Repost: Here's to You, Geological Heroes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

April 2010 Accretionary Wedge: Heroes

Update from the Road: It's Finally Fall

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.

One of the marshes bordering the west end of the Fortymile Desert,
just northeast of Fernley (location).

I was pleased to see that the marshes were fairly rich in water, and that even the median between the eastbound and westbound sections of freeway had patches of water. The volume of water in the marshes, in the median, and in the adjoining playa and Fernley Wildlife Management Area varies considerably, and though the area has been somewhat drier than usual this last year, I've never seen the marshes completely dry. I enjoy driving this section of I-80: I often see birds in the marshes, including American avocet and black-necked stilt.

I passed through Fernley, stopping briefly at the Gilpin rest stop (AKA Wasdworth rest area), always a good place to find excellent fall colors.

Trees at Gilpin.

And a closer, brighter view.

I had already crossed the main bridge over the Truckee River, between the west Fernley and west Wadsworth exits, and I had been surprised to see that the trees along the river were still yellow. They had been, I thought, nearly at peak about two weeks prior, so I really didn't expect to be seeing much besides some faded golden brown leaves or maybe even mostly barren trees.

Instead, fall was in full swing, and I was reminded that the same was true just almost exactly a year ago when I passed through and decided to exit at Painted Rock to get a closer view of the leaves.

Cottonwood trees along the Truckee River, October 24, 2013.

The river and colorful trees, from the one lane Painted Rock bridge (location).

This year, I didn't exit anywhere along the river (besides Gilpin/Wadsworth), opting instead to move through the canyon as quickly as possible (such are the vagaries of a traveling life).

After driving into Reno, I navigated the notorious Spaghetti Bowl, turning north onto 395. Eventually I stopped at the Honey Lake rest area.

Maple tree at Honey Lake rest area, October 30, 2014.

Same maple tree on October 24, 2013.

The changing leaves and general fallishness of the marshes reminded me of a detailed sequence of events from last year — of the bright golden leaves turning and falling in the canyon of the lower Truckee River, of other leaves turning and falling elsewhere along the road, and of the bright yellow aspen leaves in our yard, also turning and falling. We don't have aspen trees in our yard anymore (we had to make space for gardens and trees that don't perpetuate themselves through annoying, ever-present and ever-growing roots and sprouts), so we don't have our own bright colors and fallen leaves (except for on a few small plants in the midst of growing), but I know that fall will always come about this same time every year — often with bright colors — and possibly I will always feel nostalgic for the days gone by.

Update from the Lake and AK, and a Tribute

When I arrived at the lake late last month, the aspen tree towering over our house was glowing brightly with intense yellow and gold to orange colors, brighter than any I remember seeing before. I'm sad to say I didn't take any photos of this phenomenon, satisfying myself with a couple nice views of the tree, and busying myself around the place with various projects.

Sometime during the morning or afternoon of October 28th, all the leaves from our aspens fell almost all at once, when the wind picked up in front of an incoming Pacific front. Later that evening, I learned that sometime LFD commenter, Alaska Al, had died.

Alaska Al has, between the years of 2008 and 2010, commented on 12 posts and has been mentioned in 6 (the latter somewhat overlapping with the former). More importantly to me, he was one of my major sources of early inspiration, inspiration that led me eventually to become a geologist. His inspiration was mentioned in a few posts, especially these two: Accretionary Wedge #18: How did I Become a Geologist and Where it All Began. Besides being an inspiration for my love of rocks, minerals, and all things geological, he was most likely the source of my seemingly built-in North Arrow (see the second linked post).

Alaska Al, besides these things, has had some photos published in this blog, and has been the source for other photos of mine, particularly photos of certain rocks and minerals. His hand lens is shown here; his field Brunton here.

Mt. Foraker (right) and Denali (left) seen from the hills above Anchorage in early November. Alaska Al had much better photos of Denali than these! The Mountain (as it's called up there) will always remind me of him.

The almost record late first snow fell a few days after I took the photo of Denali.

Thanks to all who have already voiced and sent their condolences via various media.

A Geologist who Preferred to be called a Prospector

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

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

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

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

As John Livermore has said:

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

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

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

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

Here's to You, Geological Heroes

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's 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."

A live version probably recorded in 1990.

April 2010 Accretionary Wedge: Heroes

Darwin: A Geological Quote

“About thirty years ago there was much talk that geologists ought only to observe and not theorize, and I well remember someone saying that at this rate a man might as well go into a gravel-pit and count the pebbles and describe the colours. How odd it is that anyone should not see that all observation must be for or against some view if it is to be of any service!”

- Charles Darwin, in an 1861 letter to Henry Fawcett, quoted in "Dinosaurs in the haystack" by Steven J. Gould in the March, 1992 issue of Natural History, v. 101, no. 3, p. 2-13.

- Also quoted in "The really hard science" by Michael Shermer in the October, 2007 issue of Scientific American.

- A quote posted here for Darwin Day, on the 200th anniversary of his birth.



More Info on Darwin:

• Rock Stars: Darwin the Geologist


• Charles Darwin and the H.M.S. Beagle


• Darwin decides against becomming a geologist, Chapter c21 of The Present is the Key to the Past, an e-book by Hugh Rance.
  

The above photo of Darwin is from the Wikimedia Commons.

Desert Trails

May your trails be dim, lonesome, stony, narrow, winding and only slightly uphill. May the wind bring rain for the slickrock potholes fourteen miles on the other side of yonder blue ridge.
May God’s dog serenade your campfire, may the rattlesnake and the screech owl amuse your reverie, may the Great Sun dazzle your eyes by day and the Great Bear watch over you by night.

-Edward Abbey, Beyond the Wall, 1984
January 29, 1927 - March 14, 1989

This post was submitted to the first Carnival of the Arid at Coyote Crossing.

Bowman Creek: A Tribute

Old bench at Bowman Creek.

And now, I'll finally get around to why I drove up that old road to Bowman Creek, why I hung around there for a couple hours.

I looked for our old camp at Bowman Creek a while before I actually found it. When I had been back there with geo-colleague BS in the late 1980's (maybe 1988), I had been able to find the site by driving right to it. This time, everything seemed overgrown: the bushes higher, denser, and harder to walk through, the creek overgrown with trees and wild rose.

The actual campsite, out on the fan away from the creek, is fairly easy to find. I was looking, however, for a particular spot on the creek, the spot where Bob Shannon - our intrepid expediter, camp builder, and drilling arranger - had built a bench under the shade of some creekside trees. In fact, he had built every single one of our many camp structures through the summer - here and there across Nevada - inlcuding various forms of camp shade.

The bench that Bob built.

I had remembered a bench made of nice wood built into the side of a tree with a large trunk, sturdy, fully in the shade, right next to the creek. What I found instead, was an old, gray, and sun-weathered bench made mostly of 2x4's and other dimensional lumber, a bit rickety looking but still sturdy, with some of the boards missing. It looked like it had not been built into or right against a large tree, but instead had been built on the ground, and was now near a swarming mess of water birch tree trunks, all smaller than the trees I remembered. The original tree, however, may have been cut down, leaving the bench resting on the ground, possibly upside down; the only clue being one leg of the bench, on the right in the above photos, which is made of non-dimensional wood, perhaps part of a tree. I found old aspen or cottonwood trunks lying around here and there, trunks about twice the size of most current creekside trees.

So, I don't know. I have a clear memory, and I have the above pictures that don't quite match.

View from the bench.

I walked over and sat on the bench, sure that I was not the first person who had used it since our 1970's camp, sure that it was the same bench I re-visited in the late 1980's. I sat there listening to the rushing creek waters, and thought of Bob. The first time I came back, BS collected grasshoppers for fishing bait in the tall grass on the far side of the creek (there are trout in the creek), while I sat and reminisced.

It was close to midday. In the afternoon - a time corresponding to our back-then arrival in camp after a day of geologizing across the valley - the bench would still be in the shade. Shade was important when we first arrived in camp in early September; later, shade was unecessary.

Fall leaves overhead.

I sat on the bench, remembering. The leaves overhead had not yet fallen, though they looked ready.

Bob died sometime in the 1980's from a brain tumor, sometime back before my last visit to the creek with BS. Bob was old when I first met him—his sun-browned and craggy face matched the mountains and deserts in which he lived and worked. He was rugged, even austere, yet warmhearted and good-natured. At the Bowman Creek camp we showered with hot water in wooden, closed-in shower stalls that Bob built; we sat in the deep, brown-and-emerald-green shade next to the rushing, ice-cold creek on the bench that Bob built. We kept our beer in a wide spot in the creek, just below that bench.

A place to put the beer.

From the bench, I looked over toward the creek, toward the pool in which we chilled our beer.

Bob Shannon is gone now. He was the first and oldest of our collective group to die. He and his wife, who he always called “She,” had purchased a modest dream cabin along the western bluffs overlooking Walker Lake, just a few miles north of Hawthorne, NV. Now he lives on in me, and in another female geologist he encouraged in his warm and slowly sagacious way, and he lives on at Bowman Creek, where one piece of his multitude of handcrafted camp contraptions remains. We tore down the rest of his constructions each time we moved camp, dismantling outhouses, showers, shade awnings for trailers and tents, and all else into their component parts of 2x4’s, 4x4's, and plywood: pieces to be hauled by 4WD to our next campsite.

Looking up the fan toward the base of the Toiyabe Range.

There being no beer to be had, I walked back up to my truck and moseyed on.