Taking our rocks seriously

A couple years ago when I started at EMU in the geology program, Sam told me that he had taken the intro geology class and his impression was that “they take their rocks seriously.” After having our daily mapping hikes increased from 5 horizontal miles and 2000 vertical feet per day to 8 miles and 3000 feet per day (as well as moving from 4500 ft elevation to 8500 ft elevation), I’d definitely concur. Surprisingly, my cardiovascular system has adapted pretty quickly to the elevation changes. I still get winded more easily than at home, but not as much as our first day in Powell. My muscles haven’t quite kept up, however, and by the end of the day yesterday, I was dragging my feet up the last hill as if I had just finished a Kenshu class… head down, watching myself put one foot in front of the other. Step right, push, step left, push, repeat. Or… as Mom would tell me when I was seven years old… Dig. Dig. Dig. Dig. For one reason or another, that never fails to enter my mind when I’m especially worn out and all I can do is put one foot in front of the other, push, and repeat. And it always makes me chuckle just a little as I’m struggling to catch my breath.

New pics from the field station

We had a bit of time yesterday afternoon and evening, so after we threw everything in the bunkrooms, I grabbed the camera, hiked to the nearest ridge, and after finding that I couldn’t get a cellular signal there either, I started shooting. Here’s one of my favorites from the evening. Many others are up on Flickr. Just click the picture and then follow the links to my photostream.

Onwards and upwards

We’ve packed up and moved our gear and selves from Powell, through Cody and west just a bit more. We are now lodged in the Northwest College Field Station. This locale is a much higher altitude and actually much more vegetated than the campus in Powell. Powell sits at the north end of the Bighorn Basin, a natural badlands desert made habitable and farmable by the damming of the Shoshone River (initiated by Buffalo Bill Cody.) At our current elevation (around 8000 feet), there is considerably more precipitation, creating lush meadows and forested mountain slopes. The view is phenomenal, with Heart Mountain only a few miles away and the vista of the entire Bighorn Basin laid out below us. I’ve taken many more pictures already, but with only the limited internet access provided by the public computers at the camp, I’ll have to wait to upload them. We’ll spend five days here, mapping the surrounding mountain range and move to Yellowstone, then Montana, then the Black Hills of South Dakota, all of which will be tent camping.

I should also mention that a group of us spent our free day bumming around the town of Cody, which is the eastern gateway to Yellowstone, the rodeo capital of the west, and of course, the home of the legendary Buffalo Bill. The cost of living here is very affordable, so I was able to get a delicious buffalo burger, salad, a great coffee, and very friendly service for lunch for around $7 at a local diner (Sunset Cafe.) I then spent way too much time in the Sierra Trading Post Outlet store but managed to pick up a few things that I had forgotten to pack. The rest of the day was split between the Buffalo Bill Historial Center (which I could and should have spent all day at) and dinner at the Irma Hotel (originally owned by the Cody family). The city of Cody is definitely a tourist town, but what it offers to tourists is not a fabricated novelty. It is rich with history, culture, and is in many ways the heart of the Cowboy West. (Mom and Dad, you guys would love this place.)

Quick Wyoming update

We’ve had very little time for anything other than work and sleep (I’m thankful for this second part) but I wanted to get a quick update on the blog. We’ve been spending this last week studying the geology around Powell and Cody (historic home of Buffalo Bill) as well as doing detailed mapping of the Elk Basin, which straddles the state line between Wyoming and Montana about 15 miles north of Powell. The last few days have been the most intense with mapping beginning at 8am. By 4pm, each of the 2-man teams will have hiked about 5 horizontal miles and covered about 6000 vertical feet. We get back to Powell at about 5pm and eat dinner in about 45 minutes. The rest of the night until about 11pm is lecture, homework in preparation for the next day in the field, or completion of that day’s project which is due by the end of the evening. In the week of work that we’ve done so far, I already completed more maps and geologic cross-sections than I did in both my Structure and Sed-Strat classes combined.

The great thing is that I’m having a blast doing it. This is one of the few science fields that actually requires its graduating students to go out and *do* the work, living in and on the rocks and mountains that we had previously only studied in textbooks. And the entire process is really about solving a mystery… piecing together the few bits of information that we have, making careful observations, and then figuring out things like how 1000 feet of solid rock was sheared off and lifted vertically the same distance. Yes, I do have Monster Quad-envy (everyone who lives out here has one too), but I think I’d rather have a horse for this kind of work. Or both… that would be good.

Oh… more pics have been uploaded to Flickr.

115 degrees and balmy

We spent the day out in the Badlands mapping some of the area that UofM owns for paleology research. It was a cool day for the Badlands at only 115 degrees in the sun (88 in the shade) and since the humidity is less than 20 percent, I enjoyed the day much more than a day in Michigan at 80 degrees and 90 percent humidity.

Due to it being a very dry year, there has been little in the way of wildlife that we’ve seen here around the Basin. No rattlesnakes or scorpions yet, though we’ve been warned that they are out there. (Important safety tip: Don’t put a hand our foot anywhere you can’t see!) We did, however see elk and antelope during our drive out, and we heard the coyotes barking when we camped in South Dakota.

Into the West

Four days ago, Marie dropped me off in Albion, MI where I joined up with twenty-nine other geology students and headed out west to a five week field camp in Wyoming. We spent the first night on the floor in several of Albion’s geology classrooms and hit the road at 8am on tuesday morning. After driving all day, we camped on a (the?) hill in western Iowa. After another day of driving and a short stop in the Badlands and the obligatory visit to Wall Drug, we camped in western South Dakota, narrowly avoiding spending the night under a nasty thunderstorm.
Yesterday, we spent most of the day driving through the Bighorn Mountains and into the Big Horn Basin. About mid-afternoon, we rolled into Powell, WY to Northwest College. We’ll be spending the next ten days here, in a dorm, with a bed, and showers… all luxuries that we will have not at all or only sporadically for the last half of the trip.

New photos have been posted to Flickr.

Constitutional marriage amendment

This thing has been bugging me for a while now and I see that the Pres is again in the news making statements of support for a constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman. First of all, I just can’t understand why people feel this needs to be part of the Constitution… essentially part of the definition of the nation of the United States. This isn’t to say that I think that marriage couldn’t or shouldn’t be legislated. Such laws are necessary to prevent things like marrying your nine-year-old daughter to a dog in order to ward off evil spirits. But most states already have laws governing marriages, which makes a constitutional amendment all the more pointless.

The thing that bothers me the most about it though, is that the language of the proposed amendment makes it clear that these rocks are aimed squarly at someone else’s glass house. It glaringly omits a clause about the irrevocable nature of a marriage… something that I and many others believe to be integral and necessary. It is interesting and disturbing that the authors, who claim to be supporting thousands of years of social and religious ethics, worded the amendment as to prevent it from having any impact on their own lifestyle. I wonder how many divorcees and second/third/forth-time-married are anxious supporters of this bill, which is really no more or less than anti-homosexual legislation.

War… energy… economy… education… Ooh! Look! A Red herring!

Superman at UofM

Wow. I was looking for the new Superman Returns trailer on Google video and stumbled across this comedy/performance art filmed by UofM students. UMPatriots I think it was probably funnier to me since I’ve spent many, many hours in the locations that they performed, but most people will probably get a kick out of it regardless.