Kettle Pond Recreation
26 August 2014 -- 238/365
Lincoln, Rhode Island
Olney Pond, the centerpiece of Lincoln Woods State Park, is what's known as a Kettle Pond. The Laurentide Ice Sheet formed in Canada about 120,000 years ago and rapidly advanced southward. Note that the last Ice Age started 2.6 million years ago during the Pleistocene Epoch, and that Ice Age has not yet ended. We are actually in an interglacial period of that Ice Age. In any event, as the Laurentide Ice Sheet formed, the Wisconsinan Glacier engulfed much of North America. It finally began to recede about 12,000 years ago and left its mark on the New England coast. Block Island, Manhattan, Martha's Vinyard, Long Island, and Nantucket all owe their existence to the retreat of the Wisconsinan Glacier, as do all of the kettle ponds that dot the New England landscape.
In today's photo, you see two kayakers relaxing alongside one of the hallmarks of a kettle pond. The large slab of exposed granite behind them was left bare when the Wisconsinan Glacier retreated from this area 10,000 years go. Evidence of the retreat is seen in the striations still visible on that granite slab. Interglacial Periods, such as the one we are currently in, last about 200,000 years, so we have just passed the half-way mark in this one. There's some speculation that the current epoch - the Holocene - may end up slightly warmer than the previous inter-glacial epoch - the Eemian - however at our present stage in the cycle, the Eemian was far warmer than we are experiencing. Geologists do not believe the Holocene to be the last inter-glacial period of the current ice age, and the geological evidence suggests the next glacial advance is about 80,000 years in our future.
Post processing started with a classic filter in Topaz B&W FX. I adjusted color sensitivity sliders, adaptive exposure, regions, contrast, boost black, and boost white. A levels adjustment was added in PSE.
