The rocks cry out...
Faults crop up where land masses collide or rub or pull away from each other. In some areas you find a very obvious trending fault that follows a unidirectional path and has only small tangential faulting. Others are like huge fists punching into the surrounding terrain. The Uncompagrean Uplift is an example of this that is intriguing geologists the world over and it happens to sit very conveniently next to my house.
I spent the weekend counting rocks, making arduous hikes, and getting sunburned. I have never been more happy.
This whole trip was for the geology department of my school, so it wasn't like we just went out to get drunk around other geeks or something. The group on the trip was a truly fascinating and diverse crowd. Especially after a little Turkey fuel. On one of our hikes to maps river gravel deposits on the sandstone shelves, we happend to be the first white people to ever spot this arch.
It was a truly amazing weekend.
3 comments:
You have geology. Sitting under your feet is miles and miles of very boring gray rocks called "till". Either from the Wisconsin or Illinois glaciers depending on how far down you go. I heard suicide was the leading cause of death among Illinois geologists.
duh
Indeed the rocks do cry out. Or as Cat Faber puts ity in her literally awesome song "Word of God" ( http://echoschildren.org/CDlyrics/WORDGOD.HTML ):
The patient stone will teach you if you listen when it talks
The song also includes, in a verse celebrating astronomy, a line which chills me with its beauty:
The Truth has lefts its footprints in the dust between the stars
Galileo said that to suppress the Copernican theory, it would be necessary to forbid people to look up. Equally so, the truth that this planet is ancient of days can never be suppressed unless we are forbidden to look down.
Post a Comment