Road Song: Tucson, Arizona

Dan Fogelberg: Tucson, Arizona (lyrics)
Album: Windows and Walls, 1984

It's been awhile, I know. This is a pretty dark road song, possibly fitting our current times (cw).

Road Song: The Sound of Silence

Disturbed: The Sound of Silence (lyrics)
Album: Immortalized, 2015

This is a road song in that it mentions streets. It's an oldie to me, one that was appropriate when it first came out, and one which is appropriate now. I'm not sure I can say more about it, other than...listen.

Road Song: Stairway to Heaven

Led Zeppelin: Stairway to Heaven (lyrics)
Album: Led Zeppelin IV, 1971

I've don't often think of this song as a road song, but it does mention "the road" twice and "two paths" once, so is definitely a road song by any definition. It's also a gold song, for any of you miners out there.

Road Song: Copperhead Road

Steve Earle: Copperhead Road (lyrics)
Album: Copperhead Road, 1998

This is a classic road song with "road" right there in the title, courtesy once again of MOH. I can't say that I have any particular memories around this song, but the music video is quite evocative with respect to the eastern backwoods (which I remember well from my years back there), Vietnam, and what might be protecting the younger John Lee Pettimore III's current crop, which isn't moonshine.

Road Song: On the Road Again

Canned Heat: On The Road Again (lyrics)
Album: Boogie with Canned Heat, 1968

I haven't updated my road song list for quite sometime, in fact my post list by "road songs" indicates that I added the last new one in August, 2015, more than two years ago!! One The Road Again, not to be confused with the song with the same title by Willie Nelson, is an oldie from the Woodstock days, one I had pretty much forgotten about until MOH reminded me of it last week. In my mind this is old time hippie music to go along with Tupelo Honey (Van Morrison), Sugar Magnolia (Grateful Dead), and Creole Belle (Jesse Colin Young).

Sorry I can't guarantee that music videos I post will remain online. Enjoy while you can! 😊

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.

---

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

Twelve Months of LFD (2015)

I'm doing the year-end meme wherein I compile the first sentence of the first post of every month. Meme rules are as follows, as per DrugMonkey:

Post the link and first sentence from the first blog entry for each month of the past year.

I've also added the photo from the same first post, if there happened to be one. I've removed any captions from the photos, so if you want to find out more about locations, etc, you'll have to click through. The first sentences include some classically long, LFD-style sentences, one short sentence, and many that are in between. Previous takes on this Twelve Month meme at LFD were posted for 2008, 2009, 2010, 2012, and 2014.

Aaand...here's the year 2015 for LFD:
January:

A year ago today, a thin snow highlighted some Lake Lahontan shorelines on basalt-capped hills out in (or near) the Fernley Wildlife Management Area (FWMA):

February:

Yesterday, when out hiking in nearby Water Canyon (before the Super Bowl), MOH and I slowly (at least for me) made our way up a variably steep, grassy to rocky hillside until we came to a large rib of quartzite.

March:

Well, I'm back at the place I was working at about two years ago (see these three posts for more info), spending more time on a back paved road and on dirt roads than I was most recently while on the road to work (I'm still driving on the interstate some, but a lot less than during the last two years).

April:

It was a very windy day as I drove south along what's variably called the Surprise Valley Road or the Sand Pass Road (and to the north, is often called the Smoke Creek Road) into the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe's Reservation.

May:

It is often — more commonly than in the past, IMO — hazy or dusty in north-central Nevada where I routinely work and often travel, here and there across basins and over ranges.

June:

An El Niño has supposedly set in (starting when, exactly, I'm not sure).

July: Nada. Zip. Zero.

August:

Neil Young: Rockin' in the Free World (lyrics) Album: Freedom, 1989

This is technically a road song because it mentions streets twice and roads once, and because the video that came out with the song also shows a lot of streets.

September:

There I was minding my own business while flying north from RNO to SEA (that is to say, I was reading a thick book and trying to ignore a seatmate while crammed against the window near the rear of a Q400), when I looked out (to the east) and spotted the peak of an Oregon volcano sticking out through what I first thought was a low, thick cloud cover.

October:

South of the Klondyke District (our previous stop on this journey) and just north of Goldfield, one reaches one of the northernmost populations of Joshua trees (Yucca brevifolia)—or the northernmost population, depending on what range map you use.

November:

In later years—in the future of the 1976 "present" of these ongoing thesis-hunt stories—I made my way back into the Palmetto-Magruder area barely a handful of times.

December:

When I pulled up to Lida Summit two years ago—I was on my way to a property examination and had decided to check out the Lida and Palmetto areas—I stopped right in front of...a roadcut!

Road Song: Rockin' in the Free World

Neil Young: Rockin' in the Free World (lyrics)
Album: Freedom, 1989

This is technically a road song because it mentions streets twice and roads once, and because the video that came out with the song also shows a lot of streets. It's a rather dire song — quite appropriate today IMO — but it is not the sort of song I think of when heading out on the open road. (The open road in the west is often a dirt road, and who knows where it will be taking you when you leave the pavement.)

This came into my playlist again (not that I really have a playlist!) when Trump decided it was an appropriate campaign song. Maybe he though it was pro-USA; who knows. It isn't, and maybe he's figured that out by now.

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.

Twelve Months of LFD 2014

I missed this retrospective meme last year (as I also did in 2011), but here it is, back again, per DrugMonkey:

The rules for this blog meme are quite simple.
-Post the link and first sentence from the first blog entry for each month of the past year. I originally did this meme, after seeing similar posted by Janet Stemwedel and John Lynch. Prior editions include 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009 and 2008.

Previous takes on this Twelve Month meme at LFD were posted for 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2012. As usual for LFD, I've also added the accompanying first photo of the month, where there was one with the first post of the month, and a gratuitous sign photo for October.

So, here's the year 2014 for LFD:
January:

I'm sitting here inside flight 112--I think--with my phone in airplane mode, wondering if I can create a blog draft that I can save and post later.

February:

We've been having unsettled to stormy weather here in western Nevada for about the last week, with at least light snow accumulating in the mountains, though the south facing slopes have gone back to being mostly bare, even under today's cloudy skies.

March:

Flying back from Alaska on yet another recent trip, I was able to spot Rose Spit, which featured as Where in the West challenge back in October of 2010.

April:

A while back, I started collecting photos of Majuba Hill (AKA Majuba Mountain), partly because I pass by daily on the way to and from work, and also because of it's interesting shape and fascinating geology (which I hope to learn more about on this spring's GSN field trip).

May:

MOH and I will shortly be off on a field trip to a few nearby localities, including Majuba Hill, reportedly a great mineral and rock collecting site, seen here from I-80 looking northwest across Rye Patch Reservoir.

June:

Here are a few photoviews from Majuba Hill, while I get it together to take some rock photos:

July:

A quick report on a canoe trip we took recently:

August:

So, while I wasn't thinking about it, my 1000th post posted, and this is my 1005th! I'm not sure, really, what to say about this — although I'm also sure I'll think of something — other than Yay!!

September:

The sun is about to rise through thick smoke blanketing the
southern Humboldt Range.

October: A colleague of my former (deceased) husband once said, "Archaeologists are the Cowboys of Science."

[He was wrong, btw. Read the post to find out why.]

November:

So there I was, traveling west on I-80 late last week — just after our first rain sans snow (except for at the high elevations of a few mountains east of the Sierra, like the Humboldt and Sonoma Ranges, which top out at 9836 and 9396 feet respectively), and before our most recent larger rain and snowstorm of this past weekend — when I came to the marshes that border the west end of the Fortymile Desert.

December: MOH turned me on to this song just yesterday (I didn't listen to much besides classic rock and country in the 80s).

Sammy Hagar: I Can't Drive 55 (lyrics)
Album: VOA, 1984

Road Song: I Can't Drive 55

Sammy Hagar: I Can't Drive 55 (lyrics)
Album: VOA, 1984

MOH turned me on to this song just yesterday (I didn't listen to much besides classic rock and country in the 80s). The song refers to the National Maximum Speed Law (part of the Emergency Highway Energy Conservation Act) enacted in 1974 in the wake of the 1973 oil crisis. Nevada got around this law by issuing "wasting energy" tickets of $5 beginning in 1981, and although Wikipedia — and its cited source — states that "troopers were directed not to take the new law as a signal to stop writing tickets," as far as I noticed, speeding tickets were no longer issued for speeds under 70 mph (except perhaps on rare occasions). At 70 mph, you were going 15 miles over the actual speed limit, so you could be given a speeding ticket along with a reckless driving ticket, and on some roads (like the Mount Rose Highway and the Geiger Grade), you could be issued a reckles mountain driving ticket as well (higher fines).

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: Hot Rod Lincoln

I've finally taken a hint from an earlier comment by Dan McShane, and am playing "the original" (to me) Hot Rod Lincoln - though it's not by Commander Cody. And this is the way I remember it:

Johnny Bond: Hot Rod Lincoln (lyrics)
Album: Hot Rod Lincoln, 1964

And for good measure, the Commander Cody version, which I also remember quite well, and is a 70s classic:

Commander Cody: Hot Rod Lincoln (lyrics)
Album: Lost in the Ozone, 1973

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)

Road Song: Buffalo

Quite a while back, as the result of this post at En Tequila Es Verdad, I was turned on to Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers. Dana not only blogged about them, pointing out a road song or two of theirs, but get this: she sent me a CD of their songs! So, I'm finally getting around to posting a video one of their many road songs, Buffalo.



Note that while this qualifies as a road song by mentioning the iron rail and freeway, it is actually an anti–road song. And the lyrics remind me of the movie Little Big Man.

RCPM: Buffalo
Album: Sonoran Hope & Madness, 2002
Roger Clyne's tequila

And hey! This it the 800th post here at LFD!!

Road Song: Child of the Wind

This obviously classic road song was sent to me by a reader, Tom Skaug. Keep 'em coming!



Bruce Cockburn: Child of the Wind (lyrics)
Album: Nothing But a Burning Light, 1991

The melody, if not the words, fit in really well with my current frame of mind.

Twelve Months of LFD (2010)

As per usual (see 2008 and 2009), I'm doing the year-end meme showing the first sentence of the first post of every month, along with - for LFD - the first photo if there happened to be one. Seen everywhere, especially at VWXYNot?, Dreams and hopes of a (former post doc) scientist, There and (hopefully) back again, and Thus Spake Zuska. The rules for this meme are simple, as explained by DrugMonkey: Post the link and first sentence from the first blog entry for each month of the past year.

January
It being the start of a new year (the year 2010 to be precise), I have a few deep-time links for all you deep-time lovers (or would that be lovers of Deep Time?):

• The 2009 Geologic Time Scale: GSA
  
  ...


• Hutton's geology: ‘No vestige of a beginning – no prospect of an end’: OpenLearn
  
  [no end of sentence in the long link list was detected upon review]

February
Here, in non-chronological order, are a few of the geoblogospheric posts that have caught my eye recently.

March
The March, 2010, version of Where in the West (WITW) is really just an excuse to post a glacier picture or two.

April
Just a quick preview of a roadcut on Highway 36 near Susanville, CA, showing a basalt flow over some white [probably tuffaceous] lake sediments. The reddish baked zone may might include subaerial deposits.

May
Callan Bentley at Mountain Beltway has had a couple posts up recently about mud cracks.

June
Three years ago today, while driving between somewhere and somewhere else, I came upon this cool oasis in the greasewood zone below the sagebrush steppe on the northeast side of Honey Lake, CA.

July
I took a road trip last week, south into Big Smoky Valley (MSRMaps), in order to grab a few photos from areas I visited in 1976 while on my thesis hunt.

August
I just returned from a mega-trip with MOH into central Oregon, where I met with family at an annual reunion-type affair on a basalt-capped bluff overlooking a small Oregon town.

September
I've been working on a Highway 50 roadside geology series for quite a long time, and have managed to get a few posts in every now and then, but have many more to go before I really consider it complete (could it ever be complete?).

October
Where in the West, if you might remember, features some [unknown] location in the western part of the northern hemisphere.

November
Ophir and Out ... well, to Middlegate, anyway.

December
And so, following on from the post "What is a Road Song," here is the essence of one of the three road tapes I made in the late 1980s.

Everyone who blogs is tagged for this meme.

Tucson to Tucumcari

And so, following on from the post "What is a Road Song," here is the essence of one of the three road tapes I made in the late 1980s. I find that this plays better in Firefox than in IE8, haven't tried Chrome (that is, I can't play it in IE8 unless I've first opened it in Firefox; after that, it plays fine in IE8). Unfortunately, you will not be able to skip through the "tape" because of licensing requirements. Also, 8tracks may not play the songs in the original order, and the streaming may not be perfect all the time. I had to change a few songs because of mix requirements (no more than two songs by the same artist), because one song was poorly recorded (many are from my original tape recording of mostly vinyl), and because one song wouldn't stay on the mix for some unknown reason. Title of the roadsong tape was taken from the third song. The original tape was as follows:

 1) Take it Easy, Jackson Browne, 1973
 2) Hotel California, Eagles, 1977
 3) I'm Willin', Seatrain, 1970
 4) Preroad Downs, Crosby, Stills, and Nash, 1969
 5) Maggie May, Rod Stewart, 1971
 6) I'll Be Leavin' Soon, Mark-Almond, 1972
 7) Leaving Louisianna in the Broad Daylight, Emmy Lou Harris, 1979
 8) New York's Not My Home, Jim Croce, 1972
 9) Country Road, James Taylor, 1970
10) Me and Bobby McGee, Janis Joplin, 1971
11) America, Simon & Garfunkle, 1968
12) Where to Now St. Peter, Elton John, 1970
13) Six Days on the Road, Jesse Colin Young, 1972
14) Stories We Could Tell, John Sebastian, 1974
15) Sweet Baby James, James Taylor, 1970
16) El Condor Pasa, Simon & Garfunkle, 1970
17) So Far Away, Carole King, 1971
18) Come Monday, Jimmy Buffett, 1974
19) Ol' 55, Tom Waits, 1973
20) Quiet Man, John Prine, 1971
21) Pancho and Lefty, Emmylou Harris, 1977
22) Homeward Bound, Simon & Garfunkle, 1966
23) Truckin', Grateful Dead, 1970