"Lily pad room" at Onondaga Cave State Park, Missouri. (Flickr)

Sinister cave 2023 Acrylic on paper

This is a commission I much enjoyed working on; the client was kind enough to give me permission to post it.

Now, having dedicated an entire picture to painting speleothems, I can see that I like painting them even more than I thought.

Whipple Cave, Nevada (1972)

Nov 4, 2023

Unexpectedly, I got to do some scrambling around underground today! Wasn't a great big cave, but it had some very decorated little nooks and crannies.

Speleothems in Lehman Cave

Lehman Cave, near the Nevada-Utah border, is not a large cave but it does have some spectacular formations (speleothems). Here we see a vareity of flowstone, columns and stalactites. Speleothems form over long times when calcite (and rarely other minerals) precipitate from dripping or flowing groundwater.

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speleoTHEM? all this liberal nonsense. back in MY day it was speleoHIM!!!

🇬🇧 Water surface tension effect in a spectacular column that formed rimstone levels at its base. It was found in the farthest place from the entrance in Ponorul Suspendat cave, a 10 km cave in Southern Carpathians, in a 5 day bivouac trip, after exploring nearly 1 km of new passages when a sump dried up in the north part of the cave following a very dry autumn. 🇷🇴 La sfârșitul lui 2021, în P. Ponorul Suspendat, după explorarea noului colector din nordul peșterii, una din galeriile din capăt a devenit tot mai strâmtă până nu am mai putut trece. După derocarea galeriei strâmte am gasit una din cele mai spectaculoase formațiuni descoperite vreodată: o coloană la baza căreia s-a format o "cascadă" de gururi. Tensiunea superficială a apei face ca suprafața acesteia să fie "curbată" pe marginea micilor bazine, în combinație cu adâncimea și forma lor rezultând un efect optic de lupă ce mărește micile coralite de pe fundul bazinului, un efect greu de surprins în poze, de-a dreptul hipnotizant. Probabil nu întâmplător acest loc se află în punctul cel mai îndepartăt din peșteră. #PonorulSuspendat #SpeoSilex #explorare #speleothems #formations #SilexBrasov #pestera #Cerna #Capatanii #pestera #MuntiiCapatanii #Cerna #RoCaving #RoSpeleo #PesteraPonorulSuspendat #CapataniiMountains #Capatanii #SouthernCarphatians #Carphatians #Romania #caving #speleology #speologie #formațiuni https://www.instagram.com/p/CqDyMlyo6Xi/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

sees a cave post going around. thinks surely i’ve ided it. checks notes. i did not. remembers i didn’t reblog it because i got mad that people can only appreciate caves when they’re pretty. appreciate the humble and frightening beauty of caves at their most ‘ordinary’ (although nothing in a cave is ordinary) with me

Krásy podzemia, ktoré nikdy neomrzia #surveylife #surveyday #surveyincome #surveyincome #landsurveying #speleosurvey #speleologia #speleoday #speleothem #speleotherapy #caveexploring #caverland #caveman #caveday https://www.instagram.com/p/Cj8qViOLvGQ/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

Just to tie in my two themes this month----

Additional notes, because poll options apparently limit their characters:

Frodo finds great peace in watching the tides rise and fall throughout each day. He attends all the ranger programs on birds and seashells and fills pages with sketches and poetry.

Sam meticulously selects postcards in the gift shop for each of his friends and spends a whole morning writing and addressing them. He also buys Junior Ranger hats for his kids and a variety of Appalachian jams for Rosie.

Park rangers launch a Missing Person search for Aragorn when they realize his car's been parked at Avalanche Creek for three days. The search runs for almost a week before he comes strolling out the opposite side of the park, supporting one of the SAR techs who twisted an ankle during the search.

Legolas is first drawn to Olympic for the towering, mossy temperate rainforests, but the ground goes out from under him when he steps onto Second Beach for the first time. He spends an entire day watching the light and tides shift on the sea stacks, and he leaves feeling both full and hollow, like a bell that's just been rung.

Mammoth is only Gimli's first stop on a cavern tour, followed by Jewel and Wind Caves and Carlsbad Caverns. Wind Cave is his favorite for the unusual formations. He makes an obnoxious tween boy cry in Carlsbad for breaking off a speleothem.

Boromir is on a tour of military parks. He asks so many questions to the intern working the info station at Fort Sumter the kid has to go find the park historian. His favorite site is Vicksburg because that place was buckwild, though he silently judges one of the reenactors for his clumsy handling of a black powder rifle.

Merry also makes stops in Jurassic and Dinosaur National Monuments. He watches every park video, takes selfies in front of all the fossil exhibits, and earns his Junior Ranger badge at each one. He buys a keychain for Pippin.

Pippin actually gets four citations, mostly for trying to stick his hands in mud pots. He doesn't mean anything by it---he's just so delighted and curious about the bizarre landscape. He winds up with several thermal burns and dumps a king's ransom in the donation box on his last day.

Gandalf gets dinged by rangers for not paying the $5 fee for Trunk Bay, but he acts senile until they eventually decide to drop it. He gets postcards from everyone and responds to none of them.

Faramir and Eowyn are traveling together and do many of the same hikes and rides, but they do have some different preferences off-trail. Eowyn drags Faramir to a rodeo and the Million Dollar Cowboy Bar in Jackson Hole, and he goads her into Ranger Shelton Johnson's living history programs on the Buffalo Soldiers in Yosemite.

Eomer is bike-packing on his sport cruiser motorcycle. He goes to Roosevelt south unit for the wild horse herds but ends up spending half a day watching a prairie dog town. He takes 400 photos of them, mostly blurry, and texts them to Eowyn.

Shakehole: A roughly circular depression in which water drains into an underground limestone cave system

Aven: A vertical passage or shaft which connects a cave with the surface or overlying chambers and passages

Speleothem: A secondary mineral deposit formed in caves in limestone regions as dripstone or flowstone. Stalactites and stalagmites are types of speleothem

Vadose zone: The region lying between the surface of the earth and the water table. Water which seeps or flows through this region under the pull of gravity is called vadose water

Piezometric surface: A subterranean surface marking the level to which water will rise in an aquifer

Water table: The meeting place of the phreatic and vadose zones. Below it, the rock is saturated with water; above it, water under the pull of gravity is continuously flowing downward

Epiphreatic / floodwater zone: In a cave system, the epiphreatic zone or the floodwater zone is the zone between vadose zone above it and phreatic zone beneath it

Phreatic zone: The region, below the water table, in which rock is saturated with water

Lake Castrovalva area of Lechuguilla Cave in Carlsbad Caverns National Park, New Mexico. (Robbie Shone)

i only just realised this but it's so fucked up that tamriel has like a bajillion caves but no karst or speleothems

The Caverns of Sonora are really an anomaly of a cave system. Most caves sit at cool temperatures of 60 degrees or colder, but the Caverns of Sonora are 72 degrees with 98% humidity. And they. are. gorgeous. If Mammoth Cave in Kentucky was the king of caves, the Caverns of Sonora would be the queen. There is truly no other cave (that I've been to) like them.

It's covered in what looks like gem covered corral - actually calcite speleothems.

We had the luck to have our tour guided by Bill Sawyer, a caver who has probably seen more of the Caverns of Sonora than any other living person. At one point one of the tour group asked "What happens if someone gets lost in here?" Bill's answer:

"Oh I've gotten lost."

He apparently recovered his bearings when he heard a tour group nearby. (Which, terrifying. Thank you for that nightmare scenario for me to think about, Bill.)

I'll include more photos of Sonora as my queue goes out but I just wanted to make note of how magical these Caverns were.

Speleothems in Lehman Cave

This photo shows many varieties of stalactites (hanging down from the ceiling), stalagmites (pointing up from the floor), columns (connecting floor to ceiling), and a great deal of flowstone (polished limestone formed from calcite deposited by flowing water). These are all varieties of speleothems (which means cave formations). Speleothems grow slowly over long times, and continue to grow as long as flowing or dripping water is present.

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More Australia and Aotearoa/new Zealand based fakemon (sadly, not better art). Previous posts part 1, part 2, and part 3.

I really wanted to make a water/fire type, but was stuck on ideas. I debated on a naval mine bivalve and a hydrothermal vent Pokemon, but then it hit me: a sun sunfish. Meet Bilamola, the sunfish Pokemon, water/fire type.

It's based on the Mola mola, also known as the ocean sunfish. Molas are strange fish that look like someone chopped off their back ends. The name comes from their tendency to bask in the sun at the surface of the water. Pokemon already has a mola Pokemon: Alomomola, and I think Bilamola would be a close relative of it. Bilamola's rear end looks like a cartoony sun mixed with the strange, lumpy back ends of molas. Bilamola basks in the sun at the surface of the water to charge up its internal flame sac. Once charged, it dives into the dark and frigid depths ocean where the flam sac keeps it warm and allows it to release blasts of superheated water at prey and predator alike. Its name comes from "mola" and Bila, the sun goddess of the Adnyamathanha culture people of Australia

Another Pokemon found around the shore is Merconey, the mercury Pokemon, poison/steel type.

Merconey is a snail-like Pokemon with a body made of liquid metal and a shell made of metal and rock. The liquid metal that makes up its body is highly toxic. As a result, it has few predators. When it does face a threat, it shoots a harpoon from its shell at the target, which injects them with the same liquid metal that its body is composed of. It doesn't do this to hunt, as its diet consists of minerals and metals. Merconey evolves to Merxoon, the mercury Pokemon, poison/steel type.

Merxoon's shell is covered with spikes. These spikes act like hypodermic needles that inject the neurotoxic liquid metal making up its body into anything they touch. Because of this, it has no natural predators as nothing can safely touch it. It retains the harpoon of its previous stage. Lifeguards at beaches keep an antidote to its toxin on hand because, while Merxoon are not hostile to humans, beachgoers may accidentally touch one hidden underwater and get poisoned.

Merconey and Merxoon are both based on cone snails, a group of snails found in Australian waters that are famous for being so venomous that some can kill humans. Cone snails are active predators that use a harpoon-like radula to spear their prey and inject venom into it. The liquid metal aspect is an exaggerated version of the volcano snail, a deep-sea species that incorporates metal into its shell. I picked mercury as a metal because it is soft like a snail and because it's toxic, which fit because I decided I wanted to make a steel-poison type (I came up with this idea before SV publicly introduced the Varoom line). Merxoon also draws from snails of the genus Murex, which are famous for their elaborate, spike-covered shells. The name Merconey comes from "mercury" and "cone snail" and Merxoon comes from "mercury", "murex", and "harpoon".

Here's one that I came up with solely based on a pun, but ties in with one regional legendary. It's Stalactmite, the speleothem Pokemon, rock type.

Stalactmite grow over the course of centuries as running water creates stalactites and stalagmites that eventually break off and come to life. They feed exclusively on mineral-rich water and can live for centuries. Stalactmite are blind, but highly sensitive to vibrations in their cave habitats. Spelunkers should be careful, as a frightened Stalactmite may drop down on people passing beneath it. Legends say they are born from the life force of a legendary Pokemon that slumbers deep underground and may even be the rock itself.

Stalactmite is, of course, based on stalactites, stalagmites, and mites. Mites are tiny arachnids and there are some species that have adapted for a life spent entirely in caves. Stalactites and Stalagmites, as well as many other cave formations (also known as speleothems) form gradually over the course of centuries as water carries minerals into caves. I will note that while Stalactmite is not a bug type, it is still based on a bug and unlike almost every official bug type, it has the correct number of legs.

The final line I will showcase in this post it my first line of convergent Pokemon (or ecologically-similar Pokemon or whatever they're being called now). The first stage in this line is Baykacayka, the cupcake Pokemon, fairy type. Stories say the first one was a cupcake made by a master baker which was inhabited by a spirit. Its body is made of a delicious confectionary that will never go bad. They were once though to be a regional variant of Roggenrolla, but are now known to be unrelated.

Baykacayka evolves to Poundore, the cake Pokemon, fairy type. They consume an incredible amount of sugar and stores it in the form of crystals that look like decorative sugar. If one of these crystals is damaged, it will explode, leaving the surrounding area coated in fine sugar.

Poundore evolves to Gigalicious, the cake Pokemon, fairy type. Its body contains so many calories that a single bite can lead to long-term health problems. The sheer caloric energy stored in its body can be released in an explosion that can level buildings and leaves the rubble coated in icing. A Gigalicious visiting a bakery is said to be a sign of prosperity.

The Baykacayka line are convergent to the Roggenrolla line, but they're cakes instead of rocks. Baykacayka is a cupcake, Poundore is a cake slice, and Gigalicious is a tiered wedding cake. They can serve as a reference to fairy bread, a dessert from Australia and Aotearoa/NZ that consists of butter bread with sprinkles on it. I thought of this connection after I came up with the line, but I'm still rolling with it. They also fit with the trend of pastry-based fairy types. They don't have a consistent name scheme like the existing convergent Pokemon, but neither did the original line so I'm going to say I'm in the clear. Baykacayka is a corruption of "bake a cake" just like Roggenrolla is a corruption of "rock and roll". Poundore is "Boldore" + "pound cake" and Gigalicious is "Gigalith" + "delicious"