We've been in the Altered Landscape archive at the Nevada Museum of Art the last couple of days and today we ventured back out into the field. We're still a bit frazzled from the experience of visiting Shoal this morning, the second of six nuclear sites that we will be visiting on this trip. As expected, seeking out and finding anomalous nuclear test sites isn't exactly an easy or calming experience.
Discoveries along the way include unexpectedly coming across a hidden geocache box. And we made it out before the flash flood arrived...and we are beginning to be able to read the terrain of unmarked nuclear landscapes.
Some ideas and impressions are starting to gel in response to experiences thus far. After nine days of direct, raw exposure to all kinds of forces, we are starting to realize that the real action and story of note is unfolding under us- literally. And has been for awhile. The geologic meets the nuclear out of sight and lies below the ground. It feels like major breakthrough for the imagination, the work and process of finding ways to respond. More soon on this as it takes shape further.
My first postcard to Freeman Dyson in response to these sites went out yesterday. So, the project moves forward.
Discoveries along the way include unexpectedly coming across a hidden geocache box. And we made it out before the flash flood arrived...and we are beginning to be able to read the terrain of unmarked nuclear landscapes.
Some ideas and impressions are starting to gel in response to experiences thus far. After nine days of direct, raw exposure to all kinds of forces, we are starting to realize that the real action and story of note is unfolding under us- literally. And has been for awhile. The geologic meets the nuclear out of sight and lies below the ground. It feels like major breakthrough for the imagination, the work and process of finding ways to respond. More soon on this as it takes shape further.
My first postcard to Freeman Dyson in response to these sites went out yesterday. So, the project moves forward.
the road to Shoal
road into GZ Canyon (Ground Zero Canyon)
a newly installed granite marker, marks the spot
the weapon was placed in a bed of granite 1200 ft below the ground, so a spray of fragmented granite litters the ground around the site
a testing well to the south of ground zero
broken bar and pipes litter the ground
hidden geocache box in a creosote bush (smells amazing)
the cards we left in the geocache box (the concrete slab in the background is the cap for horizontal access to ground zero, 1200 feet down and 1000 ft east )
another test well on the way out of the canyon
left over cement on the buckled berm of land around the site
"One of two major underground nuclear tests in Nevada that were performed off the Nevada Test Site. Conducted in 1963, Shoal was an experiment to study earthquake effects. A 12 kiloton bomb was detonated 1,200 feet below the surface. The site now is unmarked and unfenced, though radioactivity remains in the soil below the surface. There are visible remnants of the test at the site, including cement pads, and a shaft portal. Further remediation work was conducted on the site in the late 1990's." from the CLUI site
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