Crater Lake National Park pendant
A gorgeous dendritic opal is the focal, along with a glass cabochon from Mikelene Reusse in this pendant inspired by Crater Lake National Park in Oregon.
I remember the first time I saw Crater Lake. It was late spring mid 1980s and just a little snow was left in patches under the trees. I'd been swarmed by mosquitoes on the hike to it. I came through the trees and there were no more itches or swear words just one of the most stunning sights of nature in full technicolor! I couldn't find my photos from our visit, but they're still ingrained in my brain.
Crater Lake is part of the caldera of Mount Mazama which last erupted about 7,700 years ago, although the volcano is at least 400,000 years old. There's evidence that glaciers were on its surface at one time. It is still considered a potentially dangerous volcano capable of vast destruction. It is currently considered dormant, but not dead.
Photos are from the National Park Service and are public domain
”Without wilderness, we will eventually lose the capacity to understand America. Our drive, our ruggedness, our unquenchable optimism and zeal and elan go back to the challenges of the untrammeled wilderness.
“Britain won its wars on the playing fields of Eton. America developed its mettle at the muddy gaps of the Cumberlands, in the swift rapids of its rivers, on the limitless reaches of its western plains, in the silent vastness of primeval forests, and in the blizzard-ridden passes of the Rockies and Coast ranges.
“If we lose wilderness, we lose forever the knowledge of what the world was and what it might, with understanding and loving husbandry, yet become. These are islands in time — with nothing to date them on the calendar of mankind. In these areas it is as though a person were looking backward into the ages and forward untold years.
“Here are bits of eternity, which have a preciousness beyond all accounting.”
Harvey Broome; co-founder of The Wilderness Society