Continue reading »]]> Sometimes, science feels like you’ve been given a superpower, because you can see things not many other people can see:

I love being able to pick up an ordinary rock or a plain landscape, and reveal its epic history. I used to think science wasn’t creative. I was so very, very wrong. Science is story, and scientists are storytellers. True stories, far stranger than fiction. I wish I’d know all those years ago. I would have devoted my life to telling those stories long ago, if I’d known how enthralling they were.

Continue reading »]]> At last, my darlings, I have finished! Our trees are fully cooked, piping-hot out of the oven and waiting for you to savor. Yum!

While you’re here, a couple of outtakes (i.e., photos I didn’t have enough room for):

Aerial view of seared zone south of Camp Baker after May 18 eruption of Mount St. Helens. Cowlitz County, Washington. May 22, 1980. Image courtesy USGS.

I didn’t use this one in the main post, because it’s not as obvious, but if you look closely within the scorched zone, you’ll notice how abrupt the transition from burnt to unburnt is. The hot cloud just went woosh up into the air, and while one tree perished, its neighbor was spared. Pretty wild stuff.

Speaking of wild, this was a common scene round my childhood city:

Panorama of the Schultz Fire, Flagstaff, AZ. Image courtesy Calvin Johnson, Leupp, Arizona and Coconino National Forest.

No, the San Francisco Peaks weren’t erupting. Nor was any other volcano. Some stupid bugger didn’t know how to handle a campfire in dry country, and next thing you know, half the mountain’s on fire. It burned Schultz Peak all the way up. My darlings, when Smokey the Bear tells you to be careful with fire in the forest, please be fucking careful with fire in the forest, m’kay?

Thank you. Now, get thee to the baked trees, and let me know how they turned out.

Continue reading »]]> Y’all have heard about what happened to Moore, Oklahoma, right? You already know an atheist gave Wolf Blitzer the what-for? And there was the good news about the lady and her dog? Coolio. So I don’t have to pitch why you might want to throw some spare change their way.

Lots of atheist orgs are helping out:

Atheists Giving Aid

Foundation Beyond Belief

Humanists of Florida

Oklahoma Atheists (note “Rebecca Vitsum”)

I’m sure I’ve missed some – let me know your favorites if I have.

Also, Donors Choose is starting a fund for the teachers who will have to put their classrooms back together from scratch – you can donate to that fund here.

Thanks for lending a hand, my darlings!

Continue reading »]]> Let’s go back to basics for a bit. I’ve had a challenge thrown in my teeth. Southern Geologist didn’t intend it as a challenge, I’m sure, when he* said, “The big picture/history drags people in much more easily than discussing rock types.” But I’m a contrary sort of person. And something went ping. I see no reason why we can’t have our rock cake** and eat it, too. Besides, understanding the basic rock types is essential for geology. Most of you probably know them already, but what if a physicist or a biologist or one of those other hammer-deprived science types stumbles in here? We don’t want them going, “Ig-meta-whowha?” and running away, now, do we?

Besides, I have purty pictures and a snarky sense of humor. That will hopefully be enough to entertain those of you who can recite the three basic rock types in your sleep.

Let us begin in fire, because that is the way the world began***.

Igneous

Basalt cobble from the Toutle River, just downstream from Mount St. Helens, Washington.

Igneous comes from Latin, and means “of fire.” An igneous rock is a fire rock. See how easy geology terms are?

If the rock started out melted, it’s probably igneous. Just like this beautiful basalt from near Mount St. Helens, which might either belong to her or another volcanic event in the area. It’s hard to tell, exactly, because this rock’s been river rafting, and I haven’t got the facilities in this apartment to delve into its chemical composition in order to determine its precise origin. We know it’s igneous, and it’s from near Mount St. Helens. That’s all that matters for the moment.

Ash from the 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption.

Igneous rocks come in more than just your basic basalt flavor. There’s a huge variety of magmas, and depending on how and where they cool, you can end up with anything from black to pink or white, fine-grained to chock full of glittering crystals. There’s underground (intrusive or plutonic) varieties, and above-ground, extrusive (lava) types. Sometimes it’s calm and erupts in lovely streams. Sometimes, it blows a mountain apart.

The ash to the left is pulverized rock from Mount St. Helens. It’s a pyroclastic material: “fire-broken.” You can see how the finer stuff sailed along a fair distance before falling out of the sky, while the coarser fragments landed sooner. The ash layers from Mount St. Helens’ various eruptions make excellent dating tools, used by geologists, archaeologists, and other -ists in the area. Jewelers make lovely gemstones from it.

Mount St. Helens has erupted all sorts of stuff: basalt, andesite, dacite. So when you hold different hand samples from her, you’re holding a diverse eruptive history. She’s one of the feistier of our Pacific Northwest volcanoes, and we’ll be getting to know her quite well soon. I’m doing you up a series for her 32nd anniversary. For now, we’ll just use her as our first example as to why hand samples are a gateway to some fairly dramatic landscapes, and as a poster volcano for our igneous rocks.

Mount St. Helens, photographed from Elk Rock Viewpoint. Castle Lake, born in the eruption when debris dammed Castle Creek, is on the right. The Toutle River flows through the valley. In the foreground, you can glimpse Elk Rock: this was stripped bare in the eruption, and campers on it killed. Volcanoes are beautiful, dramatic, and dangerous.

I should reiterate the point that not all igneous rocks come from big strapping stratovolcanoes. Volcanoes exist in bewildering variety, some of which you wouldn’t consider a volcano at all, not in the sense of a pointy mountain with fire coming out of it. And a rock doesn’t have to erupt to be igneous. All it needs is a history as magma. If it decides to chill out underground instead of bursting out all over the surface, it still counts.

Igneous rocks are everywhere, forming massive portions of our continents and our ocean floors. They make up some of our most dramatic landscapes. And they’re the only rocks outside of meteorites that are likely to get your attention with a bang. Pretty hot stuff, amirite?

Ridges within the blast zone at Mount St. Helens, looking east from Johnston Ridge toward Mount Adams, St. Helens’s less-famous brother. These ridges used to be heavily forested. You can still see downed trees, knocked about like so many chopsticks. The land is slowly recovering, and biology will soon cloak these slopes, but for now we get some lovely unobstructed geology. Johnston Ridge was named for USGS geologist David A. Johnston, who died in the lateral blast. Raise a glass for him next time you’re out.

We’ll be on about sediments next. In the meantime, if you want to explore the wonders of igneous rocks in a bit more detail, I commend you into Andrew Alden’s capable hands.

* Southern Geologist describes him/herself as a “fellow,” anyway.

** Rock cake is an actual thing in Britain.

*** Elements forged in the Big Bang and the hearts of stars, people. That’s firey.

Previously published at Scientific American/Rosetta Stones.

Continue reading »]]> Where were we before the craziness that was this weekend happened? Oh. Right. Oregon!

Forgot to mention our stop by the Prehistoric Gardens on Day the Seconde, didn’t I? Allow me to rectify that with this nifty picture of a T-Rex, me, and a Stellar’s Jay.

Moi at Prehistoric Gardens. Image credit Lockwood DeWitt.

We didn’t have time to go fool around inside, but we got a brochure for Evelyn, because we’re going to drag her there when she visits. Absolutely!

At the beginning of Day the Thirde, we dipped into California for a very brief time. I haven’t got any pictures of the knockers there, but I will have someday, because sea stacks stranded inland? Hells to the yes! They look awesome.

We were, however, burning to get to the Josephine Ophiolite, and we zipped along the Smith River, and suddenly…

Moi avec sheeted dikes. Image credit Lockwood DeWitt.

Wow.

All those rocks are sheeted dikes. It’s the first time I’ve stood on same whilst knowing what I was looking at, and now I’d swear I’ve seen some in the North Cascades, and I’m burning for the snow to melt and the parks to open so I can hunt them down again. These are polished to a lovely pearly gray sheen by the river. If you click the linky, you’ll see how they form. I’m standing on what used to be a rift. Yowsa!

Moi at greatest serpentinite outcrop I’ve ever seen. Image credit Lockwood DeWitt.

Further up Highway 199, you can turn off on a little gravel road by Patrick Creek and stop by this roadcut just off the highway and ZOMG. The serpentinite in this cut is outstanding. Above, you see me on a mission, getting ready to attack with hammer and camera.

Crop of Moi at greatest serpentinite outcrop I’ve ever seen. Image credit Lockwood DeWitt.

If you’ve ever wondered what field work for all these geology posts looks like, that’s it. Also, I now have ten tons of serpentinite, and if you want some, all you have to do is ask nicely and it shall be yours. Eventually. When I make it to the post office. As RQ just how often that is – I still haven’t sent her the prints I promised! But it will probably be there before you die of old age. Possibly.

Moi staring at another outcrop. Image credit Lockwood DeWitt.

This is an outcrop just up the highway from Patrick Creek. I can’t remember a damned thing about it. I *think* this is when  we were encountering the Galice Formation, and this weird-looking stuff is all the crushed and altered rock in a fault. I sorta-kinda remember discussing it. I really need to remember to scribble down a few notes at stops – my memory isn’t always triggered by images, although words will do it. And I somehow have to remember that my memory’s been about as good as that of a geriatric goldfish in oxygen-poor water, but I keep forgetting.

Where was I? Oh, right. Galice Formation. It’s ocean floor sediment stuff, slightly metamorphosed. Which means things like slate.

Moi collecting slate at a Galice Formation outcrop. Image credit Lockwood DeWitt.

Some of this slate had a bizarre rainbow sheen like an oil slick – Lockwood thinks it might have been caused by metals being deposited by water. I’ll show you more of it when we dig into the details of these stops.

Thus ended Day the Thirde – and that was the day we got to a hotel at a reasonable hour, and had time to mess around before dinner. This. Never. Happens. And yet, we’d seen a ton of interesting stuff, talked to interesting people (the rangers at the Gasquet Ranger Station Visitor Center are outstanding people, and they know their geology, and they have a guide to the Josephine Ophiolite available for free!), and collected a variety of wonderful rocks. I don’t know if that will ever happen to us again, but it was veryvery nice.

And now, to the caves! Bat caves, even, although we didn’t see any bats…

Continue reading »]]> I know I’ve been kind of (ha) erratic over the past few weeks. There was the trip to the Josephine, and when I got home, I was too damned restless to stay in one place. I haven’t been able to stay confined in the house long enough to get anything useful done. Let me esplain, or at least sum up, and apologize with some pretty pictures. There’s even a zombie.

I headed up Highway 2 into the Cascades the Saturday afternoon following my return. I ended up past Gold Bar, and saw lovely snowy peaks.

Some very lovely Cascade peaks with just a touch of snow and sun upon them.

And did a desultory bit of rock hammering.

A fresh surface!

If you look to the left of the grip, you’ll see the fresh chip. This whole wall looks like featureless gray stone. Could be limestone, could be basalt, could be anything – until you whack a chip out of it and find out it’s some sort of granitic thingy. I’m pretty sure it’s Mount Stuart Batholith, probably grandiorite. This, folks, is why you absolutely must see a fresh surface.

On the way back, I saw one of the most spectacular waterfalls ever.

Incredible waterfall.

Look at the size of the thing!

Closeup of incredible waterfall.

I mean day-amn. I’ll bet someone knows what its name is, but I have no idea. I just stayed on the side of the highway for ages staring at it, and taking a few photos, and some video, and making awed noises. Then I went home. Where I promptly did nothing at all useful.

On Sunday, still restless, I headed north to Mount Vernon. Then I decided what the hell and zipped over to Anacortes. Then Rosario Beach, all by memory. Didn’t stay to take photos because the clouds were heavy, the light wasn’t good, and I have twelve billion photos already. But it was lovely. Then I went home and continued doing nothing useful.

Monday, I discovered what I expected to, that we’d shuffled our floor support around and I’d lost my slot. No big, but it meant I couldn’t stay even for a half day. Still under orders not to type. I had to get paperwork modified for that, which chewed up a good part of the day, and then I went over to Juanita Bay. The wind was blowing hard that day, churning Lake Washington into whitecaps.

Whitecaps on Lake Washington.

I’ve never seen waves crash into the shore like this there.

This qualifies as a massive wave at Juanita.

The park itself has so many trees that all I felt was the occasional stiff gust. Still, there were bits of trees falling everywhere. But then you’d reach these islands of calm, where you could macro a flower without trouble, and the stormlight was wonderful.

Lovely flower onna tree.

And there weren’t many turtles out, as there wasn’t much sun, but the inner bits of the bay were calm enough for a few determined ones to hang about with yellow iris as their backdrop.

Turtles and iris.

So that was very nice.

Tuesday, I got really ambitious. I can’t type, but I can drive, and I can hoof it up trails, so, why not scope out Wallace Falls as a potential place to take readers this summer? Well, I’ll tell you why not: I’m not in bad shape after all this recent gallivanting around, and the climb up nearly killed me. Granted, it was gorgeous, but there was a point along the trail where I was sitting on a tree stump with my heart beating at about nine thousand bpm, and gasping like an asthmatic fish on a dock on a hot day, and I thought I was going to pass out and roll down the hill to my death. I’d even dreamt it happening, I swear, a few months ago. So there I was, hyperventilating and having tachycardia and sweating like a very sweaty person and having the most horrifying episode of deja vu ever, and I hadn’t even made it to the Middle Falls! But I did it. I pushed on to the bitter middle, waded through the folks with power tools who were busy repairing bits of the overlook, and feasted my eyes upon the vista that was my reward for near-death.

Middle Falls of Wallace Falls. Wowsa.

Then I looked at the sign pointing toward the Upper Falls. “Difficulty: Hard,” it said. The trail that had just nearly claimed my life had been termed “moderate.” “Oh, fuck no,” I said. “Sod this for a game of larks. The Upper Falls can fall without my ass, because my ass is going back downhill.” Which it promptly did. I wobbled the two-plus miles back to the car, and drove home, and inhaled food and liquid, and wished bitterly that I had not done something this foolish on a day when I had physical therapy…

But it was worth it. I have tons of wonderful photos which I can use to tell you stories about the Wallace River sometime soon, and you’ll love them, especially since I’m not forcing you to hoof it up there yourownself.

Wednesday is a blur. I don’t really know what I did on Wednesday. I remember being very shocked that I wasn’t in incredible amounts of pain. I even felt good enough to go down and have my hair hacked off. I made plans with B to go to Icicle Gorge. And did stuff. I think hypoxia from Wallace Falls affected my memory, or else I was being incredibly boring, because the rest of it is lost in a haze.

Thursday, however, I remember with utmost clarity, because it was Zombie Day. Some of my coworkers were making a little video for the company, promoting one of our corporate culture thingies, and it involved zombies, and managers in camouflage. Seriously. D was running around all kitted up in tactical gear, and someone ran to a supervisor going, “There’s this dude in camo in the call center – what should we do?” Apparently, the blue pom-pom on his shoulder and the little sparkly-glitter hand-clapper dealies in the holsters hadn’t registered, even though one of them was bright purple.

My dear friend Captain TMI, otherwise known as Ken, was one of the zombies. A local theatrical make-up specialist had donated her time (no, the corporation wasn’t paying for this, they’re skinflint barstards they are), and what she did to Ken…. This is a goofy ginger dude, and she turned him into a bloody work of art.

Zombie Ken in the making.

I never knew he had such excellent cheekbones. Seriously. And I never knew he could manage sort of dramatic, somber poses. He wasn’t even trying, which is probably why it happened.

Zombie Ken being completed by Starspider.

I love that shot – there’s actual pathos, although really all that was going on was Starspider slathering white makeup on the rest of his exposed bits.There was a whole zombie assembly line going.

And then I got to watch from the window while they milled about outside by the entrance, waiting for their scene. At one point, two employees were entering, and the whole herd of zombies chased them spontaneously, and it was hysterical. And Ken still looked great.

Zombie Ken ready for hot braaaiiinnnnssss.

Although at some point the sun came out, and he had to shield his eyes with his arm, thus earning the nickname “Zombie Ballerina.”

Anyway, huge fun times, and I’ll see if I can get permission from the others to post their zombie mugs when I get back to work. You’ll love them. One of the women looked like Robert Smith from the Cure, and one of the guys looked like Grumpy Cat. No lie.

The next day, B and I headed across the Cascades for Icicle Gorge. The weather dude said it was supposed to be 72 and partly cloudy with a 10% chance of rain. The weather dude lied. It rained pretty much all damned day. But still, spectacular, especially the Wenatchee River. It was so full of water it was bucking and bellowing and basically the watercourse equivalent of that bull that’s killed everyone who’s ever tried to ride it.

Wenatchee River wailing on a boulder.

We paused in Leavenworth to consider our options. Leavenworth is… interesting. It’s Bavarian themed, even the McDonald’s. We were laughing our asses off, but promptly determined that we must stay overnight there someday. Not only is it a theme town, it’s in the middle of some enormously excellent geology. Which we were getting rained out of. But it slacked off enough that we decided to risk it, and made it to Icicle Gorge, and saw some of the good bits, although we didn’t risk the entire 4-mile loop.

Icicle Gorge.

Oh, schist, people! I’m totally coming back there when the water’s low in late summer. Amazing. I’ve got lots of photos to show you, and you will love them.

It was still early, and we were only half an hour away from Peshastin Pinnacles, so we said oh what the hell and went. You will also love them.

Peshastin Pinnacles.

And it was beautiful, and even sunny, and we were gallivanting around like kids, until the clouds rolled in and began pouring rain upon us. The scramble for the car took some time on those narrow switchback trails, and by the time we arrived, we were both dripping like shaggy dogs newly emerged from a river. Fortunately, we’d brought changes of clothes and towels in case of falling into creeks, so we were all right.

We stopped by my favorite bend in the Skykomish River on the way home, where B had his first experience with a rock hammer. He broke a fresh surface on some grandiorite like a pro. Neither of us could make an impression on the metamorphic rocks, though – not with my dainty little hammer.

B getting some hot rock hammer action going.

I’ll have to get a sledge. Still. Lovely. I loved taking him places he’d never seen, where the scenery knocked his breath out, and showing him those places through geologists’ eyes.

And then we went home, and ate fajitas, and watched Doctor Who, and I think my life was utterly perfect that day.

After two weeks of nearly non-stop adventuring, I’m spent. I’ve spent the weekend telling myself I should Get Important Shit Done, and chastising myself for Reader Neglect, but unable to function. But that’s fine. It was worth it. Hopefully, all of these photos have made it completely worth it for you as well, my darlings.

Continue reading »]]> A probe sweeps through space. Roughly 4.2 million kilometers (2.6 million miles) away, you sit and watch images of another world appear. You notice a mottled surface, and on its horizon, jetting an incredible 260km (162mi) above its surface, a plume.

This photo was taken by Voyager 1 looking back 2.6 million miles (4.5 million km) at Io, three days after its historic encounter. This is the same image in which Linda A. Morabito, a Jet Propulsion Laboratory engineer, discovered the first extraterrestrial volcanic eruption (the bright curved volcanic cloud on the limb). Image courtesy NASA/JPL.

This is the first volcano ever seen erupting outside your planet.

This is a world where volcanic plumes are sulfur dioxide snow, and are so large they can be seen from Earth orbit by the Hubble Space Telescope, and from Earth-based telescopes as outbursts of infrared. Tectonics are driven by tides rather than internal heat; volcanoes vent ultramafic lavas hotter than anything seen on Earth in billions of years. 425 volcanic centers, 70 of them currently active, rework the surface at a remarkable rate of 1 centimeter (over a third of an inch) per year. This world is 25 times as volcanically active as Earth, bumping us to second place for geologic activity, but is barely larger than our own Moon. It’s the only other planet in the solar system we know of that has active volcanoes. It claims the prize for longest lava flows. And if folks before the 20th century had known that, they might have named it Vulcan. Galileo called it Medician Planet I, then Jupiter I when he realized it was a moon. Scientists in the 19th century named it Io.

This global view of Jupiter’s moon, Io, was obtained during the tenth orbit of Jupiter by NASA’s Galileo spacecraft on 19 September 1997 at a range of more than 500,000 km (310,000 miles). Io (which is slightly larger than Earth’s moon) is the most volcanically active body in the solar system. Image courtesy NASA/JPL/University of Arizona.

Isn’t she a beauty?

She was a bit of a surprise, but even before Voyager snapped that famous image of the first volcano caught erupting outside Earth, scientists suspected they’d find active volcanoes there. Io, you see, is caught between Jupiter’s enormous bulk and two other substantial moons, Europa and Ganymede. We’ve got tides up to 18 meters (60 feet) high, caused by the tug of our one moon: Io’s tides are more than 100 meters (328 feet) high – and mind you, that’s 100 meters of rock. It takes a tremendous amount of force to move that much solid stuff, and the solid stuff heats up to remarkable temperatures. It’s how a world far tinier than ours can sustain eruptions Earth hasn’t been hot enough to experience in billions of years.

This beautiful image of the crescents of volcanic Io and more sedate Europa was snapped by New Horizons’ color Multispectral Visual Imaging Camera (MVIC) at 10:34 UT on March 2, 2007, about two days after New Horizons made its closest approach to Jupiter. Image courtesy NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute.

This is a world that’s undeniably alien, and yet eerily familiar. Visit Hawaii’s volcanoes, and you can get a sense of what’s going on with Io. Yes, her explosive eruptions are driven more by sulfur dioxide than water and carbon dioxide like ours are, and her lavas average a scorching 1,600°C (2,900°F) compared to our chillier lavas (1200-1300°C/2200-2400°F). Yes, outside of the searing-hot areas of active volcanism, the surface is a frigid -150°C (-300°F). And, of course, things go higher in that thin atmosphere and low gravity – Old Faithful, for instance, would jet a whopping 37 kilometers (23 miles) high there. But outside of all that, the volcanoes aren’t so different. They erupt lavas composed of chemicals we’re familiar with here: sulfur dioxide, silicon, oxygen, iron, magnesium, potassium, sodium, calcium. They erupt in patterns that are quite familiar.

For instance, we can watch a curtain of fire emerge from a fissure at Tvashtar Catena:

An active fissure eruption at TvashtarCatena, a chain of giant calderas, was recorded by the Galileo Orbiter on November 25, 1999. The eruption has generated a “curtain of fire” that is more than 30 km long and 1.5 km high. Lava flows emanate from the fissure source. Image courtesy NASA/How Volcanoes Work.

We can see lava tubes, complete with skylights:

The summit caldera of Culann Patera appears to be the source of a lava tube that feeds the large, dark green flow to the west. The axis of the western part of the flow is marked by what appears to skylights lying above the tube’s continuation. These features are typical of basalt lavas found on Earth. Image courtesy NASA.

We can see calderas, some complete with lava lakes:

An active volcanic eruption on Jupiter’s moon Io was captured in this image taken by NASA’s Galileo spacecraft. Tvashtar Catena, a chain of giant volcanic calderas centered at 60 degrees north, 120 degrees west, was the location of an energetic eruption caught in action in November 1999. A dark, “L”-shaped lava flow to the left of the center in this more recent image marks the location of the November eruption. White and orange areas on the left side of the picture show newly erupted hot lava, seen in this false color image because of infrared emission. The two small bright spots are sites where molten rock is exposed to the surface at the toes of lava flows. The larger orange and yellow ribbon is a cooling lava flow that is more than more than 60 kilometers (37 miles) long. Dark, diffuse deposits surrounding the active lava flows were not there during the November 1999 flyby of Io. Image courtesy NASA Planetary Photojournal.

We’ve mapped lava fields, volcanic domes, pyroclastic deposits, mountains and plains – oh, and did I mention, we’ve done a geologic map of the place? That’s right. A whole geologic map of a whole other world, created by the USGS.

Geologic Map of Io, produced by the USGS and Arizona State University, incorporating information collected by Voyager and Galileo. Four distinct image products were created by the USGS and were used in this mapping project: (1) a global mosaic of SSI color images; (2) a global mosaic of the best resolution Galileo SSI monochrome images; (3) a global mosaic of the best quality and highest resolution Voyager Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS) and Galileo SSI monochrome images; and (4) a merged product combining Galileo color information with the higher resolution combined monochrome mosaic. Image courtesy USGS.

That map showed us another fascinating fact about Io: there aren’t any impact craters on it. Every other body in the solar system has got one, but Io doesn’t. Its volcanoes busily erase every single one. Amazing, am I right?

There’s more to be said about this beautiful, brilliant moon. Far more. And I will say it someday, after I’ve had a chance to read up a bit further (and after we’ve finished with Mount St. Helens, which we have not – not by a long shot). Consider this a mere introduction, and a promise, and a reminder that geology happens in far more places than we typically consider. The Earth sciences can be quite unearthly.

Not to mention, heartbreakingly beautiful.

In this image by Voyager we see Jupiter’s moon Io with active volcanoes. Image courtesy NASA/JPL.

References:

ASU News: “Geologic map of Jupiter’s moon Io details an otherworldly volcanic surface.” Last accessed 9/7/2012.

How Volcanoes Work: “Volcanism on Io.” Last accessed 9/7/2012.

NASA Science: “Io’s Alien Volcanoes.” Last accessed 9/7/2012.

NASA Solar System Exploration: “Volcanism on Io.” Last accessed 9/7/2012.

USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory: “An Eye on Io’s Volcanism.” Last accessed 9/7/2012.

USGS: “Geologic Map of Io.” Last accessed 9/7/2012.

Continue reading »]]> When you see the number of photos here, and reflect upon the fact they only represent a fragment of the things we saw and did, you’ll not believe me when I say this was the most laid-back geotrip Lockwood and I have ever taken. Nevertheless, it was. We were kicking back in the hotel rooms at a decent hour, we never arrived in a town ten minutes after all of the restaurants closed, and we weren’t even sore at the end of it. I’d say that doesn’t qualify as a real geotrip, but the number of rocks now weighing down my kitchen counter state otherwise.

I’ve begun research, and shall soon be regaling you with in-depth tales of The Things We Saw. But we’ll start with the outtakes, first. Observe your intrepid blogger observing geology (plus some other things).

1. Tsunami Memorial

Portion of Japanese Dock now on display at Hatfield Marine Science Center. Image credit Lockwood DeWitt.

On Day One, we zipped over to Newport for a bit and headed over to see the tsunami exhibit. This is pretty much it: a chunk of the dock that washed up on Agate Beach, and a sign. Also, it says you’re a fourteen-minute walk to high ground from there. Also, we don’t quite know why they built a state-of-the-art facility in a tsunami hazard zone when it seems it could have easily been sited on high ground. Sigh.

The exhibit isn’t much yet, but you can step inside the dock. As much as the thing weighed, it was mostly hollow – I think Lockwood said it had been filled with something like Styrofoam.

Moi inside tsunami dock. Image credit Lockwood DeWitt.

2. Darlingtonia Wayside

Self-portrait with darlingtonia bloom.

No, I’m not very badly sunburned. I’m on my knees, practically upside-down, holding my breath whilst straining to hold the camera several feet from me pointed at the darlingtonia flower. I suffer for my art, people. Do you see what I put myself through in order to get you excellent shots without destroying precious natural areas?

Actually, it mostly wasn’t that hard.

Moi photographing darlingtonia in a more comfortable position. Image credit Lockwood DeWitt.

Granted, my knees are getting old, and my hair weighed roughly ten thousand pounds (it’s since been hacked off), and it was cold and damp and oh noes somebody call the waaahmbulance!

(Those of you mourning my fallen hair can join me at the boo-hoospital. It’s not that short. And it’ll grow back. This shit’s like kudzu.)

3. Beach rocks at Gold Beach.

Moi with maclargehuge busted-up rock on beach. Image courtesy Lockwood DeWitt.

So this is a neat one. If it was in the ocean, it’d be a seastack. And one side looks perfectly solid, then you come round to the other and see this big gash filled with wedged-in blocks. They were stable enough for me to pose with them, but I wouldn’t stand there for any length of time. Certainly wouldn’t want to be there if even a minor earthquake happened nearby.

You can ask me what it’s made of. Go ahead. Ask. And I’ll look at you somberly, and say, “Fuck if I remember.” But it was awesome.

I said big blocks, right? Image credit Lockwood DeWitt.

By the way, I’m officially 5’6″ without my shoes. So yeah. Mighty big blocks o’ rock. Whatever that rock was.

More soon. For now, the trails are calling my name, and then I really have to get the rocks off the counter so I can stop eating out…