Saturday, June 30, 2012

Field Book Scribbles

Like Short Geologist, I'm unable to post much in the way of what I really write down in my field book, which usually consists of what I do every day (what I worked on or accomplished), who I talk to, phone numbers, ideas, things to do that I shouldn't forget, and other real miscellany. I prefer the kinds of Rite in the Rain® field books that have a grid on one side, title blocks on each page, page numbers, and lots of goodies in the back: these. Because I can't really get into who I've been working for in particular, or when, I've shown a typical title block as mocked up a little: location, date and weather (when a page has notes from more than one day, the rest of the dates and weather go farther down the page), client, and random comments or notes as desired. I don't usually use the scale portion; instead, I draw a scale with diagrams or sketch maps as needed.
On rare occassions, I fill out the table of contents at the beginning of the book. Here's my only "current" example.
I found a few pages here and there that I can photograph to show my general note scribbly-ness. I'm not nearly as neat and exacting as in my early field book years, when I filled them out like I was still in field camp and might get graded at any moment, using neat, small lettering, and very nice drawings. This one is from a field trip up in Alaska. I was obviously concerned about which way some fault or other moved, and am still not sure whether I got it right.
A little drawing of the North Window at Arches National Park, which goes with a photo I haven't digitized, and this watercolor.
Here's a few scribbles from a March, 1998, field trip to the Fort Knox gold mine near Fairbanks, Alaska: "low grade .013-.019 [ounces per ton]." I imagine the "low grade" is lower than that now.
Here's a little (and partial, I'm sure) story about the discovery of the Gold Bar gold mine from a May, 1998, field trip to several gold mines in central Nevada. "Lots of 'smoke' on range front." The underlined "picture rock" indicates that I took a photo and have a rock sample lying around somewhere, probably in a box in the garage.
In the back of my field books, you'll typically find some version of a calendar.
And scattered here and there, you might find doodles taken during some meeting. This one shows a horn of plenty (i.e., ore), on a table??, next to an evergreen tree.
My meeting notes (yes, I generally take meeting notes in my field book so I can find them later), often contain fairly elaborate doodles. Here's a mine adit on a hillside, or maybe it's a hobbit's home.
My field mapping notes, which are small and blurry in this photo by design, are often messier than this, and usually quite succinct.

Oh, and my field books are mine. They don't belong to the company I consult for, unless the company buys field books for me and requires ownership by contract, something I would strongly resist. Companies have a habit of losing things and getting rid of things after projects are over. I don't think I've had to give up any of my field books so far. I *have* left copies of field notes in company files when requested. It's good to know ahead of time that someone will want a copy; that way, I won't accidentally put extraneous notes from one company's business in the middle of pages that will go into a second company's file.

More of my field books can be seen here, at least from the outside.

Submitted to Accretionary Wedge #47: Field Notes.

2 comments:

JW said...

These are great! I love the drawings. Lots of good places, too :)

Silver Fox said...

It was fun looking through them - thanks for the great AW idea! :)