A New Road Trip in the Making!

Well, I'll be on the road for the next 10 to 14 days, so I'll try to have a couple posts by way of phone photos, provided that I can edit them to get the phone-photo size to match my blog size. It will be an experiment.

Photo from Whitney Portal Road looking east toward the White-Into Mountains (taken in early March, 2016). Sierran granite in shadows on the right.

Finding a Thesis: Farther into the Palmetto Mountains

Magruder Mountain from Lida Summit.

The sun went down on that 1976 campsite perched somewhere on the south side of the Palmetto Mountains, and I eventually fell asleep, curled up in my barely adequate sleeping bag on the ground near my '76 Opel. Fortunately, by this time on my thesis hunt the evenings were almost balmy, so I didn't freeze the way I had during that earlier, colder stop a few miles north of Belmont. Was this trip later in the spring?—or was it really that much warmer at the same elevation but 75 miles to the south?

I arose the next morning and dinked around a few nearby workings (possibly near the Blue Dick Mine) while I grabbed a quick bite. Then I once again got out my paper topo sheets—this time it would be the Goldfield 2° sheet and the Magruder Mountain and Lida Wash 15' maps—and determined my course for the day. I would at least plan to get up to some of the prospects and workings near Excelsior Spring, and I'd try to hit a few prospects to the northwest near the Palmetto Mine.

A portion of the Magruder Mtn 15' quad courtesy of the USGS
via their Map Locator & Downloader.

I relaxed a bit as I drove down the alluvial fan road, feeling not nearly as tense as I had the day before, and then I made my way up and over Lida Summit, which sits at an elevation of 7460 feet (although it apparently was at 7400 feet as recently as 2004!).

Lida Summit looking west.

The view looks about 55 miles across the relatively low hills of the Sylvania Mountains, across intervening Eureka Valley, across a low northern part of the Inyo Mountains, and across Owens Valley south of Big Pine, at the distant peaks of the Sierra Nevada. The highest peaks in the view, toward the right approaching a dark hill beyond and below the sign, are Mount Pinchot at 13,494 feet (4113 m) and Striped Mountain at 13,179 feet (4017 m).

When I had planned my stops early in the morning, I didn't know I'd be passing by the old site of Palmetto, formerly a silver-mining community, now a complete ghost town.

The Palmetto historical marker (also read it here), in front of an old millsite.

The rock work of the millsite.

Abandoned stone building.

Looking through the old ruin up toward the highest point of the Palmetto Mountains, 9285 feet (often called the "Blue Dick Benchmark").

Both Peakbagger and SummitPost list the elevation of the Blue Dick Benchmark as 9289 feet (2831 m). SummitPost has a good story about oldtimer Blue Dick Hartman, for whom the nearby Blue Dick Mine was named. A somewhat more detailed version of him faking his own death can be read awkwardly in this Newspapers.com view of the 1954 Tucson Daily Citizen.

Another view from the ruin (Google Maps location).

And so, on that long-ago day, I pulled myself away from the site of Palmetto and drove up a good, bladed road into the main part of the Palmetto mining district. The sun was warm as it shone through the windows of my non–air-conditioned, little blue car. I wound my way upward into the piñon-juniper zone, which to this day often feels hotter to me than the lowlands of the same area. Maybe the air is stagnant in the trees, maybe it's something about expecting more coolth from the shade than could possibly be created by these desert trees, maybe it's the sun reflecting off the dirt of the road and the dirt between the trees. I'm not sure, but I still don't look forward to hikes in the trees, especially those of the juniper persuasion, preferring the sagebrush zone below or the alpine zone above.

I stopped at a place, maybe at the end of one of the roads, where there was an old shack (or two? or three?), a wooden framed adit or two, many rusty tin cans, a couple shot-up 55 gallon drums, old and new shards of glass, garbage and rubbish, jumbles and scrap—in sum, the usual stuff and old junk often found in old mining areas, always variable from place, always worth looking through or at least taking pictures of. I ate lunch and then wandered around, looking at the old workings and mine dumps, finding a boat load of orange shaly chips, probably float from the Ordovician Palmetto Formation.

As for the broad geology of the area, I'll try to get into that next time...

Previous Posts in this Series:
Thesis: Finding an Area
Finding a Thesis: Battle Mountain to Austin to Gabbs
Finding a Thesis: Pole Line Road
Finding a Thesis: Pole Line to Belmont
Finding a Thesis: Klondyke District
Finding a Thesis: A Joshua Tree Aside
Finding a Thesis: Into the Palmetto Mountains

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."

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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.

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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.

Single Digit Highways

Nevada S.R. 722 sign near its western junction with Highway 50.

As I mentioned in Why Highway 8A?, single digit highways in Nevada became a thing of the past during the 1976 Nevada highway renumbering program:

"when all ... single digit state highway numbers were replaced by harder to remember three digit numbers. Hence, my stretch of Highway 8A is now S.R. 376. The Austin to Battle Mountains segment of Highway 8A is now S.R. 305."

Those of us who were around in those days often still use the old highway numbers of single digits when giving directions. We tend to remember those numbers and do not always know the new three-digit numbers that came along just about the same time the state had another bright idea: get rid of license plates designating county of origin.

As it turns out, even Nevada State Route 2 — "old" Highway 50, the alternate route to Austin that takes off from “new” Highway 50 just east of Middlegate gap and then squeezes through Eastgate and switchbacks over the Desatoya Mountains — is now designated by an unmemorable three-digit number, 722. It takes almost as long to remember Route 2’s new three-digit number as it takes to get to Austin on Route 2.

Junction of 722 and 50 looking eastward, with Eastgate barely discernible and the Desatoya Mountains in the background.

The distances to Austin on Highway 50 and Route 2 are similar, but the sharp switchbacks over the Desatoyas and the back-then invariable condition of complete disrepair made the drive take a little longer. (During the 1970s and 1980s, the state was always just on the verge of letting Route 2 — excuse me, Highway 722 — go back to dirt by allowing the asphalt to erode. Conditions are now generally improved, but don't count on crossing in winter.) That longer time to Austin, however, was well worth it then, and is still worth it today: it’s the scenic route, after all. Please take it at least once.

Those single-digit, Route 2 days were back before the Fernley-to-Ely portion of Highway 50 was dubbed “The Loneliest Road” by some passing-through reporter working for Life Magazine. The epithet came out in Life’s July 1986 issue.

NOTE: Life Magazine claimed the 287-mile stretch of Highway 50 from "Ely to Fernley" as The Loneliest Road, although Highway 50 doesn't go through Fernley; only Alt 50 goes through Fernley. Highway 50 takes off east of Fallon about half way to Fernley, and heads straight for Silver Springs, Dayton, and Carson City.

The label of "loneliest" was at first rejected, even jeered at, by those who lived and worked along the second-most heavily traveled east-west road in Nevada. (There are exactly three east-west roads that span the entire width of Nevada: I-80, Highway 50, and Route 6. Parts of two or three others combine to make it eastward from Tonopah to the stateline near Panaca, and I'm not counting that partial, multi-road crossing, nor am I counting I-15, a mostly north-south route that makes a short northeasterly cut through Nevada's southern tip.) Later, after its initial rejection, "Loneliest Road" was picked up and turned into a tourist attraction, thereby creating more traffic and making the road even less lonely.

I never understood the “loneliest” appellation. It wasn't lonely to drive across Nevada on Highway 50, or on Route 2 aka old Highway 50: it was open, free, beautiful, and at times exhilarating. In the summer, when all the geologists and prospectors were out in the field, the small mountain town of Austin was crowded. Motel rooms were booked in advance, although an unsuspecting traveler might be able to find an empty room on a weekend, when some of the working crowd had left town. And I swear, every single time I drove through Austin on this “loneliest” road, I ran into at least one person I knew, someone not from Austin — and this phenomenon continued well into the 1990s.

In these days of increasing complexity, there are only two single-digit routes left in Nevada. One is a disconnected section of Highway 8A that is still left in the northern part of Washoe County in northwest Nevada. Although the most recent state highway map no longer shows that route number, Nevada 8A signs were uploaded to Flickr in 2007.

The only road that has maintained its single-digit integrity — its integer — is Route 6. That’s because Route 6 is a U.S. Highway, not a Nevada Highway.

NOTE: There are still some Nevada highways that have their original double-digit designations. I won’t be going into the double digit routes much, because they aren’t as distinctive to me, and didn’t play as large a role in my personal geologic history.

Route 6 is a strangely incomparable, unparalleled highway that starts (ends?) in Bishop, California, on the east side of the Sierra Nevada — the side that most rightly belongs, in terms of geological and political temperament, inside the boundaries of Nevada, as clearly as Las Vegas most rightly belongs inside the confines of southern California. From Bishop, Route 6 heads east into Tonopah, Nevada, northeast into Ely, Nevada, east into that variably muddy and dusty town of Green River, Utah, and farther east into Grand Junction, Colorado. From there, it crosses the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains, where it officially leaves the geologic and physiographic province of the West and enters the geologic and physiographic province of the Midwest and the city of Denver, Colorado, simultaneously. From Denver, Route 6 goes through Lincoln and Omaha, Nebraska, Des Moines, Iowa, Gary, Indiana, Cleveland, Ohio, Scranton, Pennsylvania, and Providence, Rhode Island. It then juts out to Provincetown, Massachusetts, ending (beginning?) at the very northernmost tip of Cape Cod. Along its meandering journey, this obscure highway mingles with some of the great ones: U.S. Highway 50 and Interstates 70, 76, 80, 84, 90, and 195. The Sierra Nevada, which arose as a geologic block a few million years ago, long before Route 6 was conceived or constructed, seems to have prevented its attainment of sea-to-sea stature.

NOTE: Route 6 started (or ended) in Long Beach, CA, for 27 years, and indeed was a coast-to-coast highway during that time (1937 to 1964) before the section from Bishop to Long Beach was formally decomissioned as part of California's 1964 renumbering program. Thanks to Lyle for pointing this out.

But these stories are not about Route 6 or Highway 8A. They are not really about highways at all. Instead, the stories — which may someday be complied into a book — center around people and some of the places, geology, and projects along a few of the highways and backroads I have traveled; the stories are about where those highways lead.

Some miscellaneous notes:

1. Ely is pronounced Eee-lee, not Eee-lie like the inventor Eli Whitney. And Nevada is pronounced with the first “a” sounding like the “a” in cat—it is not pronounced as it is in Spanish, where the first “a” would sound like the “a’s” in “la-di-da.” The common mispronunciations of these words, along with a few other Nevada place names like Verdi, Genoa, and Moana, give away newcomers and outsiders from places like California, Colorado, and the East Coast. The correct pronunciation of these other place names will have to be taken up with a Nevadan, preferably a native Nevadan or someone who has been around awhile.
2. Some people prefer to think that the West begins with the westward crossing of the Mississippi River. I firmly believe that one has not entered the province of the West until one has gone westward from Denver, Colorado, and crossed into the Rocky Mountains, the eastward edge of which is marked by the hogbacks along the Front Range just west of Denver.
   

Return to Why Highway 8A? (if that's where you came from).

My 2010 Year of Traveling Meme

This traveling meme began last year, and was started by Alice at Sciencewomen. Others who did it in 2010 include Magma Cum Laude, NOVA Geoblog, Geotripper Part 1 and Part 2, and Geology Happens. This has been a fairly impromptu meme, with no detailed rules, and everyone should consider themselves tagged.

January: First off, I drove to Salt Lake City for a blogger meetup with Hgg. Later, I went to Elko for a meeting and to the lake to check out the snow.

Snow-covered valley in Utah with distant ice-fog.

February: MOH and I went to Great Basin National Park, which I've blogged about incessantly over these last couple years. I also made one roadtrip through Nevada, although I'm not sure why.

Ice near Sacramento Pass on the way to Wheeler Peak

March: In early March, I drove across the wet salt flats of Utah...
...and ended up on the icy mud flats of Alaska. In Alaska, we saw wildlife, a river (an icy river), a glacier (or not), a lodge with good beers, and more snow. I had flown north to see the Iditarod, but we ended up watching it on TV instead of braving the downtown cold.

April: Work, nothing else.

May: MOH and I went to Wheeler Peak, and later in the month we attempted Spencer's Hot Spring (too crowded), stayed in Austin, hiked to the Cold Springs Pony Express Station (not yet blogged), and went to the lake. I drove across Nevada to go to the GSN Gold Symposium, and went on two field trips, including a stop at Goldfield.

Lupines and ash-flow tuff on the trail to the Cold Springs Pony Express Station.

June: MOH and I came back from our late May trip to the lake, and then I drove to Big Smoky Valley, stopping briefly in Kingston, Carver's Station, Manhattan, and Belmont. We stayed once again in Austin, and went to Wheeler Peak at the end of the month.

Spectacular lenticular cloud in Big Smoky Valley, east side of the Toiyabe Range.

July: The biggest trip of the year for both MOH and I, was our trip to central Oregon via a brewery, Jarbidge, Baker City, and John Day Fossil Beds. While there, we saw lots of geology. We then returned via the Winnemucca-to-the-Sea Highway, a story which is not entirely complete.

Mt. Jefferson as seen from the Dee Wright Observatory

August: Work picked up again in August, so I didn't travel much. I did, however, manage to make it down to that Nevada hub, Tonopah. Over the course of three days, I crammed in lots backroad driving while looking at various geological features...

The Crater, in Clayton Valley north of Silver Peak.

...wandering around a couple old stomping grounds...

A southern pass into Fish Lake Valley,

with Mount Pinchot (13,494 feet, 4113 meters) of the Sierra Nevada in the distance.

...and dropping in on the infamous Silver Peak.

The Miner's Inn of Silver Peak, now defunct and rather bland looking. Was once the home of Alice's Restaurant, where you could, indeed, get anything you wanted.

As you may remember, I returned from the Tonopah area on one of the dustiest roads in Nevada.

September: After going to Elko for a meeting, I drove through Ruby Valley (MSR Maps), then took a long dirt road through Long Valley.

Ruby Lake NWR in the fall.

October: I went on the GSN fall field trip (a very dusty and slow affair due to an inexperienced bus driver who didn't like dirt roads or mines); then MOH and I took our famed Ophir Canyon route to Middlegate and beyond, returning via Pyramid Lake and Austin, NV.

Old building in Austin, NV.

November: Work.

December: While I was returning from an unexpected trip to the lake, MOH was making his way through central Nevada to another destination, so we decided to meet at Middlegate Station, where we spent two nights. We attended one of their twice monthly (or every other week) Prime Rib feeds, which I highly recommend. We banged around on some rocks, looked for fossils, and walked around on the fault scarps from the 1954 earthquake at Fairview Peak, which wasn't very photogenic because of heavy overcast. Central Nevada roads, even in the lowlands, are no longer recommended because of mud, snow, and continued storms. The central Nevada lowlands in question are at about 4000 to 5000 feet in elevation (MSR Maps). Low lowlands below 4000 feet are muddy to questionable.

The 1954 fault scarp is that irregular line cutting across the face of the mountain, generally below bedrock and often near the top of the alluvial fan. The scarp is by no means linear, and more than one can be seen in places. (Photo taken at about 6500 feet on the east side of Fairview Peak from a muddy road.)

MOH and I have already been to Wheeler Peak once this month, where the slopes were partly hidden by slowly lifting ice fog.

Wheeler Peak shrouded by ice fog and ice clouds.

And the year isn't over yet!
Where have you been?

2010 Participants:
The Musings of a Life-Long Scholar
Geotripper
Geotripper Postscript
VWXYNot?
Mountain Beltway
Andrew's Geology Blog
Maitri's VatulBlog
Geology Happens
Magma Cum Laude
Chris Rowan at Highly Allochthonous
Point Source
En Tequila Es Verdad
Anne Jefferson at Highly Allochthonous
Georneys
Liberty, Equality, and Geology

Where it All Began

OR

"How Did a Nice Girl Like You Become a Geologist, Anyhow?"

As continued from How did I become a Geologist?

I was often asked this question, especially in my early years as a geologist — the question was usually asked by strangers, mostly men, who I had just run into out in the field: prospectors and would-be prospectors, landowners, ranchers, and even other geologists. Really, you'd think people could be a little more inventive than to reuse that worn phrase so many times. The question seemed to imply some kind of wrongness in my choice of careers, and some other kind of wrongness that I'd managed to meet them out in the field — a "field" where I presumably didn't belong.

I've run into that question from Yuma to Gabbs, from Hog Ranch to Okanogan, and from Juneau to Fairbanks, and I wondered at the question every time it was asked. (The song Tucson to Tucumcari seems to be a most applicable song: my exploration travels have taken me, on legitimate business, to the places in the song: Tucson, Tucumcari, Tehachapi, and Tonopah.) I usually stuck to my routine answer, "My dad was a geologist," an answer that made sense and explained everything, at least it did for all those who asked the question. It didn't really explain things to me, nor did it tell the curious or suspicious questioners much about me.

The Making of a Geologist:
I'd like to say that it all started on Highway 8A, in Nevada, but it didn't. Nor, I suppose, will it end there, although it could. It all really started before I was born.

I was conceived and born while my dad was in grad school continuing his studies as a geologist at UO. Upon my birth, we moved almost immediately to central California, where I grew up with the foothills of the Sierra Nevada as my backyard playground, and with the northern Sierra Nevada towering above me. In those days, you could see the Sierra from Sacramento, you could see Half Dome from the Central Valley (you still can, just not routinely), and you could see Mt. Shasta from a bridge on Highway 40, now I-80, the road to San Francisco (at least, that's the way I remember it).

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I began life downstream from the headwaters of the McKenzie River of the southern Cascades, where I was like a little geologic formation myself, filling in the lowlands of a wide valley. The deposition and formation of my early life continued after my parents moved to another vast lowland: the Great Valley of California. Sediments formerly and actively depositing from seas or rivers, and rivers meandering and flowing between levee walls to the delta and into the bay, were all a part of this early life of mine — a life buttressed by the strength and continuity of the granite of the Sierra Nevada batholith, which formed the backbone of my early life.

While I was growing up in this serene and stable-looking area, my dad was at work as a geologist (the area, which is not far from where faults of the San Andreas fault system run through the San Francisco Bay Area, is far from geologically serene or stable, as many of you know). We routinely traveled from there into the McKenzie River and Willamette Valleys, up and over the crest of the Cascade Mountains, and up and down the Oregon coast; we meandered around the Sierra Nevada foothills, into the Sierra Nevada, to Yosemite and Lake Tahoe; and we made these traverses during all the seasons of the year.

The Carlin Unconformity, with old Highway 40 and the Humboldt River meandering past.

Roadcuts were magnets to my father, so we stopped and looked at them any time we went out for a drive. We collected rocks everywhere we went, and we went to lots of places. By the time I was five, I had seen the famous unconformity in Carlin Canyon, NV, and I had collected slate from eastern Nevada, granite from the Sierra, andesite from the foothills, asbestos from northern California, and agate from Oregon.

It probably also helped that I have rock collectors on my mother's side of the family, and that I grew up inspecting (and adding to) their collections of agate, geodes, barite roses, and other seashore and desert goodies. All these connections, collections, and early explorations combined might be enough to make a geologist out of anyone, but my brother, less than three years younger than I, who remembers much of this time period, did not become a geologist.

What truly did it, I think — what made me into a geologist, that is — was that I was born with a North Arrow in my head: you know, the kind of north arrow you find on any good map, one that continually and consistently points north. I guess that's a little like asserting that I was born with little magnetite or iron oxide pieces in my brain, so I can navigate the way geese or other birds supposedly do. Anyway, as far back as I can remember (possibly back to 1 or 1.5 years old), all my memories come with accurate north arrows engraved on them: that window faced east, that bed faced north, that street ran east-west, and you turned south into that driveway.

It's possible that later knowledge and directional orientation (when did it start?) has superposed North Arrows on my old memories, but maybe not: the arrows hold true for houses I was in when I was ≤1 years old, ≤1 to 4.5 years old, 4.5 to 5 years old, 5 to 6 years old, and so on. I have only revisited one or two of the early houses as an adult, and two of the early houses I have not revisited at all. For the latter two houses, my North Arrow memories check out with the house-detail memory of my mother ("Well, after you came in the front door, the master bedroom was immediately to the left...") along with the directional memory of my dad (who doesn't remember where the rooms of the houses were but does know that the front door faced east).

My dad was also born with a built-in North Arrow, as far as I can figure out, and consequently has been turned-around only once in his life. (I've been lost or turned-around three times that I can remember: once in fog, once in a dense forest, and once in fog in nearly impenetrable brush.) My natural directionality and 3-dimensional thinking (the latter is a requirement to be a geologist and the former is highly recommended) were both reinforced every time we, as a family, traveled anywhere or stopped at any roadcut. Probably the words north, south, east, and west were in my vocabulary by the time I was three, along with the words rock hammer and roadcut, so it remains a little difficult to pull out the built-in part from the added-to-later part — but the built-in part was there, of that I am sure.

That, anyway, is one way to make a geologist, although I'm sure there are 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 overstated as, "if ten geologists mapped the same area, you'd end up with at least ten different maps."

This story may be continued in another form later...

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Seatrain I'm Willin' on the Seatrain album (1970)

A classic road song.

What is Continuity?

I am a geologist, and these are going to be notes that I write in little journal books I carry around. ...a whole lot of them are going to lack any structure at all, but if you know a geologist, you know that that is the way he expresses things. Notes: there is no continuity in a geologist’s life, not in an active, busy one, anyway.”

—Rick Bass, Oil Notes

This blog post, a submission for the March Scientiae Carnival, will explore the topic of continuity. Scientiae is facing a problem in continuity — will it continue or not — which is one reason why the topic is so appropriate. Bear with me: I'm a geologist, I may meander a bit.

For the hell of it, I'm currently searching "My Documents" for files that have the word "continuity" in them. I'm doing this for a specific reason: I think I've written about this subject before; but also for a more general reason: to see how often I've used the word. Found: ten files.

"Perhaps the process of individuation is not the same for everyone. Perhaps some people individuate through becoming something different from their parents, more so than I am from mine. Perhaps not, though — maybe I underestimate our differences sometimes and overestimate our similarities other times. Right now, I like the sense of stability and continuity I find by seeing myself in my parents, even though I have spent much of my life — and even much of the past four years — trying to be different." (1995)

"...a life buttressed by the strength and continuity of the granite of the Sierran batholith, which looked down on the valley from the east, forming the backbone of my early life." (2000)

"And maybe there is more continuity in my life than [Rick Bass] is referring to above. Maybe." (2004)

"I think that some of the continuity in a geological career or in a geologist’s life comes through seeing old places again and through watching/seeing/knowing where former colleagues are working.... This knowledge can be obtained by following the movement and careers of other geologists (engineers, techs, miners, et cetera) and by following the evolution and history of certain properties, projects, and mines. One can also follow the status and changes in mining and exploration companies in general. So, I think there is continuity after all, despite what Rick Bass said in that one book of his...." (2007)

"Further work is recommended to test for continuity and thickness of this deep zone, and to see if it shallows to the east or south." (date withheld)

So, is there no continuity in a geologist's life, especially if the geologist is an exploration geologist of some sort? It's true that one rambles and roams from place to place, town to town, prospect to project, company to company — but is there a larger, greater sense of continuity somewhere? Sometimes, I'm really not sure. When I first read the words by Rick Bass, quoted at the beginning of this meander blog post, I felt that despite certain breaks, disruptions — fault lines in my life — that there had been a certain continuity, which I described earlier as the remembering or revisiting of continuous life aspects, for example people. I think I was referring to something larger than that, though, but am not sure I can describe what I really meant.

When I think about continuity, I first have to say that my parents have been a constant in my life: they have provided a backdrop to what I've done with my life through all these many years. And yet I know that they will not always be here sharing my life with me, even if from afar by phone, through visits, and through email. And when I think about that, I feel sad. But as I write that, I also realize that the constancy in this one aspect of my life is larger than it seems: despite an anticipated future in which they are no longer here, they will still, in some way, provide a backdrop or internal place of permanency inside me for what I will do in the future. They will always be part of me; they will always be here. That is one sense of continuity, although that sense is also combined with a similarly large sense of discontinuity.

Geologists of the exploration persuasion (and many geologists of other persuasions) are always looking for (and sometimes finding) continuity between this outcrop here and that one over there, a correlation that will provide an understanding between two spatially distant areas. Once a correlation is found between these two outcrops — no matter how distant they are — a certain geological understanding might come about. For example, one might then realize that these distant outcrops represent the same moment in geologic time. This type of continuity can easily arise when the rock type and rock formation at the two distant outcrops are the same (for example the Ely Limestone of Pennsylvanian age). You might see identical and very specific fossil assemblages in the two outcrops, an indication that the two outcrops are from the same bed or geologic horizon; you might see other geologic indicators hinting at correlation, such as specific types of chert nodules; and you might notice that the particular bed is overlain by another diagnostic bed and underlain by even another diagnostic bed, if you are very lucky. You might then realize that you are seeing the same bed at both exposures, and you will therefore come to realize that you are looking at practically the same time in geologic history in both places. You've just found continuity in time across spatial distance by correlating two outcrops of one specific cherty limestone bed containing a particular key fossil or set of fossils. [This may be a rather meandering way of explaining part of the stratigraphic principle of lateral continuity.]

Another way in which you might, as a geologist, recognize continuity in geologic time across outcrops separated by spatial distance, is to find a correlation in key fossils from a particular geologic time interval, even though the two outcrops in question are of different rock types. Here we have a concept that's slightly more complex, but one might find the same trilobite in a Cambrian shale in this area over here and find the same trilobite in a Cambrian limestone some tens of miles (or more) away.

Another example of this second type of geologic continuity would be what happens with correlation of tephra beds: a resultant volcanic ash layer or bed that is deposited after one particular volcano erupts ash during one single volcanic event. An example would be the eruption of Mt. St. Helens on a particular day in 1980: on May 18th, 1980, Mt. St. Helens ash was spread far and wide across the northwestern U.S., and where it is preserved as a layer, one can identify that particular day in geologic time. Another example would be the eruption of the Mazama Ash from Mt. Mazama (now Crater Lake) on an unknown day about 7000 years ago. That ash was blown even farther and wider across the western U.S., and it was deposited in a recognizable layer and preserved in more than one kind of geologic environment. One can correlate that particular moment in geologic time from clayey lake sediments in southeast Oregon to rocky talus deposits in central Nevada. The geologic formations are different, they are separated by a distance of hundreds of miles, but those different geologic formations — a lake bed in Oregon and a talus slope in Nevada — were forming at exactly the same time. That's demonstrable geologic continuity between dissimilar geologic formations. These particular geologic beds — lake clay and talus — may not survive to become parts of future rock formations, but maybe they will.

Another way that geologists find continuity in the field, is to walk out contacts between particular rock formations from outcrop to outcrop, mapping them on paper and with GPS. Geologists map the correlation between rock formations, fault exposures, and mineralized zones this way: by mapping them in the field, by following them on the ground from outcrop to outcrop. The continuity an exploration geologist looks for will often be a speculative one during this mapping phase, one that will be later proven — or disproven — through drilling. The mineralized area might be continuous for hundreds of feet or even miles; this is a kind of spatial continuity that is required for mining. It's good, also, to find continuity in assay grade and in other economic parameters such as metallurgy. I look for these kinds of continuity while prospecting, I try to predict and project these kinds of continuities when mapping, I sometimes prove these kinds of continuities by drilling.

When I once again think about continuity in my life, I really have to go back to basics. I know that in some ways I am the same (or at least similar) to ways I was in the past. Certain characteristics will, perhaps, be found within me throughout my life. I have an experience of continuous (or mostly continuous) memory from one point in my life to another — a seeming persistence of myself through time — but I also know that I have changed through that time, sometimes profoundly. I wonder then — when I think of my life, my character, myself as containing a certain kind of continuity — am I deceiving myself?

So I go even farther back, back to basic basics. And I think that geology itself is something continuous in my life: it goes back to an early time in my life, if one considers geology to include my early childhood interest in rocks.

I am a geologist. I was a geologist. I will be a geologist. I will always be a geologist.

I have been other things, I have done other things, but there is something basic about being a geologist that will stay with me no matter what I might do in the future. For one thing, I will probably always have rocks in the house. If I clean them out, I just make space for new rocks to come in. It happens every time I remove various rock piles scattered from truck to garden to living room to garage. It doesn't seem to matter what I'm doing with my life at the time — geology, art, travel, school — a new and interesting rock will somehow work its way into my house, often when there isn't really room, and sometimes when I'm not really looking.

I often, however, have a hard time seeing the day-to-day, year-to-year continuity in my life. My outward activities change, my jobs change, the places I go for work change, the people I work with change. Perhaps it's easier to see continuity when one is younger. Perhaps continuity is really an illusion, something I create in my mind in order to feel something solid, something dependable, something constant, something rocklike in myself and in my life.

I am a geologist. The rocks, the earth — they are always the same. See how they don't move (except during those occasional events like earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and landslides). See how the landforms and topography of even geologically active areas remain solid enough and constant enough that we can use topographic maps made in the 1970's and earlier — at least for most of the basics. But because I am a geologist, I know that all those statements are exactly and precisely incorrect. The rocks and the earth, the landforms and the topography do not stay the same, no matter how much I think they do, no matter how much I wish they would. The topographic maps of the 1970's and before show identity of topography until you come down to the details that are changing day to day and year to year. The stream beds have moved. The talus slopes have creeped. Lava flows have massively changed the topography in Hawaii, and they do so on a daily and yearly basis. Shorelines and barrier islands have moved. Deltas have changed their shapes. Rapids in canyons like the Jarbidge and the Grand have changed: they move, they increase, they diminish. New rapids form. Old ones disappear. Nothing is the same; the only constant is change.

Mountains like the Sierra Nevada, rock solid and made of granite, always give me a feeling of continuity. The Sierra Nevada in particular has provided some sense of structure and constancy in my life since I can remember. I was not born near them, but grew up with them looming above me. I have lived more than 3000 miles away from them, and they have even then been part of my life. They are there; they provide a sense of where I am, a sense of location, even when I can't see them across the many mountains of the Great Basin. When I am in Alaska, there they are, miles and miles to the southeast. When I am on the East Coast, there they are, miles and miles to the west. They are always there. Through my life, they have always been there. It is, thus, easy for me to extrapolate back in time to think that they have always been there — and they have been there for a very, very long time, but not forever. It is also easy for me to extrapolate into the future and find no future in which they don't exist. In my lifetime, they will always be there. In the geologic history of the far future, they will be there as mountains for a very long time. Even after they are no longer mountains, but are plains with an occasional granite knob sticking out through future sediments that have long since buried them, they will be there as a geologic province for a very, very long time (look at the ancient Appalachian Mountains, no longer the same as they were when first a mountain range akin to the Sierra Nevada, yet still, hence these many geologic eras, well-recognizable as a geologic province). Someday, however, every trace of the Sierra Nevada will have been subducted into the mantle by some future, yet-to-form subduction zone. They will not be there forever. They have not been there forever, no matter how much I'd like to think so, no matter how much I wish they were and will be. Even this one rock-hard, granite-solid seeming constant in my life isn't. When I think about continuity, at least today, I find little, maybe none. I find that sad, and yet, there it is.

Continuity: I get up in the morning at about the same time every day, I make the bed and turn on the computer, while the computer is turning itself on I make coffee. I heat my cold cup with hot water, I take the coffee to the room and start up my internet connection. I sign in to Blogger and open up my main blog page, I check the weather on one to three websites using two to ten weather subpages, I turn on or sign in to one or more social network sites and check them, or not. ... No matter what my current state of life is, I find or set up some kind of routine. The routine provides me a sort of comfort, but it doesn't provide any real continuity.

Photos from Wikimedia:

• SierraEscarpmentCA
• Middle_Cathedral_from_The_Nose.

scientiae-carnival

Accretionary Wedge #9: Geology Shapes a Life

Toiyabe Mountains, Nevada:

Looking south from S.R. 722, formerly known as Route 2, AKA old Highway 50.

This month's Accretionary Wedge is all about what was the most significant geologic event - in my life, no matter how small or large, no matter when it happened. This Wedge is hosted by Julian at Harmonic Tremors, who will be posting results after May 21st. As Geotripper and The Lost Geologist have both already pointed out, there are numerous geologic events that could qualify as major or significant (ooh, "significant" - one of those wiggle words!), even if one restricts oneself to merely the Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras of geologic time. If one digs deeper? What about the formation of the earth itself? What about the advent of life sometime in the Precambrian or the first fossil preserved in the geologic record? (Our knowledge of that first keeps changing.) What about the cooling of the hot, molten earth after it formed? What about the largest ever mass extinction at the end of the Permian? What about...? Obviously the list could go on and on and on.

I can think of two fairly significant geologic or geological events that have affected my life considerably. The first would be the postulation and then discovery of low-grade, disseminated, "no-seeum" gold in what would come to be known as the Carlin-type deposits. The history of that event and process is quite interesting, and had I known about the future of the Carlin Trend when I was five, perhaps I could have, in 1958 while passing through the Carlin area, invested all of my hard-earned and diligently saved money from my allowance (about $5.00 total saved at the time?) in buying some ranch land somewhere near Carlin north of the future site of I-80 - then Highway 40! Maybe I could have staked one claim! Well, that's just an old fantasy of mine - if I only had known.
I think that really, the combined geologic events that have most affected my life were the various plate tectonic settings that shaped the western U.S. into its present configuration of accreted and obducted terranes, with the Sierra Nevada batholith intruding beneath volcanoes in the Mesozoic and then rising to its present height from the Miocene until to today (10 to 0 Ma), the San Andreas and related faults slicing through part of California from the Tertiary onward to today (34 to 0 Ma), and the almost world-wide unique formation of the Basin and Range starting in the middle Tertiary and continuing until today (17 to 0 Ma). The Basin and Range is at its most elevated height in the Nevada region and is widest in Arizona(or Mexico?). The many tectonic events that formed the overall geology of the Basin and Range of Nevada began prior to the onset of Roberts Mountains thrusting in Devonian and Mississippian time, continued with flat subduction during the Laramide orogeny in late Mesozoic and early Tertiary time, became quite prominent with the onset of strike-slip faulting along the western margin of California in middle Tertiary time, and continue with ongoing Basin-and-Range faulting and earthquakes to this very day. These many interconnected geologic events have structured my life ever since I moved here to go to graduate school in 1975.

What really got all this going, however, was more of a geological event (the USGS 1958, 1978, and 1991 Suggestions to Authors make the distinction between using the adjective "geologic" for naturally occurring events or items and "geological" for man-made events or items -- the former would include "geologic history" and "geologic process," and the latter would include a U.S. "geological survey" and a "geological society"). What I'm really saying is that the existence of the geologic process of plate tectonics goes on and has gone on without man's recognition of it. So it is really the geological event of the discovery of and then final acceptance of the whole of plate tectonics that has really had a significant impact on my life.

Where I went to undergrad school on the east coast, my major professor, Dr. W. G. Lowry, a very good structural geologist, was an "old school" hardliner who had refused to accept plate tectonics as a theory -- and so I didn't hear much about it in my early undergrad years, except for a couple occasional rants against it (certain fossils on South America and Africa supposedly didn't fit the theory, and matching the structural geology of the northeastern U.S. and eastern Canada across the Atlantic with the structural geology of the British Isles supposedly didn't work). Later, when I took stratigraphy while still an undergrad at the same school, I was able to see a little farther into the realm of plate tectonics and active margins in particular, because our stratigrapher-paleontologist, Dr. C. G. Tillman, did accept plate tectonics as a viable and useful theory. And so, during my last year there, I learned a bit about subduction and Accretionary Wedges (although I'm not sure that last term was in use at the time).

It all came together for me while working at the USGS in Reston, VA, for a short stint prior to going to grad school in the west. Dewey and Pitman came and gave a several-day lecture series on plate tectonics, and even the "junior geologists" like myself were allowed to attend. They presented all the ideas and information known at the time, and I kept my notes from their lecture series for many, many years.

Moving to Nevada later that year to go to grad school finally settled me in to a countryside of western-style, well-exposed geology in an obviously still active geologic setting. (See this post for one comparison of west v. east.)

Accretionary Wedge #9: Significant Geologic Events