THE CATSKILL GEOLOGISTS BY PROFESSORS ROBERT AND JOHANNA TITUS - The Willows Part five A Pocket Beach

CATSKILL - Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902) is a recognized member of the Hudson River School of Art. But unlike so many of the others Bierstadt did a lot of his work in the American West. He did a large number of very large canvases that captured images of towering mountains in the Rockies. He also liked to work along the rocky Pacific west coast, especially if there were seals. Take a look at our first illustration. That’s a classic Bierstadt. We also spotted it to be what geologists call a pocket beach. These are common along the Pacific coast. They lie between two headlands, and they are locations where sand has accumulated in the quiet protected zone between those headlands. This painting is called “The Golden Gate” and it is dated back to 1900, very late in Bierstadt’s career. Look at the curvature of the beach which is matched by the approaching waves. There is a dynamic here that explains the origins of the beach. The sand of this pocket beach has been traveling along the coast until reaching that protected area. There it came to rest and would probably never be picked up and carried away. The rocky headland is truly scenic. All of this makes for a picturesque image and Bierstadt was all about painting such images.

So, what does all this have to do with our Mountain Eagle columns? Not much, you would think. But lately we have been writing about the Willows, a Dutch farmhouse along the Hudson River and that is a long way from the Pacific coast, isn’t it? Well, now take a look at our second picture. Yep, that’s a pocket beach and it lies on Willows property just a little north from where we were last week. We know, we know; this is not even a remote match for what Bierstadt painted. We were there for at least a half hour, and we didn’t see a single seal! There are no rocky headlands there either. And there was only a little sand. Instead, this beach had to be content with accumulating some of the sediment and vegetation that is carried down the river.  But this isn’t physics, geologists get to be relatively free and loose in identifying landscape features and we feel that this is just what we say it is – a pocket beach. And that gives you still another thing to watch for – when you are hiking along a coastline out there somewhere or visiting an art gallery.

Contact the authors at randjtitus@prodigy.net. Join their facebook page “The Catskill Geologist.” Read their blogs at “thecatskillgeologist.com.”