Yes, I am a Pirate...

...two hundred years too late.

This isn't a road song or a gold song or a geology song by any stretch of the imagination. Nevertheless, any explorationist worth their salt should have it in their repertoire.

Jimmy Buffet: A Pirate Looks at Forty (lyrics) Album: A1A, 1974

"Mother, mother ocean, after all the years I've found
My occupational hazard being
My occupation's just not around"

Tales of the Mojave: A Bit About Northern Exploration Company

I planned to have this descriptive section as part of the last post—the one about being packed and ready to leave town—but this "little bit" grew and grew, and eventually it had to find its own home. I've written lots of little pieces like this; many of these could be hyperlinked from several main posts. This one might most properly go near the beginning of a Tales of the Mojave book.

N.E.C.

Northern Exploration Company (NEC), a famous former international mining and minerals exploration company, had seven exploration offices when I began working there as part of a small horde of young or “junior” geologists in NEC’s Western District. Some of us were temporary summer hands (and many of us, like me started that way); many of us were on year-to-year contracts (me!); and a very few of us ended up with permanent positions in the company. There were three or four permanent geos leading the horde when I began working there; that permanent cadre had expanded to maybe six by the time I left.

When not out in the field, we worked out of one of several office-warehouse complexes scattered here and there in Reno and Sparks.[1] The complexes seemed to have been slapdashed together and often had a few problems; for example, the typical southwest-desert–inspired flat roofs were prone to leak during storms or snow-melt. Our complex—and a nearby complex leased by another, also famous former mining company—was near the Truckee River and so occasionally flooded. The large windows of the office half of our complex faced south across a largely undeveloped area of the Truckee Meadows; these windows caused overheating, especially in winter when the low sun provided unplanned for solar energy. Nonetheless, we had a good setup that included a smallish warehouse in the back with shelves for field supplies, tables for core logging, and rock saws and grinding wheels for cutting and polishing hand samples.

The Western District of NEC was a decidedly renegade district, though at the time renegade attitudes were fairly common within exploration groups based out of Reno.[2] Geologists aren’t ordinarily known for their adherence to rules, and they are especially not known for following pointless and questionable rules sent down from above—an above that was usually either outside the country or east of the Mississippi, the latter being nearly the same thing as a foreign country to those born and bred in The West.

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We can argue nearly forever about where The West begins or ends. The Mississippi River clearly constitutes one viable boundary for defining what is east and what is west. The hundredth meridian has also been used as the boundary between east and west; for example, in 1843, Thomas Farnham said lands between the 100th meridian and the Rockies were “usually called the Great American Desert” (Stegner, 1954). Later, Thomas Durant held a “100th Meridian Excursion” when Union Pacific crews passed the 100th meridian in 1866, a goal set by Congress. A little later, John Wesley Powell, writing for the USGS in 1879, recognized the 100th meridian as a line roughly defining the eastern boundary of his “Arid Region,” an area that generally receives less than 20 inches of rainfall per year and encompasses most of the west (by any definition). I think one could also use the Great Continental Divide as the boundary between east and west: All drainages east of the divide would drain to the Gulf of Mexico or the Atlantic. All drainages west of the divide would drain to the Pacific.

Google Earth image with yellow line marking part of the 100th meridian. The meridian cuts several states in two and roughly separates a greener area in the east from a notably browner area in the west.

I usually maintain that the true west, “The West” as I capitalized above, begins at the eastern edge of the Front Range of Colorado. Denver is not inside The West by this definition. (Neither is Boulder, for that matter.)

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As mentioned in our main text above, geologists within the exploration offices of the west (however we define west) were often fractious and rebellious, and they were unlikely to listen to anyone from Chicago, say, some muckety-muck who might be sporting a fancy three-piece suit and polished black shoes. (There are numerous stories revolving around entertaining such VIPs.) Denver’s offices were often a little spiffier than those in Reno, perhaps having been influenced somewhat by the fancier petroleum offices in the area. Also, some Denver offices acted as headquarters for the minerals explorations groups of larger companies, and some *were* the headquarters for smaller companies. Consequently, geologists who had the misfortune to be based in Denver often ended up being a little more stilted, a little less rebellious, a little more formal: they were ever-so-noticeably more well-behaved when it came down to orders from above, and they were a little more likely to look at you askance if you decided that a rock-throwing contest was in order before the sampling program began in earnest. (A few were definite leaders as far as renegade actions go—here I’m particularly thinking of some unnamed few during my later years at Former Mining Company. Most, though—well, many—tried hard to keep up.)

The Kmart of Exploration

Our Hughes 500-D in 1978.

The Western District of NEC came to be known, at least to a select few, as “The Kmart of Exploration.” This appellation had been assigned to NEC by a summer hire[3] —Dan, the guy with the Frisbee dog, a black and white Aussie of one variety or another—during the uranium summer of 1979. He said he came up with the epithet after being involved in procuring supplies and provisions for the field largely at Kmart. I thought the nickname—seemingly indicating that the company was cheap—was overstated; after all, each uranium camp[4] had a trailer with space for a full kitchen; an office with drafting area, map storage cabinet, and beaucoup supplies; a camp cook; canvas tents with room for two field hands in each tent; a couple of 1978 4WD pickup trucks, brand new during the uranium summer of 1978; and a Hughes 500-D helicopter equipped with radiometric instruments capable of detecting radiation and breaking it down into the three major source elements, potassium (K), thorium (Th), and uranium (U). I thought our camps and equipment were pretty plush, especially when compared to the archaeological camps my husband frequented.

Much to the head honcho's dismay, "Kmart of Exploration" stuck. Perhaps it was partly our field schedule that made the name stick. We worked eleven and three, drive-on-your-own-time. That schedule meant eleven days in the field, three days off, with the driving time between home and field (and vice versa) being on our own time, not on paid-for company time. Perhaps the name stuck because we were encouraged, if not required, to camp out rather than stay in motels.

Camping supposedly saved gas, time, and money because we didn’t have to drive in to town every morning and evening and didn’t have to spend money on motel rooms. We also bought groceries instead of eating in restaurants, resulting in a lowered food expense. So we typically lived outdoors—in the dirt and weather of whatever area we were working in—for two to four nights; then we were into town for one night to get a shower, to sleep in a cool, air-conditioned motel room, to gas up, to stock up on fresh food, and—most importantly in the Mojave—to stock up on water and ice. Then, back into camp mode we went. I thought there were some flaws to the party line about camping, although I never did an actual cost-benefit analysis. For one thing, those of us who didn't have a permanent camp located somewhere near running water in the higher and cooler reaches of eastern Nevada (a certain lucky few that I was rarely part of) spent a certain amount of time setting up camp every evening. After getting our new camp in order, we made dinner and cleaned up. Then, nighty-night. After waking up in the morning, we tore everything down and repacked the back of the truck. With all the unpacking at night and repacking in the morning, we often ended up rearranging boxes of sample bags twice a day. Because we prepped our own camp and food daily, we were essentially working twelve to fourteen-hour days, rather than ten, with little time to rest or recoup in the evening before falling asleep (on cots or on the ground). Ten-hour field days were de rigueur at NEC. That meant we'd quit camp at 7:00 am, say, with breakfast and camp tear-down already complete, then work in the field until 5:00 pm. Then we'd finally get on to camp setup and dinner making after that. When someone else was cooking your meals and when there was running water available for cooling off and even showers, as in the uranium and moly camps, the hours were okay—long, but feasible.

In the Mojave, they were hell.

To be continued...

Notes:

^[1] These complexes were often called "geo-ghettos" back then—although that term would probably not be politically correct now—often because they weren't built all that well in some respects, and also because they seemed to house a lot of geological groups.↩

^[2] We cultivated—or were known for—a semi-outlaw attitude and everyday defiance that was deliberately exacerbated by the temperament of the head honcho in Reno.↩

^[3] We didn’t call our summer employees “temps” until a good number of us moved to Forminco, where "temp" was already in use.↩

^[4] For more about the uranium camps, see this series about the Caliente camp of the first uranium summer (that's what we called them: the first uranium summer, and the second uranium summer).↩

A Reference

Stegner, W.E., 1954, Beyond the hundredth meridian: John Wesley Powell and the second opening of the west: Penquin Books, 496 p., 1992 reprint. Quote from p. 215-216 of 1992 reprint.

Repost: Here's to You, Geological Heroes

My DSL lines and WiFi, provided by Frontier (or not provided, as the case may be), are currently quite lousy with 50%-plus packet loss. For some reason, Google pages and products, including this blog, work at least slowly and sporadically, as does the NWS weather site. So I can find out how many calories I'm eating (or drinking) while checking out the latest atmospheric river that has most likely been one of the culprits in decimating my internet connection. I can also do a little research by asking Google questions and submitting search terms. If the answers show up in the blurb accompanying the resulting list of search results, then I'm good; if not, I'm stuck with a list of websites that won't open. Consequently, I can't quite finish the current post I'm working on: It needs a little more research. So I'm reposting a post from 2010: a submittal to the now defunct Accretionary Wedge blog carnival. Here it is.

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The Accretionary Wedge is coming up soon, so my thoughts are naturally turning to Geological Heroes, the topic of this month's Wedge, hosted at Mountain Beltway by Callan Bentley. Callan says,

I invite all participants (geobloggers and geoblog readers alike) to contribute stories of their heroes. It’s time to pay tribute to the extraordinary individuals who helped make your life, your science, and your planet better than they would otherwise have been.

As far as geologic heroes go, I was first thinking that maybe I don't really have any (or maybe I just don't have many personal ones that I feel I can write about on the blog). I thought, therefore, that I'd list two geologists who are heroes to me, although they aren't personal heroes:

• Tanya Atwater - a leading plate tectonicist, geophysicist, geologist, and oceanographer. She is a hero to me by way of being a leading and famous woman in my field (or a related field), one who "is especially well known for her works on the plate tectonic history of western North America, in general, and of the San Andreas fault system, in particular...."
  
  I've not yet had the good fortune to meet her, but long ago (and not very far away) I named a dog belonging to my previous partner and me after her. Upon hearing of this dubious honor from an acquaintance of ours, Tanya A. reportedly said, "Ruff ruff," while making a motion like scratching her ear with a paw.

• Tom Dibblee - a legendary field-mapping man, who mapped "565 quadrangle maps covering over 40,000 square miles, some fourth of the State of California." I first learned of his mapping while working in the Mojave, where his maps cover nearly every square inch of ground and provide the basics and details for every geological map that has come after him. He is known in that region for not having to use a Brunton to take strikes and dips (except when beds were dipping at shallow angles), because his sense of orientation and angle estimation were excellent, such that he was always within a couple degrees. He started mapping when in high school, and never stopped, completing a mapping career of almost 80 years only when he passed away in 2004.

Beyond these two, I was sitting out on the rig one day, and while thinking that I'd just leave this post at a two-person list I realized that the topic "Heroes" was making me think of Waylon and Willie, and I started singing "Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys."

Don't let 'em pick guitars and drive them old trucks...

[technically a road song because it mentions trucks] and then that somehow led me into "All My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys" followed by "Waylon, Willie, and Me."

Now, not all the lyrics of these three songs are applicable to whatever particular feeling they engendered in me on that recent field day, nor are all of the lyrics particularly applicable to the topic of geological heroes — except that:

When I start thinking about the real geologist heroes I've known over the years — whether male or female — they are rather much like cowboys, or like outlaws: out in the field all day, bouncing around in pickup trucks old and new, doing their own thing, making it on mottos such as "it's easier to get forgiveness than permission" or "it's all changed now," running their own programs, districts, and companies, shooting cans, rolling boulders, and participating in other shenanigans that shall go unmentioned here, some of which have involved various forms of (legal in Nevada) explosives.

These more personal heroes of mine include my thesis advisor(s), my major professor, the professor I T.A.'d for, several former professors and T.A.'s, many geologists from both Northern Exploration Company and Former Mining Company and elsewhere, the two Larry's, the two Nancy's (you *know* who you are), most of my former field assistants — one has or is now running her own company, one patented her Hg-gas sniffing method and has run her own lab, one is now running her own exploration group at a major mine, and some have gone on to other things but are nevertheless heroes to me for making it in the "man's field" of exploration and mining geology.

My heroes, over the years and decades, have also included several FOP/Quat people: JODavis, Bud Burke, Marith Reheis, and anyone who was present for the flying Vee in the middle of the Black Rock Desert in 1987 or who made it to the 1991 FOP down in Fish Lake Valley, Nevada.

And then there are some true outlaws or aspiring, wanna-be outlaws — hmm... should these names go unmentioned? (You know who you are: R, BS, JS, PG, S+D, et al.)

Really, when it comes right down to it, there are too many geological heroes to list, refer to, or name, including all the consultants and independents attending the hospitality suites and receptions at Northwest every year, going back to the wild S+D bashes in Spokane some thirty-plus years ago.
And so, here's to you (all of you)...

...from a copy of a print from an original slide taken here at a now burned-down hot spring cabin, by JODavis in the fall of 1981, photo credits to JODavis and LLLackey, photo ©2010 Looking for Detachment, all rights reserved, poem written by SH and CR.

The Spencer Hot Springs cabin, with roomy concrete bathtub and piped in hot water, was burned down later that year or the next, reportedly by the same individuals who, in their over-zealous righteousness crossed out in red marker the name "Asshole" (and other cuss words written on the interior of the cabin) — these individuals were apparently disturbed by the existence of such a den of iniquity as a hot spring where people *gasp* sometimes bathed naked. I don't know who these red-marker people were, nor do I really know that they were the arsonists — but that's the way the story goes.

The original from the 1978 album "Waylon and Willie."

April 2010 Accretionary Wedge: Heroes

Geologists: The Cowboys of Science

A colleague of my former (deceased) husband once said, "Archaeologists are the Cowboys of Science." (I don't know if he actually said it in Capital Letters like that, but that's how it came across to me.) DH disagreed and said, "No, Geologists are the Cowboys of Science. Archaeologists don't even come close."

The first character that actually comes to my mind, for some reason, is Bret Maverick's brother Bart. He's not a geologist, but he goes off gallivanting around the countryside on his horse, somehow managing, often, to get into trouble. He reminds me of some geologists I know, who go off the same way in their 4WD pickups.

Also read:

Sherlock Holmes, Forensic Geologist

The Romance of Geology in Russia: A Tribute to Alexander Ainemer
Here's to You: Geological Heroes
Dust Hole (previous post)

The Middle Adit at Majuba Hill

Our goal on Majuba Hill, while driving up the switchback road past the Keep Out sign, was the Middle adit, which is known by some to be the main entrance to mineral collection sites within the mine.

Here we are, ("we" being a very small portion of the ±80-person-strong field trip) standing around the flat area in front of the Middle adit.

A closer view of the mouth of the Middle adit, overhung by talus, and with old rails heading into the old workings.

There's a nice bit of tourmaline breccia just inside the mouth on the right, but it didn't look like a great place to be hammering, and the breccia wasn't very photogenic.

The entrance to the adit is barricaded and posted, not sure by whom.

I stuck my camera lens inside the metal grating and took a natural light photo. The old rails emerge from a rockfall area and continue into the dark distance.

Another photo, taken with the flash, gets us a tiny bit farther into the mine.

I suspect that had the entrance been open, a few geologists with headlamps (and secondary backup lights) would have ventured in!

A Geologist who Preferred to be called a Prospector

In contrast to what I said in a recent aside about prospectors v. geologists, at least one well-known ore finder, John Livermore, preferred to be called a prospector, according to Andy Wallace [dead link], his longtime partner at Cordex, and also according to himself (see this oral history).

Exploration geologists who are successful at finding ore deposits are often referred to as ore finders, a distinction I often reserve for those who find more than one ore deposit. I've known several geologists who have made one significant discovery in their lifetimes (so far); some of these geologists have not necessarily, for whatever reason, gone on to find another (so far). Many (several?) of us have found a small to sizable geologic resource or a small ore deposit. (An ore deposit is, by definition, a mineral resource that is economically viable and therefore minable. Some deposits or resources will become economic in the future; some never will be.) Some of us have found ore deposits that then went sub-economic due to changing prices, costs, requirements, or demands; these resources may still be sitting out there waiting to be mined in future (I know of at least one).

According to Andy, many exploration geologists like to think of themselves as prospectors, whereas I usually think of prospectors as the original oldtimer with a burro (a 4WD pickup or jeep these days): a man or woman who is usually non-geology educated, who you find out and about banging around on rocks, crushing chunks of suspected ore to pan for gold, black-lighting in the night for tungsten, always out in the field looking for the next find. Most of the prospectors I've known have been men, but as I've mentioned before, I've known at least two prospecting women (non–geo-types).

Andy also describes a true prospector as having a different mindset from the average exploration geologist. He ends up describing a quality I've also heard referred to as "eternal optimism." An eternal optimist gets up every day sure that today they are going to find "the big one", today they are going to strike it rich: today is the day. This optimism, when I've seen it, is maintained constantly despite all previous indications that maybe today will not only not be the day, but maybe the goal won't be reached at all, the goal being to find that next big ore deposit — find a mine, as we often say. Andy is right in asserting that most exploration geologists do not believe that "over the next hill, they’re going to find the next big one." We do, however, have to maintain hope (or we would have given up on the business a long time ago); but for the most part, we maintain a hope seasoned by a dose of reality. The prospector mindset Andy describes, or the mindset of the eternal optimist as I'm describing it, is a mindset that is sure in face of setbacks. Fact is, the only eternal optimist I've worked closely with did not even see setbacks and was always sure that this current prospect or property would be the one, that this current drill hole only needed to go just a little deeper, or that the next drill hole would strike ore.

As John Livermore has said:

"Something about the prospecting instinct is different from the geological ability. A lot of geologists are not really very good prospectors . They get very interested in the rocks, and sometimes they don't have the one-track mind of finding mineralization. And prospectors, without a college degree, can often be in some ways better than geologists, because they are very persistent, and they get interested in an area, and they'll go over it with a fine-tooth comb."

There may be a difference between what we used to call eternal optimism and what John Livermore exhibited. The eternally optimistic viewpoint we watched in action daily, trip after trip, year after year, was not entirely based in reality. What Livermore went out and did, repeatedly, was turn unknown and unlikely prospects into active mines, and if not into mines, at least into known resources that became mines within his lifetime.

I'm not sure how to spot the difference in the two highly optimistic, highly positive and hopeful outlooks. I do know that the one is grounded in economic reality, the other may not be. Both mindsets have the persistence of the true prospector.

Read more about John Livermore, who died last month, here. Thanks to him for helping to sponsor my thesis and many others.

An Evil Geologist Lair

I've been thinking about the ideal location for my own personal evil geologist lair (in case I develop any evil tendencies in the near or far future), and realized, with great sadness, that now that Mt. Shasta has already been taken by Garry Hayes, and because the best beach is already occupied by Jessica Ball, that I'd have to look somewhere else besides volcanoes.

In fact, the only fitting possibilities would be something like a really deep, scary, haunted, open pit like the one in Desperation (Stephen King's novel, Stephen King's film), or (more likely) a nice pleasant underground mine hidden away somewhere in the desert outback, left to me and me alone by the old-timers that dug the mine. One in particular pops into my mind, the Mary-Drinkwater Mine, on Mineral Ridge above Silver Peak, Nevada. Unfortunately, however, that mine, which had beaucoups levels dug into en echelon, low-angle quartz veins, is probably not the same after undergoing open pit mining. So, I'll have to choose another place. (I know where, but ain't tellin'.)

A good underground mine will be in a location not known to anyone else, so I can get away when needed and not be found when being searched out by whomever might be doing the searching (black helicopters have been suggested). It will therefore not only be in an obscure location, but its opening — a typical adit into some hillside either somewhere in Nevada, the Mojave Desert of California, or Idaho (don't ask me why the latter) — while looking like any other adit if you happen to be passing by on the surface, will be absolutely hidden from view from overhead. In fact, it will have multiple openings, as all underground mines should. The main adit opening will look rather uninviting to casual passersby, including most geologists, and would only possibly be entered by the most dedicated of exploration geologists seeking out gold or quartz or hidden structures.

A second opening, way back into the hillside, will provide good ventilation (an air shaft), and will probably be so hidden on the hillside above that not even a scurrying-by pocket monkey or prairie dog will see it.

A third opening will be down a side tunnel, through an open stope that shows indications of incipient caving toward the left, so that most people in the know (underground miners, desert rats, exploration geos) will either avoid the room entirely or will at least skirt it far to the right, where booby traps can be set and sprung if needed. This open stope, once negotiated correctly, will lead into some drifts in solid quartz. Multiple levels will open up from this point, with elevators going up and down between levels, following the old, originally hand dug and now widened, raises. A back exit, only obvious with some digging around and following of anomalous air flows, will allow escape through an active underground mine on the other side of the mountain, where I will be able to exit surreptitiously with all the other miners at shift change.

A fourth opening, the entrance of which will be partially caved so as to look uninviting, will lead past a caved open stope to a hallway of gold-bearing quartz that will impede the approach of even the most dedicated gold-seekers (they will have to stop for samples and won't pass further without taking their sample bags out to a typical mineral exploration pickup, thereby allowing time for any evil denizens of the deep who happen to be present to escape deeper into the mine). Beyond the wall of gold-bearing quartz, a flat-lying metal grizzly made of old mine rail will bar access to the last escape route. If anyone makes it this far into the deeps of the lair, they will not know to press a button inside a panel hidden behind the pile of slabbed, broken waste rock sitting nearby. In fact, they will ignore the waste rock entirely and go for the ore sitting next to the grizzly, large chunks of gold-quartz ore that the old-timers left because it didn't fit through the grizzly.
Meanwhile, the denizen of the lair (that would be me), will be running down the haulage tunnel below the grizzly, heading for its opening in the wash right above the old, hand-built road, an opening now obscured by decades of flash flooding down a steepening canyon. The ATV awaiting me at this exit, will allow me to pass nearly unseen and certainly camouflaged by ordinariness, down the mountain to The Alternative bar, where I will blend in with miners and geologists alike.

One view from a good lair.

Accretionary Wedge #38: Back to School and Beyond

This month's Accretionary Wedge theme, as described by Anne Jefferson at Highly Allochthonous, our host, is "Back to School." The theme is fairly broad, with topics or questions for geology students, geology professors and geoscience teachers in general, industry folks like myself, and all geoscience enthusiasts.

First of all, I'd like to encourage everyone who gets into geology to follow your own path, wherever it may take you. If you are the sort of person who likes to plan things out ahead, do so; if you like to follow your nose, do that and don't look back.

Some people have asked me what industry needs or wants. I can only attempt to speak for the mining and minerals exploration industry, and can't speak at all for the petroleum or environmental side of things. What we "need" in the mining industry isn't necessarily anything a student of geology can plan on. Things change. If you want to aim in our direction, do get into it for your love of geology, your love of minerals and ore deposits, and your love of discovery. Discovery is what we do. Or, get into it for the wonderful opportunities to study complex structure that you will find at every mine and prospect. Structural preparation is often integral to the formation of ore deposits.

These questions,

If you are outside academia… what needs do you see for the rising generation of geoscientists? What skills and concepts are essential? Are there skillsets that we aren’t doing a good job of imparting on students? How important are things like communication and quantitative skills versus specific knowledge about rocks/water/maps? If you could go to a group of undergraduate geosciences majors and give them advice, what would you tell them? What would you tell their professors?

made me think of a few things. So follow a few random thoughts.

First, I don't know where geology in general is heading, what kinds of geologists will be needed in the future, or in what numbers. For mineral exploration geology, I do think that in the forseeable future a background in mineralogy and petrology will still be needed, along with increased need for experience in certain types of computer programs (various GIS and modeling programs). Some of these programs can only be learned on the job or through short courses.

Field experience is valuable, and will hopefully remain so, otherwise we will end up with a generation of modelers who have never looked at what they are modeling, something a sane world should not want. Although I've seen hints of this type of thing happening here and there and every now and then, senior-type geologists have been, so far, stepping in to keep things on track.

The need for good communication skills can never be understated. Today, a lot of on-the-job communication is done by cell phone and email, but knowing how to write a good report, long or short, is quite valuable, a skill that is often overlooked by geologists, a skill that could often be improved upon. At the very least, you will have to be able to communicate to management — people who are not always geologists — why you need the money, why your recommendations for next year should be funded. This communication will often be both written and verbal, the latter being given to groups in slide presentations.

When I taught Op Min and Petrography/Petrology (including all or most of the basics of the non-lab portions of those classes), my co-T.A. and I required "Rock Reports" about rocks and their accompanying thin sections, mostly to let students practise their writing, and to help them realize they would most likely have to write similar short, descriptive to interpretive reports or memos on the job. We graded down for misspellings of rock and mineral names, and we graded down for left out mandatory rock-report sections (I don't remember what format we used). Spelling is now easier, perhaps, because of Word and Google; good sentence construction is corrected only approximately and often incorrectly by Word.

A thesis is a good place to get some practice writing in the standard scientific format. I recommend seeking out someone who will give good editorial feedback.

Another thing that comes to mind is all the black box type of data collection and data creation tools that are available now, including portable XRFs. These devices in particular remind me of the tricorders used on Star Trek. Point the thing at a rock, and it will tell you all you need to know.

Well, maybe. It will tell you something. Will it tell you how much gold is in the rock? Probably not, or at least not unless you can already see the gold, or unless the gold is present in ore-grade amounts. (1 ppm Au is often ore grade; cutoff grades at heap leach mines can go as low as 0.003 to 0.005 ounces per ton, which is about 0.10 to 0.17 ppm gold, way below any XRF detection limit I've seen so far.)

Anyway, the point I'm working towards is that a good geologist will not be out in the field just collecting numbers with any type of device or black box, although we certainly do that with portable XRF devices, PIMAs and TerraSpecs, and various types of geophysical surveys. A good geologist will need to know when the numbers don't make any sense and why. And you will need to know what those numbers mean and what you might do with them.

For example, if you are going to believe a tricorder that tells you you've just discovered the next Mother Lode, but you don't know how to recognize common and less common associations — minerals such as fuchsite, types of structures including veins, faults, and suture zones, and general and more specific rock types such as greenstone and grey ore — you might be disappointed when chemical (real) assays come back. You will sometimes be disappointed looking for new ore deposits, anyway, but relying on any kind of black box with no way of evaluating the results it hands you is a sure guarantee of disappointment.

So, I say, learn the basics, which include rocks and minerals, and learn basic field mapping skills. Especially learn how to find out things you don't know. Ask questions, try to find answers. Learn to be an observer of all things, and learn to look for things that are unusual, things that might seem out of place but are there anyway, and things that might be there but are obscure or hidden by other more obvious features, textures, or structures. Becoming a keen, trained observer will hold you in good stead through your entire geological career, and in life, no matter where you might go.

UPDATE: Accretionary Wedge #38 is now up at Highly Allochthonous!

Report on an Afterwork Field Trip

This will be a brief field trip report from an undisclosed place and an undisclosed time. In fact, other such field trips over the years, whether during or after work, might be worth reporting on occasionally, mostly sans photos.

It was a sunny afternoon, approaching early evening, and several colleagues and I passed by some broken and brecciated road cuts while on the way to our various evening destinations, wherever they might have been. The purpose of the rather spontaneous mini field trip was to shoot the bull about the meaning of the road cuts and see if we could figure anything out—in other words, to get our creative thoughts flowing. Lines and crude cross-sections were drawn in the dirt on the side of the road, with less crude versions drawn in some field books.

Our first stop was essentially a mess of fractured, broken, and shattered rocks showing varying degrees of iron-staining and oxidation. Some jarositic-looking, weakly clayey limestones formed a possibly arched, upper zone above more typically calcite-veined dark gray Devonian limestone cut by hematitic seams and hematitic fracture-fill fines. Discussions ensued about what iron-oxides were staining the rocks and filling in fractures. A reddish coloration—reddish brown to reddish orange brown—in a batch of rocks, sometimes present in broad areas or even over whole mountains, is supposed to be a good sign when one is looking for the upper oxidized to leached portion of a porphyry copper system — at least according to a few old-timers who told me about such things back in the late 1970s when porphyry copper exploration had come to a standstill after what turned out to be a long-term decline in the price of copper.

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An Aside: A long time ago, Bear Creek or Minefinders developed a color triangle for determining the composition of various limonites or generic to mixed iron-oxides. Powdered pure or nearly pure jarosite (a sulfate containing iron that can form as a weathering or oxidation product of pyrite) was placed in a circlular spot in the upper corner of the triangle, powdered pure goethite was placed in the lower left corner of the triangle, and powerdered pure hematite was placed in the lower right corner of the triangle. Three other circles were placed between the three corners, each composed of 50-50 mixes of the appropriate two of the three main powders, and one circle in the center contained the three end members mixed together. To summarize the triangles main colors, jarosite is pale yellow to white when powdered or scratched, goethite is the typical dark golden brown of the average "limonite," and hematite is its typical reddish brown. I've looked high and low for an online version of this field cheat sheet that consisted of stiff cardboard with clear plastic- or cellophane-covered circles of powders with appropriate labeling, but have yet to find anything resembling the original. Perhaps I'll draw up something similar to the original and go further into this little exercise in crude field determinations sometime at a later date. For now, back to the field trip.

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I developed a question or two as we were standing beneath the large fractured to brecciated mass of structurally complex reddish to yellowish brown pile of carbonate rocks: (1) were we looking for copper and (2) doesn't the same guide to ore (red rocks and reddish color anomalies) also apply to finding porphyry molybdenum deposits? I also wondered (3) haven't red rocks been considered a guide to ore in at least some disseminated gold districts, for example at and around Florida Canyon? The answers: (1) maybe [seriously, what we were looking for was actually in question], and it is good to define what you are looking for without getting so stuck on what you've decided to look for that you can't see the possibility of finding something else, (2) yes, for sure, something I first learned from other not-quite old-timer types, also back in the late 1970s, and (3) well, of course, but not everywhere.

Our impromptu field trip then moved down the road to stop number two, where a breccia of unknown origin was exposed in a particularly hairy road cut on a tight curve with narrow shoulder and the occasional speeding vehicle. The breccia reminded me of the Titus Canyon megabreccia: mostly angular fragments of dark-colored carbonate rock were cemented by white, crystalline calcite. I thought it looked like a breccia of possible hydrothermal origin, one in which fragments had shattered but not moved far. It also looked a bit like a tectonic breccia, though no faulting surfaces were exposed. The expounder leading this part of our field trip said it could be a collapse breccia that formed over an oxidized massive sulfide deposit. Oxidation of sulfides produces volume loss, leaving a potential collapse waiting to happen. I'm not sure how the calcite gets into position to cement the breccia together, it somehow having to push the fragments apart to exploit the collapsed zone, but some long, thin beds of shaly limestone could be seen to be sagging downward in a couple places, testifying to possible collapse. Perhaps the breccia was really fragment supported instead of apparently matrix supported, in which case the calcite could have moved in later with groundwater or low temperature hydrothermal waters of some kind.

Resulting major questions arose from the two field trip stops and all the bull that was being shot around. One major one that was oft repeated: Should we drill here? Or there? Or over there? Everyone wanted to choose their own drill hole or two and locate them in specific favored spots. Another question: Should we sample here? The answer to that question? If you have to ask the question and don't just pile in with your bags, labels, and rock hammers, the answer is an automatic yes. Conclusion: get on with it! ASAP.

And so ended a spontaneous early evening field trip to two undisclosed field trip stops, along an undisclosed highway, at some vague undisclosed time within the last 10 to 30 years.

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Torrent, José, and Barrón, Vidal, 2002, Diffuse Reflectance Spectroscopy of Iron Oxides (see page 1441 for Munsell color of some iron oxide minerals).

Somewhat Related Posts:
Some Thoughts on Weirdness, and A Picture (or Two) (or Three)
Megabreccia II: More Photos
Megabreccia III, the Continuing Saga

A Few Questions (and some Answers)

What do you do when hard rock geologists are hard to come by (as was the case when geological hiring was making a comeback in the early 2000s after the gold crash of 1997-98?

Normally, a lack of geologists with a required experience level or orientation toward mining, exploration, mineralogy, etc. has resulted in an across-the-board increase in pay for geologists in the industry.

Related Thought: Experienced hard rock geologists aren't necessarily hard to come by at the moment, but everyone I know is pretty busy.

One thing that can be done when geologists are hard to find is to increase recruiting efforts at schools that support mineralogy, petrology, geochemistry, and field camp. If you teach at such a school, you should make sure the industry knows that your school falls into that category. Some companies currently recruit, at least in part, outside the U.S.

Companies can advertise jobs where they will be seen: at schools supporting required classes and at geological societies geared towards mining and exploration such as the Geological Society of Nevada (GSN). Many companies routinely do the latter, and I get emails with the resulting job postings.

An Aside: More basic training is probably offered by some companies now than at any time in the recent past, although documentation of this supposition of mine is sparse. Training geologists to recognize common minerals and rock types should not be necessary. Training geologists to recognize uncommon minerals associated with common ore deposit types has, perhaps, beome more common through the years; many of these types of minerals used to be learned in ore petrography, in economic geology and mineral exploration classes, and in grad school. With the industry booming, many young geologists are bypassing grad school for jobs available now (a practise which is being recommended and supported by many companies). In my early days, it was fairly routine to be sent out to your first drill rig without any, or much of any, introduction to drilling, sampling on rigs, contamination problems, what to think if the driller says X, what to do if the driller says Y, when or how to tell them to shut it down (for a variety of reasons, such as poor sampling, drinking on the job, not showing up at the rig...), and many other things that I mostly just picked up on my own.

What do you do if your contacts in the hard rock world happen to be minimal or out of date (as mine were in the late 1990s and early 2000s)?

You go to places where hard rockers hang out, such as meetings of the GSN or AGS (Arizona Geological Society) or other state geological societies, field trips run by the GSN twice yearly, field trips run by the SEG (Society of Economic Geologists) every year at GSA, conventions offered every five years by the GSN and yearly by the NWMA (Northwest Mining Association), and you take short courses as necessary. In other words, you update or re-create your contact base. This may or may not take much effort, depending on a variety of variables.

What do you do if you happen to be unwilling to pay the going rate for experienced geologists or less experienced geologists with hard rock degrees (as happened to me in the late 1980s)?

A lot of times, you end up doing the work yourself or end up doing less work per time period—in other words, you suffer. If you hire less experienced people or those with an inadequate background (as I have had to do on occasion because of company hiring policies), you get less done, sometimes spending nearly the same amount as if you had paid a higher rate, depending on your overhead. And you kick yourself a couple times while complaining vehemently to your boss about the company pay rates. There is no real fix to this latter situation, except time and hopefully a management willing to buck the trend or status quo. (Your company may get bought or spun off, thus possibly fixing the management problem, as also happened in the late 1980s and probably also at other times.)

How long does it take to train inexperienced geologists to do the tasks at hand?

This really depends on what you need to have done. For a jasperoid-sampling program down ridgelines in Nevada, training time is minimal, perhaps a few days, at most a week if you also need to teach field location skills (GPS should make this considerably easier than in the past—though map-reading skills should still be required, in case the satellites go down or in case your batteries go dead or you drop your GPS in the water or over some cliff), maybe a day or two more to teach 4WD skills (use a helicopter instead!). If you want detailed rock descriptions or unusual mineralogical determinations (by geologists rather than by x-ray) in somewhat complicated alteration assemblages, for example in IOCG deposits and skarns (iron oxide-copper-gold) or in high and low sulfidation gold-copper systems you had better plan on two weeks minimum (often even with experienced geologists) depending on background and mineralogical aptitude—also, consider sending your geologists on an intensive mineralogy or alteration short course or an appropriate field trip. And, be sure to hire geologists with good observation skills! Always!!

As a just-out-of-school geologist, how should I go about getting a job in mineral exploration and mining?

Here, my ideas are possibly somewhat out of date, but see question number two about creating contacts, elicit help from your professors who are hopefully maintaining some contacts, and contact major and some minor exploration/mining companies.

Consider traveling to mining-oriented states like Nevada if you get some encouragement or just to knock on doors; this may not be done as often as it used to be, but I suspect it would still be considered a sign of initiative.

Sign up for the GSN so you'll get job announcements (not just for Nevada). Although many of these postings will be for people with at least some minimal years of experience, you may be able to apply for some of those jobs, and you will get names of people to contact. Also, jobs for entry-level geologists are advertised through these emails; I got one of these as recently as late May.

Other ideas that work are welcome.

Links: On Field Geology

These selected field geology links from the geoblogosphere are listed roughly in chronological order, with a few related posts grouped together. There are numerous other posts about being in the field, doing field work, photos from the field, and reports on field trips scattered all over the geoblogosphere: don't get the idea that this list is by any means all inclusive!

The Accidental Geologist: Highly Allochthonous, Chris Rowan, Sep 2007

Testability: teaching conceptual models: All of My Faults are Stress-Related, Nov 2007
Testability in Earth Science: Highly Allochthonous, Nov 2007

Data, interpretations, and field work: All of My Faults are Stress-Related, Apr 2008
On Field Geology: christie at the cape, Apr 2008

toolkit: Short Geologist, Aug 2008

off-roading: Short Geologist, Oct 2008

hotel warrior: Short Geologist, Feb 2009
hotel amenities: Short Geologist, May 2009
hotel amenities 2: Short Geologist, May 2009
Field Vehicle Amenities: Green Gabbro, May 2009
Field Pack Amenities: Highly Allochthonous, Anne Jefferson, Jun 2009
the backpack: Short Geologist, Jun 2009
One Reason to Have a High-Clearance Vehicle: Looking for Detachment, Jun 2009

pocket problems: Short Geologist, Feb 2009
A geologist fully equipped for fieldwork: The Lost Geologist, Mar 2009
The Fully-Equipped Geology Student: Geotripper, Mar 2009
What-we-carry-around-in-the-field-meme: Johannes Lochman, Mar 2009
This is what (some) geologists look like: All of My Faults are Stress Related, Mar 2009
The Geologist: Fully Equipped for the Field: Looking for Detachment, Mar 2009
Fully Equipped Geologist: Hypo-theses, Mar 2009
In the field, "Geologists wear gray and khaki": Magma Cum Laude, Apr 2009

Where do geoscientists get their ideas? All of My Faults are Stress Related, Aug 2009

Two Years Ago Today: Things in My Truck: Looking for Detachment, Feb 2010
truck organization: Short Geologist, Mar 2010

Geology Field Work and Weather Monitoring: Reading the Washington Landscape, Nov 2010

The wonders of winter geology: Pore Space, Jan 2011

Fieldwork Friday series at Dinochick Blogs, spring and summer 2009
Gear label at Short Geologist (ongoing)
Friday Field Photo series at Clastic Detritus (ongoing)
Sunday Sands series at Through the Looking Glass (ongoing)

Deep Time

Deep time, geologic time, and the geologic time scale are intertwined concepts relating to the age of the earth, the long epochs, periods, eras, and eons of earth time, a time that is so long compared to our ordinary, everyday time, or even to historic time, that it took some number of years for it to be recognized. We in the west were formally introduced to geologic time by James Hutton, the father of geology. In Theory of Earth, published in 1788, he said:

For having, in the natural history of this earth, seen a succession of worlds, we may conclude that there is a system in nature; in like manner as, from seeing revolutions of the planets, it is concluded, that there is a system by which they are intended to continue those revolutions. But if the succession of worlds is established in the system of nature, it is in vain to look for anything higher in the origin of the earth. The result, therefore, of this physical enquiry is, that we find no vestige of a beginning,—no prospect of an end.

The Persian polymath, Avicenna, had come to a similar conclusion more than 700 years before Hutton:

Either they [mountains] are the effects of upheavals of the crust of the earth, such as might occur during a violent earthquake, or they are the effect of water, which, cutting itself a new route, has denuded the valleys, the strata being of different kinds, some soft, some hard... It would require a long period of time for all such changes to be accomplished, during which the mountains themselves might be somewhat diminished in size. [quoted by Toulmin and Goodfield, 1965]

John McPhee took us a little deeper in 1981, when he introduced the phrase "deep time" as a proxy for geologic time in his book Basin and Range. Prior to that, geologic time was the realm of geologists; since then, deep time has become a part of our everyday vocabulary. John McPhee, in essence, gave geologic time to non-geologists.

As a geologist, I've studied geologic time at least since high school, when I took Earth Science as an elective, extra science. I knew of geologic time prior to that, going back possibly into my early or middle childhood, when I became fascinated with rocks, minerals, volcanoes, trilobites, and dinosaurs, and when I probably learned some of the names of the geologic time periods and eras, such as Cretaceous. (Wikipedia shows the ages, epochs, periods, eras, eons, and supereons of the earth better than the geologic time scale linked to earlier; also see the ICS Geologic Time Scale). Did I understand the vast amount of time involved between trilobites and dinosaurs? I don't know.

I do know that thinking in terms of geologic time has become somewhat commonplace for me, and it seems to be primarily a matter of numbers and scale, and something that I visualize. My life fits inside a linear view, which runs from left to right in front of me: my birth being to the left, today being right in front of me, and my imagined latest years, even somewhat beyond likelihood, being to the right. When I think of history going back to the time change from B.C. to A.D., 1 A.D. is on the left, and everything else is relatively squished as it approaches today, which is still right in front of me. So, what about the 2 million years or so of Pleistocene glacial and interglacial intervals? Now, I've placed the beginning of the Pleistocene over to the left, our general time or the last century is right in front of me. At this point, I can't help but look farther left, beyond the beginning of the Pleistocene, where I can easily see the entire Tertiary back to 65 million years ago.

If I think of all of geologic time — the time frame during which the Earth existed, the last 4.6 billion years — things get even more squished on the end towards our current time, and I've often at this point managed to seat myself firmly in the early Paleozoic, Cambrian maybe, about 600 million years ago. The Precambrian is off to the left, and everything else off to the right. Sometimes I look at this sliding geologic time scale from the end of the Paleozoic, toward the Mesozoic, knowing (even though the Paleozoic rocks and fossils didn't know) that dinosaurs and the massive intrusions of the Sierra Nevada will be coming along as geologic time progresses.

And so, viewing all of geologic time, or particular parts of geologic time, requires me to slide my view to the right and left — or to slide time itself — while expanding or contracting the detail of the time frame, depending on what I want to look at. And when I'm reading about a particular time — whether historic, pre-historic, or geologic — the view often shifts until that the particular time is right in front of me, with time after that, including present time, over to the right.

Another thing I find myself doing when trying to view geologic time — and possibly this happens because I've read so many science fiction books set in countless future timelines — is to include future histories and future geologic time frames in my view, way off to the right. I do this when thinking about the future of the Earth, Solar System, and Universe, and also when thinking about things happening on Voyager in the 24th century (Star Trek timeline), or on the planet Path (Ender’s Universe). Often, this future time looks dark, with a lot of scattered stars and star systems. Or, once again, if I'm reading or watching books or movies set in these future timelines, that present is right in front of me, and our current present — their past — is to the left.

Some time ago, I read In Search of Deep Time by Henry Gee. Early in the book, he gets into a description of deep time, based in part on what John McPhee said in Basin and Range:

McPhee meant the term to refer to the immense intervals, measured in millions of years, disccussed as if they were days or weeks in the conversation of geologists: yet in reality, the intervals of geological time are too long to be readily comprehensible to minds used to thinking in terms of days, weeks and years--decades, at most.

He goes on, after showing a standard geological time chart:

But apart from telling you that Deep Time is long, conventional accounts never consider the implications of the scale of Deep Time on the way we think about evolution [I extrapolate, here, to include other geological occurrences and events]. If, as McPhee says, Deep Time implies intervals more or less incomprehensible to humans, we are entitled to ask whether it is valid to tell stories about evolution according to the conventions of narrative or drama. If it is not, then every story we tell in which causes are linked with effects, and ancestors are linked with descendants, becomes questionable: we can no longer use Deep Time as a backdrop for the stories we tell ourselves about evolution, and how and why we came to be who we are.

Once we realize that Deep Time can never support narratives of evolution, we are forced to accept that virtually everything we thought we knew about evolution is wrong. It is wrong because we want to think of the history of life as a story; but that is precisely what we cannot do. This tension--between Deep Time and the everyday scale of time--is the theme of this book. – Gee, In Search of Deep Time, Introduction

I didn't really find or feel much of that tension when reading his book, and was really looking forward to reading something deeper about deep time. The book, instead, is primarily about certain mechanical aspects of evolution (cladistics), which are really beyond me as a hard rocker, but which were nevertheless fascinating. I can't really comment as to their usefulness, but can refer you to this New York Times review of the book. As a geologist, I disagree that geologic time intervals are too immense to be comprehended. Perhaps it's a conceit for me to think so. Perhaps it's as McPhee says:

Geologists, dealing always with deep time, find that it seeps into their beings and affects them in various ways. ... In geologists' own lives, the least effect of time is that they think in two languages, function on two different scales. – McPhee, Basin and Range

Now, as an aside, I'd like to take deep time in literature farther back than John McPhee, to the "deeps of time" of J.R.R. Tokien.

Quotes from Tolkien on the deeps of time:
Out of the shadows the hobbits peeped, gazing back down the slope: little furtive figures that in the dim light looked like elf-children in the deeps of time peering out of the Wild Wood in wonder at their first Dawn. – The Two Towers, Book III, Chapter 3 [quoted here]

In this elvish sheath dwells the Blade that was Broken and has been made again. Telchar first wrought it in the deeps of time. – The Two Towers, Book III, Chapter 6 [referenced here]

And She that walked in the darkness had heard the Elves cry that cry far back in the deeps of time, and she had not heeded it, and it did not daunt her now. – The Two Towers, Book IV, Chapter 9

As it drew near the great furnaces where, in the deeps of time, it had been shaped and forged, the Ring's power grew, and it became more fell, untamable save by some mighty will. – The Return of the King, Book VI, Chapter 1 [quoted here]

A Few References:
Al-Rawi, M.M., and Al-Hassani, Salim, 2002, The Contribution of Ibn Sina (Avicenna) to the development of Earth Sciences: Foundation for Science, Technology and Civilisation, Publication 4039, 12 p.

Avicenna (Ibn Sina), c 1014-1027, The Book of Healing: editions of the Arabic text were published in Cairo, 1952-83, originally under the supervision of I. Madkour (list of works).

Gee, Henry, 1999, In Search of Deep Time: Beyond the Fossil Record to a New History of Life: The Free Press, New York, N.Y., 267 p.

Hutton, J., 1788, Theory of the Earth: Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, vol. I, Part II, pp.209-304, plates I and II. Hutton's work is available online in several places (Univ Wisconsin, 1788 version with link to 1785 abstract, Project Gutenberg, 1795 version) and also for sale at Amazon.com.

McPhee, John, 1981, Basin and Range: Farrar; Straus & Giroux, New York.

Toulmin, Stephen, and Goodfield, June, 1965, The Discovery of Time. New York: Harper & Row. [Reprinted Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977, 1982.]

More Reading:
Mapping Deep Time (deep time, geologic time, and Hutton)
The "Army of Caterpillars" Tracked Down (Hutton and Dutton)

NOTE: You can now, starting today, follow @GeologicTime on Twitter to find out, "What would 4.6 billion years of Earth history look like [when] represented by one year's worth of tweets?" I suspect that @GeologicTime will be quite busy during the latter months of the year! Read a little more about that project here.

Related Post: Links: Deep Time and Time

Why Do I Like Geology

I’ve been asked to say what I like and don't like about my work or my life as a geologist.

--SIDE NOTE: I don’t often call myself a scientist, but I call myself a geologist, which I've heard is supposedly some kind of scientist, though I wonder some days, or maybe I just wonder about some people. Whew!--

These are questions that I’m rarely, if ever, asked in real life. What I’m usually asked is, what do you do as a geologist, because most people—as far as I can tell—don’t have the vaguest idea what a geologist does. When I’m asked that, I say vague things like, I map the geology out there, you know, the rocks (because I’m a rock person). Sometimes I’m asked—by people who have an idea of what a geologist might do, and who know that I work for mining companies—how is it that you find gold or whatever-it-is you’re looking for out there. Well, then I mention mapping to find out what is out there, drilling to delineate and define the ore, and looking for various hints and clues that depend on the commodity and ore-deposit type that I might think is worth looking for (or for which someone has paid me to look, if I haven’t had the chance to decide that for myself). I explain that some things look good because of past associations: certain colors in the rocks, certain types of brecciation, certain minerals, certain structural conditions, and possibly things like quartz veins if one happens to be trying to find a vein-type deposit—but maybe even if one isn’t, because quartz veining can indicate that something is going on in the area, some mineralization processes may have been at work.

And I explain that, really, to understand these things, to discover something undiscovered or to further delineate something already discovered but not yet large enough or good enough for anyone to want to come in and mine, that I or someone will have to sample the rocks, because assays and geochemical analyses need to be performed; these are necessary so I can tell what is really in the rocks and not just end up going on past associations. Past associations can lead you in a right or wrong direction, and that direction may just depend on blind luck. So samples are necessary, geochemistry is required.

And then I explain that I’m often working on a drilling project, whether it’s an early stage drilling project nearly immediately following the mapping and sampling phase or whether it’s an intermediate or end stage drilling program, where a mineral deposit of some kind has already been discovered or even partly drilled out. And that, once again, many samples with assays and geochemistry are required. Because, although a really good geologist can estimate copper grade in some kinds of deposits, gold grade is quite elusive, even in vein deposits where some of the gold might be quite visible.

So, what is my most favorite thing? The problem I have with this question is ultimately my problem with having favorites. I used to be asked to say what my favorite color was. I had to make that up. Because, really, I didn’t have one. I like, and have always liked, a hell of a lot of colors. Some not so much, most quite well. For a while I really liked lavender, and then I decided to have blue as a favorite color, perhaps as a reaction against the ubiquitiously female pink. At some point I decided that I didn’t like green—that was after living on the east coast where all the overgrown vegetation was obscuring my view of the geology. Now, there really aren’t any colors I dislike completely, although there are several that I favor, including magenta, various shades of purple, and some shades of green—among many others.

So again, what is the thing I like best about my work or my life as a geologist? I think primarily I like or even love rocks. I like working with them, I like being around them (they don’t talk too much, for one thing), and I like trying to figure out what they’ve been doing all the many eras, eons, and epochs that they’ve been in existence—depending on their geologic age. I also love the concept of geologic time, now popularly called deep time, and I’ve loved it for a long time (for me, that is—geologically speaking I’ve loved the concept of deep time for barely an instant). The rocks don’t even really have to be consolidated or rock-like, yet, for me to like or love them. Unconsolidated materials—soil, alluvium, gravels, sand—these are all rocks in the making, although many of the unconsolidated deposits won’t be preserved for future geologists to look at, but some of them will. And when I’m working with these unconsolidated materials, deposits, and formations of Anthropocene, Recent, or Pleistocene age—which I have mapped in some detail, and even drilled when needed—I often think about whether these particular deposits will get preserved and someday become rock, as though becoming rock is the primary purpose of being a deposit of any kind. (Yeah, maybe that’s weird, but that’s where deep time meets future time in my mind.)

So, now we’ve established what I like best—and because I like rocks best, and because I'm an exploration geologist looking for minerals, a few things become required, whether I like them or not. These requirements generally include that I travel for work, because one usually runs out of backyard rocks fairly quickly, and because the mineral deposits I'm finding, mapping, sampling, drilling, and delineating aren't usually found in my backyard (somone's backyard, maybe; if they had been found in my backyard, I'd alreay be rich and would just be blogging and traveling for a living).

Traveling, therefore, is a requirement. There are jobs that don’t require quite as much traveling; these are usually at or near mines. Some of these jobs require long commute times, and they usually require long working hours. By long commute, I mean as much as 2 hours in one direction. For compensation, the pay is often good, and sometimes the time off is good. Also, because travel away from home base is often required (except sometimes when working at mines), staying in motels becomes almost second nature. It used to be something I didn’t like, something that for some unknown reason even made me anxious. Now it’s nice to get away, at least for a while, and one reason that's so is that the rooms are almost always clean and not cleaned by me, and they have a greater feeling of space than the little house I currently live in.

And what do I dislike about the life? (Yes, we call it that: the life, like we were in the mafia or something.) That can depend on a particular job, but one thing that can be bothersome is office-type politics. Traveling away from the office, if one happens to have an office, gets one out from under the keen eyes of sometimes overbearing or over-managing bosses, gets one away from gossip and other related office antics, and can allow one the freedom to do one’s job properly. In the wide open spaces, one can feel free—even in these days of constant “on” required by cell phones and such, especially because cell service is not available in many prime exploration areas—unless one happens to be close to mines, freeways, major cities. Of course, by Nevada standards many of the “major” cities I’m referring to are quite small. Which is another good thing, for the most part.

What I have found over the years is that almost all good things have their downside in some circumstances, that good things become bad things, maybe just with repetition, maybe just because of the oppositional nature of things—and likewise for bad things. The things I don’t like under some circumstances can become things I like under other circumstances, and the things I like can become things I don't like, at least for some time being.

As far as using the things I like to motivate myself through things not liked: yes, I think I do that to some extent, but in some situations I’m more likely to motivate myself with things that arean’t strictly work related, by finding something that keeps my mind entertained or keeps me inspired. These things might be as simple as taking photographs when there is time, or finding something at work that I can do that is both helpful and personally rewarding, even though it might not be required or expected. And then other times I just plow through, knowing that mineral exploration is quite variable by nature, and that I’ll be doing something else soon, maybe tomorrow, maybe in a few months—but soon in the long scheme of things, and instantaneously by the standards of geologic time.

scientiae-carnival

Cornelia Clermont Cameron

By way of introduction, this post was originally scheduled for a long-ago second edition of the Diversity in Science Carnival, started by DNLee at Urban Science Adventures! in February, 2009 (1st edition here). The second edition — which highlighted women in science — was published at Thus Spake Zuska in March, 2009 (originally at Sb). The carnival came and went without me publishing this post about Cornelia Cameron, one of the first professional woman geologists I ever met. Now, I have a perfectly good second opportunity, because @JacquelynGill announced a Women in Science blogfest and tweetfest for today! Follow the Twitter Fest at #womeninscience.

I didn't get to work with Cornelia Cameron, but I met her — and saw her in the halls when she wasn't out in the field — when I was at the USGS in Reston part of one year while in between undergrad and grad school. She was only six years older than I am now, was often smiling, and looked sun-leathered from many years of field work. She was practically one of the first women to have a real geological career (not the first, however, read about Mary Anning and others here). The photo, which *no longer* links through to the source (the website looks like it was hacked, so I deleted its URL), was taken when she was working in the Tobacco Range Islands of central America at age 78. You can see another photo of Cornelia here.

Cornelia Cameron was born in 1911, way before my time or yours. She had the extreme good fortune to have both a scientific father and scientific mother. Her father was a professor of natural sciences and a photographer; her mother, Harriet Clearman Cameron, had an M.S. in Geology and had completed courses for a Ph.D. in Botany. Cornelia's father died when she was about 7, so she was raised from then on by her mom.

Cornelia earned a B.A. and M.A. in Botany in 1933 and 1935, and in 1940 she got her Ph.D. in Geology, with an emphasis on geomorphology. She worked for various geological outfits during her career, inlcuding Cities Service Oil Company, the Iowa Geological Survey, and Stephens College. She was at the USGS from 1951 until she died in 1994 at the age of 83. During the height of her career, she was one of the world's foremost experts on peat deposits, and received many awards for her work: the USGS Meritorious Service award in 1977, the DOI Distinguished Service Award in 1986, a Distinguished Alumni Award from University of Iowa in 1987, and DOI's Public Service Recognition Award in 1990. She was also a prolific writer, publishing a total of 110 papers, of which I list very few, below.

As I said earlier, I didn't really know her, but I do know that she was regarded as quite a character, and I heard a few stories about her field adventures when I worked at the USGS. She and her mom were both going into the field together when I was there in 1975 (she was 64, her mom was 103!), and I remember that she was known for having male field assistants to collect rocks and carry packs as needed, a luxury I have had only one time during my career. Here are a couple quotes about Cornelia and her mom (this source):

Until she was 103, the senior Dr. Cameron accompanied her daughter on field expeditions around the world. Dr. Cornelia Cameron herself continued doing field work until a month before her death at 83. Dr. Cameron joked that when her mother got so old that her eyesight had deteriorated, she put a cow bell on her mother in the field, so she could find her mother if she wandered off.

And from Jennifer Harden (same source):

In a story about daughter and mother’s adventurous military terrain investigations in the Caribbean area before the Bay of Pigs invasion (early 1960’s), Dr. Cameron recounted that “Mother and I were a perfect pair. We told everyone that we were Canadian tourists. One time, as I doing traverses along the slopes of one of the islands, Mother stayed in the car. I was upslope from her when I saw a truck full of guerrillas pull up. Mother simply charmed them and they drove off.”

At some point during my research for this post, I read something stating that Harriet Cameron died in September of 1975, shortly after I left the USGS for grad school. If so, the date — either 9/22 or 9/23 according to my notes — would jive with my memory that Cornelia's mom was still going into the field with her while I was there. I can no longer find the reference.

A Few of her many Publications:
Cameron, C.C., 1970, Peat deposits of northeastern Pennslyvania: U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 1371-A.

Cameron, C.C., 1970, Peat deposits of southeastern New York: U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 1317-B.

Cameron, C. C., 1970, Peat resources of the unglaciated uplands along the Allegheny Structural Front in West Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania: U. S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 700-D, pp. D153 - D161.

Cameron, C.C., and Palmer, C.A., 1995, The Mangrove Peat of the Tobacco Range Islands, Belize Barrier Reef, central America: Atoll Research Bulletin 431, with a tribute and photo.

Cameron, C. C., 2000, The bogs of Roosevelt Campobello International Park: Roosevelt Campobello International Park Commission.

Read more about Cornelia Clermont Cameron:
Levine, Maxine, 2007, Women in Soil Science: AWSS Newsletter, v. 26, no. 3, p. 10-15.

New York Times, 1994, Cornelia Cameron; Peat Expert Was 83: August 10, 1994, Obituaries.

University of Iowa, 1987, Distinguished Alumni Winner: Cornelia Cameron.

University of Iowa, Cornelia Cameron Papers: Iowa Women's Archives, The University of Iowa Libraries.

Minor editing 8Mar2012; Links updated 19May2013 and 25Feb2017