Winnemucca to Hwy 395 north of Susanville, Part 3

Black Rock Desert

Well, here we are again, traveling from Winnemucca, NV, to Highway 395 north of Susanville, CA, and we’ve just made it to the west end of the Jungo Road where it intersects with NV S.R. 447 (formerly S.R. 34) just south of Gerlach. You’ve probably noticed that I haven't been blogging much recently. I'm not really sure why. Sometimes the work I do takes the writing right out of me, partly because I do enough writing many days that I'm totally done with that by the end of the day; also, I don't really have much time after work before I have to do dinner, then get ready for bed—at least if I want to get enough sleep, which I do want (I don't always succeed). Another thing contributing to the recent spate of sparse blogging—besides taking care of personal things that have been taking a lot out of my energy during my days off—is that my writing effort during the fall and winter months has been going toward writing bits of fiction (a novel?), which I've been working on intermittently during the last two years.

Anyway, all of that—work, trying to get enough sleep, personal issues, and writing fictional to non-fictional stories—has placed blogging low on the list.

Now I'll upload the photos for this post, and we'll go from there. Just like a real journey, we’ll see how far we get!

Smoke Creek Desert

At the end of the last post, we'd driven quickly through Gerlach and had reached the northwest side of the Smoke Creek Desert. I hadn't taken any photos while zipping through Gerlach, but I often stop, and I've even stayed overnight at least twice. So let's backtrack before moving on.

Gerlach is a small town that brags of several mottoes, including "Center of the Known Universe," "Where the Pavement Ends and the West Begins" and "The Time That Town Forgot." More can be seen on the town sign, above, or in this nicely enlarged version of the sign by the RGJ. As indicated by the sign, Gerlach is technically pronounced Grr-lack rather than the Grr-lock one hears so commonly these days. I shot these photos of Gerlach on a trip that FMOH and I took back in the spring of 2014. Like the June, 2018, trip that we—you and I—are reprising, he and I had just come into town from Winnemucca on the Jungo Road. We were bringing the motorcycle back from Nevada, mirroring this trip taking it out to Nevada.

While in town, we did the usual thing of stopping to eat at Bruno's Country Club, probably getting Bruno's Famous Homemade Ravioli. By 2014, Bruno was no longer making his ravs personally, so I don't think they were quite as authentic, nor were they quite as good.

Unlike many trips, this time we stopped at the bar for a couple beers; we weren't driving on that afternoon or evening, but were, rather, staying at Bruno's Motel. Bruno Selmi, the Basque owner of the cafe, bar, motel, and only gas station in town, died in May of 2017—he can be seen in the photo above the bar (the older man on the right).

After checking in to our room at the motel—and after duly going back to the bar to get a second room when the first smelled either of gas or dead mouse—we wandered out onto the far western edge of the Black Rock Desert, where we had a view somewhat atypical of most views of the desert. This section of the Black Rock is a section you don’t want to drive into: it’s usually muddy, and it’s very possible that you’ll get stuck. The getting stuck part typically happens at night when an unsuspecting traveler, one who is already out on the desert somewhere to the east, decides to get off the desert—and instead of driving to the usual take-out spot north of town, sets their sights on the lights of Gerlach and makes a beeline for town. The next thing our unsuspecting—or willfully ignorant—traveler knows, they are stuck, possibly axle deep, in the mud at the west end of the main section of the Black Rock Desert. Fortunately for them, they aren’t far from Bruno’s gas station. Maybe someone will risk a vehicle to come and pull them out!

It’s possible one could wend their way through the merely salty white section of desert to the pavement on the east edge of Gerlach, at least in the drier years, but I don’t recommend trying it. I personally know at least one person who tried this one night back in the 1980s; the getting stuck was epic.

The next morning after breakfast, FMOH and I headed west.

Now let’s get back to my June 2018 trip, which I was taking all by myself (cue pint-sized pity party). I had just made it to the northwest side of the Smoke Creek Desert and had taken the photo seen earlier and in my last post.

A ways farther down the west side of the Smoke Creek Desert, I pulled over for a quick examination of some tufa. There are many spots to see tufa domes, mounds, and hills along the west side of the Smoke Creek Desert; this mound, Hill 4081, was a new one to me.

I climbed up through the cheatgrass and scattered tansy-mustard tumbleweed and looked around. Here we’re looking off to the northeast, more or less back toward the Junction of C.R. 447 and the Smoke Creek Desert Road. The Granite Range, unsurprisingly underlain by granite, rises steeply beyond the distant Smoke Creek Desert playa. The foreground is green because...water. It’s a wet part of the basin, possibly because of the entry of perennial Smoke Creek into the desert just south of where we’re standing. It’s also more elevated than the playa, and covered with grass (at least cheat grass) and various scrub.

I love tufa mounds, so I stood looking around for a few minutes, taking lots of photos. This photo looks off more to the north. The distant bluish hills just right of the tufa dome are part of the Buffalo Hills, which are underlain by a pile of volcanic rocks.

More tufa! More volcanic rocks! The hills in shadow between the tufa masses are some volcanic flows forming the eastern foothills of Burro Mountain.

From this point on Hill 4081, I got back on the Smoke Creek Desert Road, went south a short distance, and then turned west on what Washoe County considers the continuation of the Smoke Creek Desert Road, and what Google Maps refers to as the Smoke Creek Road: a dirt road that heads west up Smoke Creek.

to be continued...

Google Maps location map.

Related Posts:
Winnemucca to Hwy 395 north of Susanville, Part 2
Winnemucca to Hwy 395 north of Susanville, Part 1
Things You Find in the Field: Sulfur at Sulphur
Blue Mountain (2012)
Pulpit Rock (2012)
Smoke in the Black Rock & Smoke Creek Deserts (2102)
Where in the West: Black Rock Desert (2008)
Where in the West - June: A Second Look (2008)
Where in the West - June (2008)
Name That Place (2008)

#fieldworkfail BINGO

This space has been fairly quiet this year, and while I'd like to blame my lack of posting on work, the truth is that most of the blame falls on ye olde personal life, which has been in a dumpster since early November. But rather than going into the sordid details here, I'm going to post on something that was big on Twitter a couple months ago, thereby continuing my present trend of running behind (on the blog — thankfully not elsewhere).

Yes, that's it: #fieldworkfail BINGO. I present an unadorned, unplayed BINGO card:

It was Kat Black who presented this Bingo card to fieldwork-Twitter (largely but not entirely composed of biologists and geologists of various flavors), back on the 30th of March. Most of the entire ensuing Twitter convo can be read here (though I don't know how long Twitter-search keeps things available, so maybe the link will fail in the future).

Thinking about my field work history in some detail, I created this BINGO card from my experiences. As you can see, I did get a BINGO. Without the free space in the middle, though, I wouldn't have made it.

By way of a little explanation, I've added a few details in the next version of the same Bingo card:

You might notice that I replaced "Animal attack" with "Plant attack" and added an extra mark. While I've been stared at closely by 3 to 4 coyotes at once and also by a protective stallion once or twice —  the former causing me to unnecessarily grab my rock hammer and the latter causing me to give up on that canyon for that day —  I've never been attacked. I have, however, been mercilessly attacked by wild cholla balls, which definitely have a mind of their own and can be quite persistent in trying to attach themselves to parts of your body, especially feet and legs.

(I've had a few close encounters with wild cats — mountain lions, bobcats, and a possible jaguar — and I've come closer than I prefer to snakes several times, and closer than they prefer judging by their rattles or swift slitherings away from me — but these were merely close encounters, with none of them resulting in anything resembling an attack.)

In my line of work, especially when doing mineral exploration recon, a moderately routine hazard not listed would be getting shot at or being run off a property with a gun, which has happened to me once (American Girl), maybe twice or thrice —  although the second time was unclear and so probably doesn't count (Old Woman Mountains), and the third time was merely a threat without any visible gun brandishment (Tumco). In addition, there can be various helicopter-related hazards, the least hazardous of which might be being left out by the helicopter pilot, who for various reasons, including forgetting part of the crew (me!), might not pick you up —  a story that was told in brief here.

Road Song: Wanted Dead or Alive

Bon Jovi: Wanted Dead or Alive (lyrics)
Album: Slippery When Wet (1986)

Just another song about life on the road: one I heard the other day while traveling between here and there.

Road Song: The Highwayman

The Highwaymen: Highwayman (lyrics)
Album: Highwayman, 1985

This song--like this one posted earlier--reminds me of "the road" and of life on the road as an exploration and recon geologist. It also reminds me of my Dad: because one of his favorite artists, Willie Nelson, is one of the singers; because of the dam building and Boulder Dam reference (even though the building of that dam was before his time); and because he'll always be around (at least for me).

Here's a second version (essentially the studio version, although the accompanying video references to "starship" don't match my Star Trek ideas of what starships really are and will be).

Road Song: On the Road Again

Willie Nelson: On the Road Again
Album: Honeysuckle Rose, 1980

This is an obvious Road Song, one for which, possibly, the category was named. In fact, the song was *on* one of the first road song tapes — surprise, surprise! Another of the first road song tapes can be played or perused  here.

On the Road Again is from the early 80s (barely 80s), when we were all on the road. It reminds me of roads, Highway 50, central Nevada, geologists, driving late at night to get home, driving anywhere to get out into the field, geological heroes, and much, much more. Today, it's dedicated to my Dad. My mom, a child of the 30s and 40s, was inspired to play this song (among many others) at his memorial service. The associated, perhaps fortuitous, metaphor, just stuns me.

Road Song: Turn the Page

Here's another road song about life on the road, written by Bob Seger. I like the Seger version best, but the Metallica version is also good.

I hope to be on the road soon, traveling more for vacation, family, and visits, than for work, but will probably be keeping an eye on roadcuts, mountains, deserts, and canyons as we go along.

Bob Seger: Turn the Page (lyrics)
Album: Back in '72, 1973

Metallica: Turn the Page
Album: Garage Inc., 1998

Road Song: Stories We Could Tell

This song always reminds me of "the life" -- that is, the life of an exploration geologist. You may have to click through to YouTube to listen to this original version, which is the one I know best.

John Sebastian: Stories We Could Tell (lyrics)
Album: Tarzana Kid, 1974
John Sebastian website (has auto-playing music turned on)

Here's another version, with the pixelated pictures evoking the kind of traveling I'm thinking of when I hear the music. You may still have to listen to it on YouTube.

Jimmy Buffett: Stories We Could Tell
Album: A-1-A, 1974
Jimmy Buffett website

So if you're on the road a-trackin' down your every night
And singin' for a livin' neath the brightly colored lights
And if you ever wonder why you ride the carousel
You did it for the stories you could tell

(emphasis mine)

First Day Off After Nine

Early morning: This was my rousing view of clouds and the foothills of Winnemucca Mountain when I awoke this morning. This photo now seems to represent what was a somewhat inspirational beginning to what turned into a busy, erratic day. Perhaps the day was also a bit like the clouds: scattered.
Early evening: It was a hectic day, seemingly, and I'm finally relaxing with a cold beer — a Rotator IPA in a Ruby Mountain Amber pint glass. I think the only reason the day seemed hectic was that I did things other than what I planned, things that weren't on my TTD list, so I felt as though I didn't accomplish anything. Instead of relaxing and blogging (both were on the list), I did a modicum of unpacking, a bit of arranging, and quite a bit of rearranging. I did get two things on my list done, including having a relaxing hot bath. And, for things not on the list, I accomplished the hanging of a peg strip near the front door of the apt, which now looks like this (sign compliment of furnished apt):
By the end of the day, prior to beer, I didn't find a Father's Day card to my liking. Whereas it seemed that the cards in our moved-away-from town were dorky and quite repetitive year to year, it seems as though the cards in this new town, while ostensibly or superficially quite varied, trend overall either toward the overly sentimental (for either myself or the way I view my dad), or they are raucous musical and noisy things that I'm pretty sure he wouldn't like. Consequently, because I'm already late in mailing anyway, I'll probably dig through the many cards I have on hand, which I've bought for myself not to use but to look through and enjoy (art cards), then I'll pick one out and hopefully get it sent by tomorrow afternoon when the mail gets picked up at our nearby apt-based boxes. With any luck, the card will arrive in AK by Monday, only one day late.

In the meantime, I'm expecting a phone call from MOH. He's on his northern adventure, checking out oil fields and small towns in northerly areas that I've never visited. (I'm jealous, in a way, but am getting daily pictures of campsites, rivers, and the way my old truck currently looks as a mini-RV. One thing I've learned is that the Yellowstone River is quite beautiful, though a long way from here.)

And now, my beer is still cold but needs to be refreshed with a new one, the sun coming through the open-to-the-freeway window — open to let swamp-cooler air on high out — is warm. After beer I'll have a dinner either of mint chocolate cookie ice cream or mini-ravs and milk. That will be the end to what I now see as a good day.

P.S. The "our town" tag refers to the old place in the hinterland of eastern Nevada, and the "wnmca" tag refers to a uniquely named town in north-central or north-western Nevada (depending on how you view Nevada geography).

P.P.S. I am finding myself, as I've mentioned before, considerably shorter on time for blogging while working the industry-wide normal 10-hour days and having a door to door driving/riding time of 45 to 60 minutes, depending on particular logistics. These logistics create what are actually 12 hour days, longer than my previous 10-hour work days plus 30 to 45 minute max round trip times (10.5 to 10.75 hour days compared to ± 12 hour days). I'm still adjusting, rather slowly, to my lack of blogging time. I'm not awake enough in the morning to do much serious (or very good) writing or link finding, and the short evening is often crammed with brief winding down, dinner, getting ready for the next day, enjoying a netflix-streamed old TV series episode or two with MOH when he's here, OR just crashing, OR reading the internet but not blogging. Haven't figured all that out quite yet — and I haven't quite scheduled time in for any excercise besides what I get at work, walking up and down metal-grated stairs and walking back and forth down my rubber-padded cement-based core-logging lane.

P.P.P.S. Wrist and elbow overuse pain (started in one arm, is now also in the other becuase of using the other almost exclusively at times) has also limited what I have been able to do on the computer. The pain, soreness, inflammation, whatever it is, is better. It all probably began from packing and lifting/carrying boxes; consequently, any unpacking I do puts me at least slightly at risk of a longer healing time. (RICE: REST, ice, compression, elevation — need the former, acheiving very little of the latter - how does one raise the elbow without using it or other possibly compromised muscles? Meh.)

Busy Days!

I haven't been blogging much, and there is a reason — well, there are several reasons, a major one being the move I've been involved in since at least late April, another major one being my new job with it's longer drive time that results in essentially 11.5 to 12 hour days: leave our new place at 5:30 in the morning, arrive back sometime between 5:00 and 5:30 in the early evening, depending.

Here we are on our first U-Haul van trip, driving past some Ely Limestone on the left and right side of Highway 50 near the turnoff to Ruth, NV, with a reddish hill of Rib Hill Sandstone (??) in the sunlight straight ahead:
And we're not done with the move yet, although we're getting closer to our goal of being out of the old place and entirely ensconsed in the new place, which will entail unpacking, reorganizing, and making preparations for a related new adventure that is more MOH's than mine, but which will involve completely cleaning out and refurbishing my old truck.

The caravan on our first trip, in Jakes Valley.

Our caravan this trip will not be quite as complicated, nor will it involve my old truck or the Prius.

And here's a shot of the van with Prius in tow heading north on S.R. 278 toward what *might* be a ridge of eastward-dipping Eureka Quartzite.
Maybe we'll have time to stop and take a look at the supposed quartzite today or tomorrow or whenever we get out of town — or maybe not.

For now, back to packing, cleaning, packing, more cleaning, calling utilities et al, loading, last minute packing and more loading, driving and driving, arriving, unpacking at storage and new apt, reorganizing, trips from apt to storage and back, and whatever else I've forgotten.

Location shown below is the approximate location of the last photo.

Goodbye...

...to the old mine.
Hello, way off in the distance, to the new.

I've started a new contracting/consulting job in a new place, a gold mine up on one of the Nevada gold trends, a move from copper to back to gold. I'm still in exploration rather than production, that aspect hasn't really changed. Some of the particulars have changed, some particulars remain the same or nearly the same. (The same and not the same: geology, geochemistry, drill rigs, core, RC chips, logging, samples and sampling, microscopes, cross-sections, various investigative instruments, PPE, geologists, techs, support contractors and companies, etc.)

The gold trend mines (Carlin trend, Eureka–Battle Mountain trend, Getchell trend, and Midas trend) are often, though not always, a long way from towns and cities (primarily Elko, Carlin, Eureka, Battle Mountain, and Winnemucca). The two major companies and some smaller companies facilitate transportation to the mines with busses and vans. My regular 10 hour work days are now lengthened by 45 to 60 minute drives or rides in both directions. My time from doorstep back to doorstep in the morning to late afternoon or early evening runs from about 4:30 am to about 5:00 pm, sometimes a bit earlier or later depending on variable logistics. Consequently, the time I currently have available for blogging is a little limited.

I'm also getting resettled in the new town, not really quite yet moving out of the old town in the hinterland of eastern Nevada. This process may take as much as a couple-three months. In other words, I'm fairly busy on my days off. There is also a whole new area to explore and investigate.

I'll post when I can!

Update from the Lake: Fall with a Bit of Color

And I mean just a bit of color! On our last trip to the lake about mid-month, the leaves on our aspens had started turning, but they hadn't really gotten all that far.
In fact, they were not quite as far along as they were at a similar time three years prior, so possibly this is fairly normal (I'd have to go deeper than the archives held in this blog or on my computer and pull out some backup drives to find out).
While at the lake, we noticed that the pine trees all around had a lot of brown needles, maybe not more than average but it seemed like a lot: many Ponderosa pines had what looked like about 25 to 50 percent brown needles. They usually retain needles for three to four years, which would be an average drop rate of about 25 to 35 percent.
I spent some time walking around the yard, photographing things that caught my eye.
Leafy and needly things.
Needly and leafy things.
Okay, enough of that. Back in the thick aspens where they are intergrown with alder and fir, lots of tiny little greenish yellow birds hopped about and flew here and there, barely stopping long enough for me to get a picture.
But I did! Two sharp pictures, as a matter of fact, out of all the hundreds (it seemed) of missed birds, blurry birds, and bird butts. Not sure what they are, however, other than some kind of sparrow. They are very small, they hardly ever stop moving, and they love all shady and hidden areas.
We were busy at the lake, as were are at times, and one thing we did was to turn off water to our flowers. This year, we had lots of daisies, a few purple cone flowers, and very few gaillardias. We don't know if the gaillardias were getting too much water, were choked out by the vetch that we didn't weed, or if the daisies are providing a negative influence. If the latter, we may weed some daisies next year. Can't have a monoculture.

Other successful undertakings mainly centered around prepping the torn up dining area, acquiring a 12x12 sheet of rock-pattern vinyl flooring, and carefully cutting and dry-laying it. Next year, or sometime in the winter, we will install some matching baseboard trim. Needless to say, other projects remain, some started, some merely thought about. I'm actually hoping to get to one or two of these this winter! We'll see, though. It gets cold, the place gets snowed in, the water will be turned off, and just getting there can seem like a major accomplishment.

Update from the Lake: Early Fall

Photo:
Early fall construction in Austin, Nevada

In a departure from the semi-standard format of my on-again, off-again updates from the lake, this post will have zero pictures from the lake itself, just from the road to/from the lake. Why? Because I didn't take any! Really!

Our fairly recent visit to the lake was one of getting a little less accomplished than planned, with accomplishment of one or two things not planned, including the fixing, eventually, of a semi-broken water heater. Semi-broken means that if one went out and occasionally tripped the reset, the heater would come back on, heating fully until the next time the thermostat, upper or lower or both, went haywire and caused the thing to shut off. That was the main thing not planned for, which, as far as we know, was fixed successfully just as we were leaving. (No way to really tell until we go back and run the hot water.) A second unexpected accomplishment (or event) was a special trip to town for a family birthday dinner.

Photo:
Looking downhill while waiting for the pilot truck in Austin, Nevada.

Overall, it was a mostly lazy, restful interlude. I had no problem sleeping in or napping, and my state of restfulness carried over nicely to the beginning of this most recent work stint, which started sometime last week (I already don't know what day that was, or what day this is: the perils of long work stints.)

We didn't get new flooring down in the dining room, but we did find a likely store and probable choice: a rock-patterned vinyl.

Oh, and we discovered that one thing we thought we had accomplished back in early summer had been left undone, with our local handyman having disappeared with his payment plus tip. He took the money and ran! We are hoping a neighbor will be more thorough and conscientious.

Our drip line was still running, flowers were still blooming, birds were chirping, and leaves on trees hadn't started to change. It was summer when we arrived, fall when we returned.

In other news, we are back at our little house and well into the middle of our work "month." It's turned suddenly fallish and is expected to snow tomorrow; the tomatoes in the garden are safely enclosed in an impromptu greenhouse made of stakes and thick plastic. Flowers here are still blooming; it is hoped that green tomatoes will ripen despite the impending snow.

Marathon Summer Summary

It was a busy summer, and now with fall here, I'm once again about to go back for another work stint, which for me will involve working about 18 days in a row, depending on a few unknowns. Last month, for various reasons, I wasn't looking forward to going back to work after my days off; this month I'm merely a bit tired.

In the middle of my typically long work stints, if I feel I've gotten into a bit of a rut, I will often have to renew myself, usually by refocusing my mind, sometimes by something as simple as a hot bath (no hot springs are currently handy). A little burnout or rut development here and there is normal. What has been somewhat atypical this summer is the intensity of our days off, my 10 or so, MOH's 7. I usually spend about one day (sometimes two if I'm lucky) getting ready for days off by catching up on home paperwork and chores, by getting laundry done, and by running a few errands. Then, off we go. The where is usually a great place, and although the where sometimes involves chores of other kinds, the where always involves some needed relaxation. This summer has included two major trips, Alaska and a camping expedition to Wheeler Peak; these trips have been rewarding, enjoyable, relaxing, and offtimes intense. The comings and goings related to these trips — and to smaller trips like one earlier this summer and one earlier this month — always involve getting ready, and the return always involves unwinding from the trip and getting ready to go back to work, often with more paperwork and chores, more laundry, and more errands, giving the whole several days a symmetry of sorts.

These last four months have felt time or event crowded to me, with every day off for both of us seemingly scheduled in advance. Oh yes, we have had time to stop in Middlegate, time to ride our mountain bikes, time to hike to the Pony Express Station (maybe twice!), time to stand in the river and fish, and time to stare deeply into several campfires. We've been fortunate in these things, and in having opportunities for travel, even when some of our travel has been done to accomplish chores and repairs of various kinds. We have also been fortunate in having two jobs, and two cars in which to get to those jobs. Our jobs start at different times of the day; we sometimes pass each other on the road, one coming home from work while the other is going. We wave at each other or flash our lights.

—————

The other week, my truck broke down in front of our little house, fully blocking one of the roads. After trying a few things and getting out the shop manual — hurriedly, because we didn't know what we were going to do if we couldn't get the thing started and dusk was threatening — we determined that the fuel pump, located inside the gas tank, was kaput. I called the emergency number of the place that usually works on my truck; the owner recommended a towing service. I called them, they recommended another outfit. That guy came over immediately, pulled my truck onto his tow truck while neighbors watched, and hauled my malfunctioning truck off to the auto shop. He dropped the truck and keys there (after hours), and delivered the towing bill to my insurance agent the next day. Two days later (a colleague drove me to work and back while I was sans truck) I had my truck back. Yes, it was the fuel pump.

———

A few days or a couple weeks later, while out camping miles from anywhere but Baker, a town of minimal services — card-reader gas station, a couple motels, a place to get showers, a place that sells firewood for camping, and an operating cafe-bar with small general store of the mini-mart variety — the other car, our Prius, broke down in a way that left it somewhat driveable, driveable only because of its strange hybrid system. We finally determined, after replacing most of the coolant, that the "fan" belt to the water pump had broken or come off. The Prius is not an easy car to work on without a full lift, and it has very tight spaces around most of the parts that one might want to work on, including the belt. We were able to coast it down to Baker without it overheating, and with me driving another vehicle loaned to us by our campmate-SIL. We pulled the Prius into the card-reader gas station, drove the other vehicle over to the cafe-bar. Baker has no cell service. No place near Baker has any usable cell service whatsoever, although I got sniffs on the mountain above 8500 feet. We were able to use the landline at the bar to call the number of my auto shop (which I had on my not completely useless cell phone), and were able to find that they were probably the only place for hours that could work on a Prius. So we called the same towing company, met the tow truck by the Prius a couple hours later, and had the car dropped at the auto shop. We drove SIL's vehicle back to camp.

Now we have a whole campfull of gear, ours and SIL's, and one vehicle, when it took two fully loaded vehicles to get the gear and the three of us to camp. We left with SIL the next day, the day she was planning on leaving anyway, picked up my truck at our little house, drove back to camp, and stayed an extra day! The luxury of having an extra day! And the luxury and good fortune of having the vehicles to pull this thing off! (We weren't as overscheduled as I thought, it turned out.)

We stayed overnight, packed up camp the next morning, drove in and unpacked, then picked the Prius up at the shop. Yes, it was only the one belt, the one running the water pump.

—————

It has seemed like a bit of a marathon summer, perhaps fall will be more steady-as-she-goes.

Light at the End of the Culvert

Looking through a culvert on a recent hike.

I'm in the midst of starting a new consulting job (after an enjoyable to cabin-feverish three month hiatus), so I have - at least for the moment - ceased updating the earthquake and tsunami links post I started last week when I had more time and before I knew how many, many posts the geoblogosphere could write about essentially one subject in six days. As noted in an update to my links post, continuing information (along with a lot of other geology and geoscience) can be found at Chris Rowan's AllGeo Feed, Ron Schott's GeoPicks, and GeoBulletin: News from the Geoblogosphere.

Where it All Began, Part II

Continued from Where It All Began, which ended:

That, anyway, is one way to make a geologist, although I’m sure there are also other ways. One thing that geologists are sure of is the existence and viability of other ways — this idea is technically referred to as “multiple working hypotheses,” and it’s sometimes stated as, “if ten geologists mapped the same area, you’d end up with at least ten different maps."

---

Half Dome

The western U.S. — from the subduction-bounded and transform-faulted Pacific coast to the uplifted and locally hog-backed eastern border of the Rocky Mountains — is a tectonically active region. This activity is revealed in the Mesozoic intrusion, cooling, and crystallization of the great Sierra Nevada batholith (65 to 210 million years ago), in the Holocene to Miocene faulting of the San Andreas fault system (0 to 35 million years ago), and in the Pleistocene to Pliocene uplift of the Sierra Nevada Mountains as a block (1 to 3 million years ago especially, with some uplift still continuing). The west coast has been an active continental margin for a long time — back, way back into the early Paleozoic and perhaps beyond into the Precambrian. I was born and grew up in this active geologic area.

When I was almost eleven, my family and I left the west coast semi-permanently and moved to the mostly inactive, even passive, continental margin of the east coast. The east coast — as geologists learned when the theories of continental drift and plate tectonics came together in the 60s and 70s — has been, for the most part, tectonically inactive since the Paleozoic era, with a smattering of activity in the Mesozoic, and even less activity since then (though not entirely zero). It took geologists years to figure out how plate tectonic theory could apply to such a long dead area (geologic history here and here). It’s now known to be a passive margin.

I never felt truly at home there: the mountains were not mountains, the coastlines were not coastlines — unless we drove all the way to Maine — and no huge masses of granite stuck out anywhere to provide a feeling of solidity or to remind me of home. Eventually, I found pieces of home in the granite quarry of Mt. Airy, North Carolina, and in unakite outcrops hidden somewhere amongst the creeping, overgrown underbrush of the Blue Ridge Mountains (unakite = altered granite). I was also rather partial to the kyanite of Willis Mountain, and enjoyed looking for twinned staurolite crystals. These, and other rocks and minerals, are reminders of the the Appalachians' earlier, more tectonically active heydey, but I was not introduced to them until relatively late in my east coast stage of life. I was a geologic orphan.

---

When I returned to the west in 1975, I bypassed all known modes of geologic transportation — continental drift, wind and river transport, landslide, fault creep, thrust faulting, and valley rifting — and, instead, traveled across the continent in my ‘72 Opel, with everything I owned fitting inside except my full length mirror. I deposited myself like a graded bed on the east side of the Sierra Nevada and once again drew renewed strength from its high prominences and great length.

I was now in the province of the intermountain west, an area of complex and still unfolding geology, an area of tension and extension that formed, and still form, the quite obvious elevation extremes of basins and ranges that reach from the Sierra Nevada to the Wasatch Range. (Reno, Nevada, and Salt Lake City, Utah, are moving away from each other at a rate of about ½ inch per year.) The topography is simple and seemingly endless: up and down, up and down, up and down: corrugated or not corrugated, depending on how you like to characterize things. Dutton (1886) described our western ranges as looking like "an army of caterpillars crawling northward" — ranges of the Basin and Range province crawl northwestward across Arizona toward Nevada, and crawl northeastward across Nevada toward the Snake River plain.

I was also in a region shaped by tectonic processes more subtle than those that created the definitive horst-graben topography of the Basin and Range, processes that were active long before the land now known as California even existed — before magma arose from the melting zone deep beneath the west coast’s subducting plate to form a batholith that is intermittently present from at least Mexico to the northern reaches of Canada, and even into Alaska. First, sedimentary layers and volcanic flows had accumulated in former oceans and basins; then, as part of repeated accretionary events beginning in the Paleozoic, western siliceous cherts, siltstones, and pillows had been pushed over eastern carbonates along a thrust fault hundreds of miles long: the Roberts Mountains Thrust.

Carlin Unconformity

I was in a land of slammed-together accreted terranes, of compression and obduction, of province-wide, low-angle reverse faults. I was also in a land of thin and hot crust, a land whose huge-caldera volcanism and volcanic pyrotechnics in the Tertiary could easily make the eruptions of Mt. St. Helens, Mt. Mazama, Mt. Pelé, and Krakatoa look puny. In short, I was in the Great Basin — a region that overlaps with the Basin and Range province but is by no means identical to it — where all rivers, creeks, and dry washes flow inward into inland lakes or dry playas, and not outward to the sea.

I was, at long last, in Nevada.

Nevada, the silver state, has long been known for its bonanza gold and silver, and has more recently been known for its no-seeum, low-grade, disseminated gold (not so low-grade anymore, but that's another story). After moving here, I expanded my horizons: Carlin-type gold deposits in 1976, eastern Nevada in 1980, and the Mojave desert in 1981. Because of my own expansion, I gradually came to know that I was in the land of detachment faulting: a land where extreme extension and tectonic denudation have exposed the tortoise-shell–shaped cores of metamorphic core complexes that cut through the North American Cordillera in a band running from north-central Mexico into British Columbia. Detachment faults — large, low-angle normal faults of regional extent — separate the ductilely deformed cores from the broken and faulted rock formations lying tilted and detached above.

I moved here in 1975 and have been extended, disseminated, and detached ever since.

Some References:
Cathro, R.J., 2010, Nevada-type gold deposits (Part 4): CIM Magazine, v. 5, no. 7, p. 88-90.

Dutton, C.E., 1886, Mount Taylor and the Zuni Plateau, p. 105-198 in Volume III of Report of the Secretary of the Interior; being part of the Message and Documents Communicated to the Two Houses of Congress at the Beginning of the First Session of the Forty Ninth Congress in Five Volumes: Washington, Government Printing Office.

Gilbert, G.K., 1890, Lake Bonneville: U.S. Geological Survey Monograph 1, 438 pp.

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

Troxel, B.W., and Wright, L.A., 1987, Tertiary extensional features, Death Valley region, eastern California: Geological Society of America Centennial Field Guide-Cordilleran Section, 1987, p. 123-132.

Dark Side of the Moon

Eclipse

All that you touch and all that you see
all that you taste, all you feel
and all that you love and all that you hate
all you distrust, all you save
and all that you give and all that you deal
and all that you buy, beg, borrow or steal
and all you create and all you destroy
and all that you do and all that you say
and all that you eat and everyone you meet
and all that you slight and everyone you fight
and all that is now and all that is gone
and all that's to come
and everything under the sun is in tune
but the sun is eclipsed by the moon

Roger Waters quoting Jerry Driscoll [Gerry O'Driscoll according to this source], from an interview [Wayback Machine] at The Most Complete Pink Floyd Page: [Wayback Machine]:

"The final words ['but the sun is eclipsed by the moon'] are Jerry Driscoll's. His original words were, 'There is no dark side of the moon really. As a matter of fact it's all dark... and the thing that makes it look alight is the sun.'"

Pink Floyd
Dark Side of the Moon
Composer: Waters
Year, 1973



Cover Art from a now defunct (geocities) Pink Floyd site.

Related Posts:
Why Highway 8A?
Single Digit Highways
A Bit about License Plates

Coming Soon!
Highway8A Introduction I

Links updated 2Mar2018.

Road Song: Pancho and Lefty

Two versions of this classic Townes Van Zandt song: Emmylou Harris, 1977. For the next one, you'll have to turn the sound down (compared to the first one). Merle Haggard / Willie Nelson, 1983 Livin' on the road my friend Was gonna keep you free and clean Now you wear your skin like iron Your breath's as hard as kerosene Weren't your mama's only boy But her favorite one it seems She began to cry when you said goodbye And sank into your dreams. Pancho was a bandit boys His horse was fast as polished steel He wore his gun outside his pants For all the honest world to feel Pancho met his match you know On the deserts down in Mexico And nobody heard his dyin' words Ah, but that's the way it goes. (Lyrics from Emmylou Harris, 1977, as heard by myself.) Originally recorded on the "Tucson to Tucumcari" road-song 90 minute tape back in the 1980's.

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

A Million Things and DonorsChoose

There is a lot going on around the geoblogosphere (and more than that) and it has been harder for me to post during this most recent round of 10 hour days than I remember it being back when I started blogging. Maybe my posts were much simpler then, just a photo or two, some update about the weather, a link or two, and move on.
First, before I get distracted, let me point you to what I think is one of the most important things going on this week and into next month: Anne Jefferson and Chris Rowan of Highly Allochthonous are sponsoring their annual Earth Science DonorsChoose Challenge, which brings earth science tools, projects, and supplies to students and classrooms in need of your support. Go to their giving page, where you will find several projects worth funding, as well as links to other Earth Science giving pages including one by Maitri of Maitri's VatulBlog. As a bonus, HP is matching the first $50,000 raised during the Science Bloggers for the Schools challenge, this week through November 9th. So, get to it!

Also, it's National Fossil Day, and Anne has a great post up about the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument in Oregon, which I visited very briefly this summer, and reported on equally as briefly. :)

Back to my rant: I get home after 10 hours at work, sometime between 5:10 and 5:30, and I've been doing that now for almost an entire month. After getting home, I might read a little online, have dinner, then maybe I'll have time to watch a Stargate Universe episode with MOH if he's not working nights. Then, after dinner, maybe I'll hang out online just a little more via mobile after getting ready for bed, or maybe I'll read. (Currently I'm reading - very slowly I might add - Roads: Driving America's Great Highways by Larry McMurtry).

In the morning, my alarm goes off at 4:30, I snooze it until as late as 5:00, make coffee, have coffee while reading blogs and news until maybe 6:00, at which time if I'm actually editing an already written post I might push it until 6:10 or so, then I get ready very quickly so I can be out the door at 6:40.

I think about blogging, not constantly, but often. I think about my many blog ideas, am in the midst of a few things already started, have Wedges to think about, and other stories in progress from earlier this year or last - and I bog down, or give up, or something - because the truth is, it just doesn't seem like there is that much time in the day.

I have access to a computer at work (not my computer, which would be much, much faster), but have not felt at all comfortable writing anything, even during coffee breaks or lunch. Instead, a couple-three of us get together and yak about things: work things, geological things, world of finance things, other things. One thing different than a couple years ago: I share a large room (a coreshed) with one or two other geo-types and don't have an office space to myself.

Then, on breaks between work periods, at least during these last 30 days, I've had a drive-to-meeting and drive-back-from-meeting break (two days); one whole day off, half of which was spent doing laundry; and a field-trip break (three days, all on the road). What I mean is, on breaks, I tend to be going somewhere, maybe because I'm not really traveling for work at the moment. During these various trips, I sometimes end up in a place without a good or easy-to-use internet connection, at least for a short time, or - as during the breaks over this last month - I end up in places where socializing and hanging out with other geos talking about old times, geology, the mining business, good stories, and other things takes precedence over all but the most cursory checking of things online via mobile in the late evening.

So, what this all boils down to, is that you - all my readers - are not getting many posts from me. And I don't see much to do about that right now!

In the Dark of the Night

It is so good, after a long day - of work, of computers, of tubular rocks - to lie down knowing that I won't have to get up early in the morning. It is also good, after more than ten days of work in a row, to know that I will have a day of sleeping in, a day of some quiet with a few errands - think: laundry - before a partial day of driving to two nights and two days of mine geology field tripping.

Darkness: at night, I love it!


[posted 20Nov2010 from the Draft folder]