Tom Bombadil, And Water Lilies In The Old ForestI Drew This One Last Summer (with No-good Old Watercolors

Tom Bombadil, and water lilies in the Old Forest…I drew this one last summer  (with no-good old watercolors on pretty bad paper, since I was camping in the middle of forest myself  :P )

last doodles for tonight: tiny Olorin helping Varda to put the stars in place, and tiny Mairon bringing some fire to the forges of Aulë

Ancient oak, new leaves

Your Summer in the Sky - Submitted by SeesawSiya

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Well lads, I decided to make a fourth water ranking list! Some of these were suggested or requested, in which case I’ll @ them, and others were just some that I’ve read about since my last post and wanted to talk about! Enjoy.

Zambezi River, Africa, @marshmallowmachinegun

This river is making the list primarily because of the massive, terrifying rapids that you can apparently surf on. I don’t care for that shit at all. It earns the first spot on this list for being super freaky, 1/10.

Lake Toplitz, Austria, @darthlenaplant

This is, strangely, a lake with two bottoms. Around 52 feet down is a bunch of sunken logs, essentially creating a false bottom that divers can’t get through. Below this level, there is no oxygen in the lake and life becomes very scarce. But the lake has a maximum depth of 328 feet, and allegedly contains boxes of Nazi gold somewhere in the deeps. This draws in treasure-hunters, but I definitely won’t be heading down into this false-bottomed lake anytime soon. Since this lake doesn’t have any visible drop-offs or looks particularly scary, it gets a 2/10.

Dean’s blue hole, Bahamas

Until the discovery of the Dragon Hole in China, Dean’s blue hole was considered the deepest “blue hole” in the world, reaching a maximum depth of 663 feet. One of the reasons this underwater cave is so unsettling to me is it’s proximity to land. Like, can you imagine walking along a beach and looking out at the ocean and seeing that just a few hundred feet away?? For being such a visually dramatic hole in the ground, it earns a 3/10.

Cetina River, Croatia, @imalwayssirius

Often referred to as the “natural Eye of Sauron” (or, as I saw one of my mutuals post, the earth’s vagina) this bizarre feature is the source of the Cetina River. The spring bubbles up from a cave that reaches depths of over 300 feet and drains into a river 63 miles long. Although this spring is definitely beautiful, I don’t know that I would want to raft over it. 4/10.

Red lake, Croatia

The Red Lake sits in a deep sinkhole, with cliffs soaring over 800 feet above the water. Below the surface, the sinkhole continues for another 942 feet. The depth was unknown until 2017, when a diver finally descended far enough to see the bottom. The incredible depth of this lake makes it one of the largest sinkholes in the world, and earns it a 5/10 on this list.

Lake Peigneur, Louisiana, @amzrigh

I don’t know where to start with this one. I guess we have to go back to 1980, when this was a 10-foot deep freshwater lake. Underneath the lake was a massive salt mine, and on the surface was an oil drill. Basically, a miscalculation occurred and the drill broke down into the mines and this lake began to drain into them. Unfortunately, this lake wasn’t closed off, and used to empty into a nearby bay. As the lake drained down into the mines, the water flow reversed and sucked water in from the bay, briefly creating a 100+ foot waterfall and then the largest man made whirlpool in history. Although multiple ships from the bay were sucked down and the mines were completely flooded, amazingly no one was killed in this horrifying accident. So, what was once a 10-foot deep freshwater lake is now a 200-foot deep saltwater lake. The bizarre story and extreme depth of this lake gets a solid 6/10.

Kern River, California, anon

There are signs around this river which state “Kern River, 271 lives lost since 1968”. That would be enough to scare me off, but apparently not everyone feels the same. This river is so deadly because in many places, it appears calm and inviting, drawing in swimmers, and then sucking them under with a fast undertow. In fact, you are required to wear a life jacket if you’re even walking around the river with no intentions to swim (although it doesn’t appear that the person in this picture heeded those warnings). For sheer danger, I have to award this a 7/10.

Barracuda lake, Philippines, @pineowlple

Don’t worry, the lady in the picture is fine, she was just posing for a creepy photo. And this lake is fascinating for reasons other than its sheer drop and weird rock formations! Barracuda Lake has one of the most bizarre thermoclines and haloclines in the world, drawing in divers from far and wide who want a unique experience. The surface of the lake is freshwater and roughly 82 degrees F, but as you descend to about 50 feet down, the temperature in the lake suddenly rises to 100 F (only slightly cooler than an average hot tub)! This is because the lake contains both fresh and saltwater, separated by a hazy boundary. If you continue heading down to the bottom, the water will become cool again. Divers often describe swimming in this lake as a strange sensory experience, with some people claiming you feel weightless and liken it to being on another planet. Even stranger, the sandy lake bottom is described as being “jelly-like”. Definitely an 8/10 for how downright strange this lake is.

Enchanted river, Philippines

This river is a popular tourist destination for its beautiful blue waters and fascinating history. Some local legends report seeing fish down in the depths that cannot be caught by any line or net, and claim that the river’s color came from fairies. The mysteries of this river continue in modern day, as no one has been able to find the source of it. Exploration of the enchanted river started in 1999, and a hidden cave was soon discovered 98 feet down. During the sixth exploration of the cave, a diver died after reaching 130 feet deep. So far, divers have descended 269 feet into the cave, and mapping efforts are underway, but the bottom has yet to be found. 9/10 for the strange legends and seemingly being bottomless.

La Fosse Dione, France

This beautiful karst spring has a name which literally translates to “Divine Pit”. The spring has been used for water since Roman Times, but despite its long history it is shrouded in mystery. The strangest part of this pit is that no one knows where the water comes from. Roughly 82 gallons of water enters this spring every second, but the source is unknown. Several divers have descended into the depths of this pit, and none have been able to locate the bottom. In 1974, two divers went down and never resurfaced. In 1996, another diver attempted to find the source and died as well. In 2019, yet another diver went down and reached 1,213 feet before having to resurface. He did not find the bottom either. 10/10 to this lovely, French bottomless pit.

Lavender Honey

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