Over thousands of years, as the glaciers retreated, the water level lowered, leaving behind the layer of silt that once formed the bottom of the lake.

The Carcross area – “Carcross” is derived from “caribou crossing” – was once a glacial lake. The answer is that Carcross Desert, though certainly sandy and often referred to as the world’s smallest desert, is actually the remains of a glacier. It is only visible by air – there is no public access to the site.Ī one-square-mile desert, surrounded by snow-covered mountains, in a Canadian territory just south of the Arctic Circle. The Badlands Guardian is east of Medicine Hat, a few miles south of Many Islands Lake. Faces, particularly religious ones, are frequently found in inanimate objects – the Virgin Mary has appeared, among other places, in a grilled cheese sandwich, on an expressway underpass and in a pile of chocolate drippings at a California candy factory. The Badlands Guardian is an example of pareidolia, the phenomenon of an overactive imagination perceiving recognizable shapes in ambiguous stimuli. (Rejected monikers include Space Face, Chief Bleeding Ear, The Listening Rock, Jolly Rocker and Pod God.) Following a naming competition, the 820 × 740 foot (250 × 225.5 metre) figure came to be known as the Badlands Guardian. A gas well and road leading down from the chief’s ear resemble earphones.Īn Australian woman going by the name of “supergranny” discovered the head on Google Earth in 2006. Over millenniums, erosion and weathering fashioned the rocky terrain into the shape of a human head, complete with feathered headdress. Gaze out of an airplane window above the Badlands east of Medicine Hat and a Native American chief will stare back at you. The Badlands Guardian, Medicine Hat, Alta. Peter Camani’s ongoing art project near Burk’s Falls, Ont. The castle is around 240 kilometres north of Toronto.

Though he has long envisioned a forest of sculptures made from cement and human ash – with the names and bios of the deceased written on them – he has only created one so far. Inspired by the Druids, Camani intends to continue sculpting screaming heads for as long as he’s able. There are now over 100 scattered through the landscape – 84 screaming heads, giant half-buried hands, trees with ghoulish faces and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. In 1995, Camani began installing sculptures on the land surrounding the house. Dubbed Midlothian Castle, the dwelling features a screaming head for a turret and a dragon for a chimney that appears to breathe smoke whenever the fireplace is blazing. It all began in 1989, when the former high school art teacher began building a house on the property. The field of screams is just one component of Camani’s ongoing art project on a 300-acre (1.2 km2) former farm just outside the village of Burk’s Falls, Ont. The “vibrant creation” to which he refers is a forest of 18-foot-tall (5.5 metre) screaming heads made from cement and – if his idea catches on – the ashes of deceased humans.

“Why settle for a small underground plot in the suburbs,” he writes on his website, “when you have the option of joining a vibrant creation that fills the landscape?”

Peter Camani has a suggestion for where your earthly remains should go when you die.

Badlands guardian native american