sunrise over State Ground

As I drive down the county red gravel road, I look to my left. Traveled a bit further to pull over safely. The paucity of traffic up here makes me drive even more carefully as I pull over at the strangest times. In the last 2 years I believe I’ve met less than 10 different cars / trucks out on the backroads working sunset/sunrises in this backcountry. . This image on “Section 36” taken 2 miles south of the Wyoming / Montana border . This is nothing like AREA 51 just so you know… . Section 36 in any particular township is the “school” section. That square mile reserved by the govt for the gov’t to be used for a school building.

This is a “School Section” mostly state owned ground 660 acres in size. It is leased to a neighboring ranch to me. A square Mile of State ground. Private ground past on the far Ridge. The pyramidal hill on the right skyline is “Mitten Butte”. Back in the 1950’s, the view the Parks Road /Trail Creek One room School House had. No neighbors then either. Only two signs of that old building… Some concrete foundations remain over a bank where they. Secondarily an old oil burning furnace about 3x3x5 feet still sits on the prairie marking the site where most of the local ranch kids learned the basics. It was a mile plus walk from our homestead where quite a few of the local kids came from to school.

‘Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming / Montana borderlands (Wyotana)

Title: Sunrise over State Ground

Posted on December 13, 2019December 7, 2019 by Frank Bliss

Mitten Butte Volcano Illusion

SATIRE:

So I wake up the other morning and much to my surprise, was a local pyramidal hillock that was blowing it’s top. The steam was rising, the cauldron boiling. I anticipate pyroclastic flows, lahars, glowing red hot clouds and other volcanic manifestations similar to what buried Pompeii. Ash should start falling any moment. Maybe “Sneaky Pete” the windmill will save the day and blow the ash away…

Back to my normal programming: Geologic Musings:

OK, this is NOT a volcano. It takes a properly positioned camera lol. Those are normal clouds up in the sky. Yellowstone is not blowing up. The Devil’s Tower/Missouri Butte Volcanic Neck field about 50 miles to my southeast has not reactivated. No, the Laramide Orogeny has not started back up just yet.

That Butte (called Mitten Butte), is made of layers of river sands stacked on top of one another. The volcanic shape is a result of a hard cap rock which resisted erosion better than every thing else between it and myself. All that rock has been removed by erosion. It is a erosive remnant of all the material that used to surround the hill. Hundreds of feet if not thousands of feet (depending on your location) of sediment has been removed around here. Remember Devils Tower? That used to be a mile or so deep. Now it sticks up 1267 feet above the Belle Fourche River. That river system essentially removed enough material to expose the harder tower. Same process here except just the top of the hill is harder rock.

Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands (Wyotana).

Title: Mitten Butte Volcano Illusion

Posted on October 15, 2019October 6, 2019 by Bliss

Mitten Butte Alpenglow Twilight on a Frosty Morning

Locally this “Pyramidal Hill” is known as Mitten Butte. The Yellow Alpenglow behind on this Frosty Morning was captured a bit more than a week ago as the image just now made it to the web and gallery.. Twilight Landscapes are all dark…because they were/are 😁

A good word to look up would be “Monadnock” Great word of the day.

Geologically this hill is an erosional remnant, still standing when all the material/sediment around it was washed away. A hard cap rock and being at the top of the drainage made this possible. I’ve been to the top 3 times in 20 years. I do have photos somewhere lolol. There is no road up there as it is state land. The only way up is to hoof it. It’s about 300 feet higher than the base. IT’s Lance formation but no dinosaurs or fossil microsites that I saw and I have pretty much walked it all. . Because it’s state land, it is illegal to disturb any vertebrate remains I would have found. I saw some small pieces of vertebrate materials but nothing worth telling the state geologist about. I just wanted the viewpoint to see what was up there. Big view and not much but harder rocks than lower down the slope. All sandstones/mudstones and silts. Cretaceous river sediments is all that hill contains. No mystic Pyramid or Volcano, home for aliens or some other exotic purpose. Just a pile of hardened sand/mud/silt.

Location: Hardly a mile from Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands.

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