Nothing makes me feel more at home than the Clarno Basin, where I work 10 weeks out of the year. If

Nothing makes me feel more at home than the Clarno Basin, where I work 10 weeks out of the year. If it’s the purple ancient soil-turned-claystone of the Clarno Formation, the vistas of the Basalt-rimmed John Day Canyon, or the solitary Common Sunflower that blooms in the middle summer, it always beckons me back.

Top to bottom: What I call the “Purple Basin” above what we call Equisetum Canyon at Hancock Field Station, a lovely vista of the John Day Canyon, and a sunflower atop the ridge that forms the spine of the Clarno Unit of John Day Fossil Beds National Monument.