Prelude to a Catastrophe: Silver Lake

Let's have a road trip, shall we? Yes, I do know we were in the middle of Oregon, getting ready to shove our noses against some particularly delicious road cuts, but this is a virtual car - we can skip states in the blink of an eye.

So hop in. We're on our way to Mount St. Helens today. The skies are very nearly clear - by Washington state standards, anyway. Warm sun mingles with a cool breeze that snickers about autumn's imminent arrival. You've got your nose plastered to the car window as we drive up Spirit Lake Memorial Highway from Castle Rock. All you're seeing at this point are low hills and a flat bit of valley, plastered with green stuff. Biology is a perennial problem for geologists round here. You can barely see the hills for the trees. And you can't even tell we're driving along the shore of a lake. But here it is: visible in satellite views, anyway.



View Larger Map

We turn off at the Mount St. Helens Visitor's Center. Lovely building, quite a lot of nice displays, and a nice nature trail along Silver Lake.

And you're just burning for your first glimpse of Mount St. Helens her own self, but the clouds aren't cooperating. That's quite all right, because I want you to focus on the lake for a bit. Maybe it'll help if I tell you Mount St. Helens created it.

Cryptozoology and Cute Fuzzy Critters

No, this isn't about the cat. This time. Although she's pretty crypto - I never can figure out why she goes from cuddly to homicidal with no warning, and she is cute and fuzzy. Even when she is trying to tear you limb-from-limb.

We stopped at the North Fork Survivors Gift Shop at the Buried A-Frame on our way to Mount St. Helens. This is practically a requirement. First off, A-frame house buried by a lahar - tell me that doesn't attract every geologist on the planet. Secondly, Bigfoot statues.

And, this being the Pacific Northwest, Bigfoot's gotta have an espresso.

Dragonfly in Action

I meant to post something really nice and substantial tonight, but my darling Aunty Flow is being wretchedly evil this month. We'll have to make do with a dragonfly instead. But whatta dragonfly! I shot this at Silver Lake, where a lovely visitor's center and a nice walk on a nature trail built along and on the lake make for a good introduction to Mount St. Helens.

Dragonflies swooped round us, too active to easily photograph, but I got a fantastic action shot of one of the little buggers.

This is why I love my camera: that little dragonfly was several feet away in a riot of vegetation, and it still managed to capture him. Check out the crop:

Not bad for a little point-and-shoot, eh?

I love this shot, because it shows the weird contortions of a dragonfly's body as it gets ready to launch. They're such interesting little critters. Someday, I plan to park myself along Silver Lake for an hour or two and catch more of these guys - in addition to the blues, there were some delicious reds I didn't get a chance to shoot, although Steamforged got a few and might be kind enough to put them up for us soon.

My Volcano Phobia is Officially Pining for the Fjords

We would have ended the summer adventuring season with a bang if Mount St. Helens had been so kind as to erupt.

I used to have a bit of a volcano phobia. I'd have nightmares of majestic mountains suddenly exploding, threatening me with pyroclastic flows and hot red lava. I remember those dreams: tense, terrified sequences that sometimes began with the first jets of steam and ash from an unexpected eruption, sometimes picking up in mid-drama as I tried to gather cat and loved ones and flee. There was a dream where I lived in my childhood home again: the Peaks were putting on a spectacular show outside the sliding glass doors, lava bombs and ash falling all round, hot bits of volcanic ejecta setting off massive forest fires. Lava flows once chased me all the way from Flagstaff to Phoenix, melting the car's tires and cutting off escape routes. I'd wake up exhausted, heart pounding, eyeballing the nearest mountain for the slightest sign of unrest. I'd run through evacuation plans in my mind and check the news (at the time, rumor had it the ground around Flagstaff was rising by an inch a year, and I believed there was a magma chamber filling up below the mountains). I'd watch teevee shows about eruptions and consider that the oldest volcanics nearby were less than 1,000 years old. The volcanoes were sleeping, not dead, and I was ready: if they so much as twitched, I'd be outta there like a shot.

I never ever in my entire life wanted to see a volcano erupt live. Not even the tame little Hawaiian ones. Nossir. I'd take my eruptions on teevee from a safe distance of several hundred miles, thanks ever so much.

So what did I do? Moved to a subduction zone, where things regularly go boom. My stepmother laughed at me. But as I told her, they monitor these things intensively, and the moment one of them woke, I'd be on her doorstep with cat and suitcase in hand.

I never would have gone to Mount Saint Helens the first time if I'd known she was, actually, erupting. And I would have fled if I'd realized the pretty wisps of steam emerging from the dome weren't merely residual heat, but active dome-building. The parking lot was filled with scorch marks from hot rocks falling from the sky. And I was damned glad we'd brought the fast car - if it looked to be an eruption, we'd be so outta there.

And we got home after a hell of an experience, and I looked some things up, and realized I'd stared into the heart of an erupting volcano, one that had violent tendencies, and nothing bad had happened.

Still, I'd run, wouldn't I? If I saw her start to blow, I'd surely scream and run away.

Then I started studying geology.

And then I went back.

And found myself disappointed St. Helens is sleeping.

The scorch marks in the parking lot are faded now. The dome isn't steaming. The seismometers on her slopes are quiet. And I wished she'd wake up. I wished she was busy dome-building again. I wished I could stand on the viewing platform at Johnston Ridge and watch her put on a show. Not a big one, mind, but just a little something for the kids. Cujo and Steamforged had never seen her in person before. I had the new camera. C'mon, girl, just a little plume for your old buddy Dana. I wrote you a get-well card when you blew apart in '80, remember?

No such luck. But it doesn't matter if she's erupting or not - she's still spectacular. The blast zone is still a virtual moonscape, despite all the wildflowers and alders. You just don't get to see bald slopes and deep, wild erosion in western Washington. There's nothing like a VEI-5 eruption to clear away all that pesky biology.

We took the long climb from the parking lot to Johnston Ridge Observatory. At first, the ridge hides the mountain. She peeks at you, gradually comes into view, and you almost don't notice because you're goggling at the downed trees and nearly-naked slopes of the blast zone.

Note the biology starting to get all uppity. I think we need another VEI-5 to teach it a lesson. Yes, it's pretty; yes, that's how western Washington's supposed to be, but damn it, it's beginning to block the geology views.

And yes, that's a bit of the crater rim rising above the bushes. Stick with me. A few more feet of climbing, and you'll see views.

"Adorers of the Good Science of Rock-breaking"

"Make them like me adorers of the good science of rock-breaking," Charles Darwin told Charles Lyell once, long ago. This, from a man who also once said of Robert Jameson's lectures on geology and zoology, "The sole effect they produced on me was the determination never as long as I lived to read a book on Geology." That, of course, was before Adam Sedgwick lectured him in geology and took him out for field work, which seems to have done the trick. He did read another book on geology, Lyell's Principles of Geology, which became his constant companion on his voyage with the Beagle. The concepts of geology prepared him to think in deep time. Without his passion for geology, without deep time sinking deep in his mind, the theory of evolution that changed the world might not be Darwin's.

Outcrop on Doherty Ridge. Photo by Cujo.

I have become, like Darwin, an adorer of the good science of rock-breaking.

It's a love that bloomed late. It's always been there, since I was little and wondered at the mountains rising in my back window; at the vast chasm in the ground that revealed billions of years; at the sea that had become fields of stone. But just a bud, tucked away, unopened. I thought I knew what I wanted and needed from life: a degree in some sort of writerly discipline, like English or maybe History, until I decided the additional debt I'd have to take on wouldn't teach me any more than I could teach myself, and I left academia for the world of daytime wage-slavery and nighttime scribbling. I set geology aside, because what a fantasy writer needed couldn't be found in earth and stone. So I thought. I searched the stars, delved into physics, waved fondly to geology on my way to geography. I knew the basics: plates moved, mountains rose where they crashed. Enough to determine the shape of an imaginary world, wasn't that?

No.

And there was the small matter of a subduction zone, now: I'd moved away from the fossil seas. I didn't understand this terrible and beautiful new place. It wasn't a landscape I'd grown up with. So I explored it a bit, and the more I explored, the more I needed to understand, the more I realized a story world should be so much more than an ocean with a few haphazard continents sketched in. I wanted to understand this world so that I could understand that. So I delved, deep, into deep time, into continental crust and ocean floor. I turned to books on geology. They weren't enough. I found a few geobloggers. They were more, still not enough. I began writing geology in order to understand it, because there's no better way to learn than by teaching someone else. And it still wasn't enough.

The more I learned, the more I realized I didn't know.

And that isn't precisely the problem. If it was, I could decide that knowing a little more than most is quite enough to be going on with, and settle down, content with my little gems of knowledge. If I'd just stayed a bit more ignorant, it would have been okay.

There's a metaphor that explains why those few shining gems, no matter how many more I acquire, will never be enough. It's in the story I'm writing right now, in which Nahash, the Serpent of the Elder Tree, is tasked with giving knowledge and wisdom to a young girl. And this is what he does, the first time they meet:

He led her round the tree, to the spring that bubbled out from between the roots, clear and deep. Another branch hung low there, and there was fruit on it, so heavy and ripe it was ready to fall. He plucked one of the fruits and turned back to her. "This fruit is knowledge. Do you see? It's probably sweet. Could be sour. You won't know until you've tasted it." He held it out. She reached for it, but he pulled it back. "There's something else. Once you've tasted it, no matter whether it's sour or sweet, you'll always be hungry. You'll starve. And that water, there-" He waved at the spring. "Sweetest water in the world, maybe the whole universe, but once you've had a drink from it you'll always be thirsty. Starving and parched. Is that how you want to spend your life? There are other ways of living, you know, and some of them are no less worthy. Some of them are even fun. Or so I've heard."

She held out her hand, but didn't speak.

"Are you quite sure? Because there's no going back, you know. Not ever."

Should I ever become a famous speculative fiction author, people will accuse me of being autobiographical. And, aside from the fact that I was an adult when I ate that fruit and drank that spring water, and didn't actually munch unidentified fruit and drink from the spring of an actual World Tree Serpent, they'll be quite correct. This is completely autobiographical. Since taking a bigger bite and a deeper drink from the fruit and springs of science, especially geology, I've been starving and parched. I'm desperate enough for more that I've considered going deep into debt for a degree I may never earn a living from. I'd beggar myself to get a full meal, and I know I'd walk away with a $30,000+ tab, and I'd still be starving. Add several fistfuls of dollars for grad school, and I'd still feel I hadn't had more than a bite to eat and a drop to drink.

There's no going back, now I'm an adorer of the good science of rock-breaking. There's no end to it, you see. It's a vast old Earth, and there's no way for any of us to know everything about it. And even if we could, have a look out in space - lots more planets out there, all unknown, all fascinating, all with incredible rocks to break.

On Doherty Ridge, with George's rock hammer. Photo by Cujo.

Anne Jefferson asked, "If you are a geology enthusiast but not professional… what do you wish you could get in additional formal and informal education? What would you like from geosciences students, faculty, and professionals that would make your enthusiasm more informed and more fun?"

And these are the things I'll say to you professionals and pending professionals, you professors and students, you who have careers at surveys and for companies:

Do not withhold your passion.

If there's a book within you, write it. Let your love pour onto the page. Put as much of your knowledge and wisdom into words as you are able, and get it into my hands. You don't even need a publisher in this digital age: you can upload it as an ebook. I'll take whatever you've got. And if you need a wordsmith's help, well, you know where to find me.

If something fascinates you, blog it. Even if it's complicated and you think it's of doubtful interest to anyone outside of the geotribe, post it up there where I can see it. If you love it enough to spend time explaining it, chances are I'll love it enough to spend time doing my best to comprehend it.

If you've written a paper, share it. Blog about it, maybe even offer to send me a .pdf if you can. There's a huge, expensive double-barrier between laypeople and papers: the language is technical and hard, and the journals charge so much that even if we're willing to put in the work, we may not have the funds. We've already spent our ready cash on books and rock hammers and various, y'see. But if you're allowed to send out a copy, and you can give me an iota of understanding, I'll read it, struggle with it, combine it with those other precious bits of knowledge until I've made some sense of it.

Show me what you see. Post those pictures of outcrops. If we're in the same neighborhood with some time to spare, put those rocks in my hands. I know you've got a career and a family, and can't lead many field trips, but if you can take even a few of us out, do it. We'll happily keep you in meals, beer and gas money just for the chance to see the world through your eyes, in real time and real life.

Answer questions as time allows.

Point us at resources.

Let us eavesdrop on your conversations with other geologists and geology students.

And hell, if you want to make some spare cash, and you're not in a position where there might be a conflict of interest, consider teaching some online classes for a fee. There's plenty of us who can't quite afford college, but could scrape together some bucks for the opportunity to learn something directly from the experts.We'd practically kill for that opportunity, but the days when you were allowed to break rocks in prison are pretty much over, so there's not quite as much incentive to break the law.

In other words, mostly do what you're doing now, with maybe a few added extras.

That's what those of us without the cash for a college degree and not even a single community college class on offer need. We just need you to share as much as you can, challenge us as much as you can.

And you there, with the students: make them, like me, adorers of the good science of rock-breaking. Send them out into the world with passion, a hammer, and a desire to babble to the poor starving, parched enthusiasts hoping for just one more bite to eat and drop to drink.

Lockwood, Dana, rocks and rock hammer on Doherty Ridge. Photo by Cujo.

This post is dedicated to the geobloggers who adopted me, answer questions and write remarkable posts and answer my plaintive "I can haz pdf?!" cries with a grin and a quick email. Dedicated most of all to Lockwood, who taught me how to properly break a rock, and gave me such rocks to break! Thanks will never be enough, so when you're next in the Pacific Northwest, my darlings, I shall give you a fine road cut (or several), a substantial meal, and more than one beer. And I meant what I said about being your wordsmith, should you ever need help writing a book.

Yeah, About That Lighthouse....

It was barely bloody visible. No matter. We had one of those glorious, rare, clear, and very warm days that would have led to some spectacular views. Only, those glorious, rare, clear and very warm days have led to quite a lot of forest fires, so there was a remarkable amount of smoke in the air, cutting visibility considerably.

Sigh.

Still. 'Twas lovely. The sun shone, waves crashed, and I got me feet wet. Not bad as far as possibly last adventures of the summer season go. I'd been missing the Sound. Our adventures this summer involved more fire than water, and it just seems obscene to live half an hour from one of the most beautiful bodies of water on earth and not get out to see it.

We went to Alki Point. From there, you can see just about everything round Seattle that makes it so geologically interesting. Shall we take a tour? We don't even have to walk about much.

Discovery

We saw a lighthouse. Sorta. If you enlarge this photo by lots, you'll see the lighthouse at Discovery Park standing at the very end of land, there. And you can see those wonderful bluffs I'm so enamored with.

Continuing on...

The Long Reach of Mount Mazama

A caldera eruption is a massively violent thing. We're not talking the quiet calderas in shield volcanoes like Mauna Loa and Kilauea, which love erupting and frequently pour burning hot stuff all over the landscape, but generally stick to easygoing lava flows that allow people to get out of the way. We're not even talking about Fernandina Island, which had a caldera collapse in 1968 and is too dangerous for Galapagos-goers to visit. No, we're talking about the kinds of eruptions that happen fast, big and explosively.

We're talking about the kinds of eruptions that hurl ash and pumice so high and so far that the landscape for hundreds or thousands of miles around is blanketed in thick, choking ash. We're talking about eruptions that bury landscapes for hundreds of square miles in pumice fields tens of feet thick.

We're talking about the kind of eruption whose traces are still fresh and clear more than seven thousand years later.

Road cut through Mount Mazama pumice, Route 58

It's hard to wrap your mind around this, but here we are: over thirty miles from Mount Mazama as the crow flies. Only now have we come near the northern boundary of the pumice fields, and they are still between six and eight feet thick.

Perspective time. I'm standing in a place where, if I'd been able to stand still during the fallout from the eruption, I'd have been over my head in pumice. Over thirty miles away, not in the path of any lahars or pyroclastic flows or any such excitements, and if I'd had a one-story house, it would have been buried to the eaves. And, people, these aren't itty-bitty bits of pumice. Stuff landing here reached up to nearly two inches long.

Mount Mazama Pumice, collected at the road cut on 58

Now, pumice is light, I grant you that. But it's not exactly aerodynamic. Toss it up in the air, and it doesn't take very long to come back down. So just imagine the force needed to hurl one and two inch chunks of it over thirty miles to land in blankets that would have buried even basketball players standing on their tip-toes.

It's difficult to imagine. We just haven't had many events like that in our living memory. In fact, when my intrepid companion and I got to talking about caldera eruptions the other day, I had to ask Erik Klemetti when the last one was. Mount Pinatubo fits the bill: maclargehuge eruption with worldwide consequences that left a caldera nearly two miles across. Note that Erik called that a "small" caldera collapse! It's the closest to Mount Mazama we've come in the information age.

Then there was the Valley of 10,000 Smokes. Krakatau. Tambora. That last was the largest eruption in recorded history. I mention this because Pinatubo was a measly VEI 6. A piddly little colossal eruption. Mount Mazama, on the other hand, rated up there with Tambora: a VEI 7. Super-colossal.

And it has left its mark, so far away.

Pumice Flats

 In the background, there are mountains, yes. In the foreground, flat or gently-rolling land. When Mount Mazama spewed its guts all over the landscape, it filled in valleys and leveled things out. The pumice-filled ash doesn't hold moisture well, so the scrappy Ponderosas, already in the rain shadow of the Cascades, are even more starved for water. This isn't a land that supports riots of vegetation. The only things that survive here are those used to doing without.

Mount Mazama Pumice mixed with cinders. I should get a centimeter scale tattooed on my thumb, shouldn't I?

Close to the road, you'll notice all these lovely red and black bits mixed in with the yellow-white pumice. Those are cinders, trucked in and scattered on the road for traction on snowy winter days. I have to admit something to you: my heart did a little bound of joy, because that's what the roadsides in Flagstaff look like (usually minus the large pieces of pumice, but not always - we've got a stratovolcano that liked coating the area in pyroclastics, too). Things weren't so colorful before people came along and started spreading cinders on the roads. Just tough green plants, tan ash, and pale pumice as far as the eye could see.

Mount Mazama Pumice and cinders at top of cut

I scrambled to the top of the cut to try to get away from contaminating cinders. No such luck. But I got to see scenes that could have come from my childhood: Ponderosa pines doing their best to make a living, scrubby little bushes with water-miser leaves, and plenty of dead wood, all fighting to hold on to loose, ashy, easily-drained ground. It's a small hill, not much taller than I am, but a hell of a climb in all that loose stuff. Little clouds of ash puffed up and coated my shoes. Moisture seemed sucked instantly from my skin. It smelled of volcanic earth and pine resin, and if you've never smelled that before, you're in for a treat. It's one of the most beautiful scents on earth.

And as you stand there, you ponder the force it takes to create a landscape like this, and your poor brain boggles. Thing is, this is only the beginning. By journey's end, you may just feel you've experienced a caldera eruption inside your own skull.

Ye olde indispensable references:

Roadside Geology of Oregon: Especially the marginalia, oddly enough.

Erik Klemetti: My go-to man for all things volcano, even on a Sunday, even on a holiday weekend.

Anne Jefferson: Who is not just a master of floods, it turns out, but knows some kick-ass volcanoes such as Fernandina.

Lockwood DeWitt: Tour guide of Oregon geology extraordinaire, and without whom I wouldn't have known what the hell I was seeing.

Interlude With Dragonfly

I wish I could promise you drama. However, aside from some very nice scenery, Highway 58's about the least-dramatic road through the Cascades. When you reach Willamette Pass and stop by Odell Lake, you don't really feel as though you've just reached the mid-point through some of the most dramatic mountains in the United States. Sure, they explode occasionally, but they haven't exploded round here just lately. You haven't even climbed very much - you're at a mere 5,000 feet. There's some nice pointy peaks surrounding you, but it's not like you've been on a steep climb with hairpin turns through them. You don't feel like you've really worked for it.

Which is fine, because that's left you nice and relaxed and in a mood to amble round photographing pretty things. There's even a helpful sign that tells you what you're photographing:

Hard to be sure, but that could be Diamond Peak there in the distance

Rather not what one expects in a shield volcano, is it? But that's what it is - a great big shield volcano composed of fifteen cubic kilometers worth of basaltic andesite. That's lots. And it's thought to be fairly young - around 100,000 years or so, which in geologic terms means it's barely out of diapers.

I know, I know. You're looking at its jaggedy profile and saying, "Dana, my dear, that looks more like a stratovolcano." Well, yes, of course it does. It stopped erupting before the last ice age ended, and the ice did a number on it. Ice is quite the artist (not Vanilla Ice, but actual ice, mind). It sculpted and carved and removed bits until this nice, sharp diamond shape was left.

And it left a rather nice lake, as well.

A bit of Odell Lake

The glacier that covered this area carved out a nice basin, then closed it off with a terminal moraine, and left the lake behind. The Cascades are riddled with these high mountain lakes, and they're all quite lovely. Not warm. But pretty.

I'd have quite a few more pictures of mountains and so forth, only I came across this wonderful wee beastie as I was pottering about:

An unexpected dragonfly

Well, you know I'm mad for these things. And this poor bloke was dying. When I saw him, he was a bit pathetically crumpled up, on his back, and just looking miserable lying there on the bare shoulder pavement. I didn't want him to finish the last moments of his life by being squished under a tire, so I scooped him up. He spent a comfortable few moments on my knee:

A fine fellow

And he didn't seem much fussed by the whole thing. He just rested there calmly, and I thought, I'll never have a better opportunity to photograph a dragonfly's eyes. Only I'm a softhearted silly person who won't reposition a dying dragonfly for her own gain, so I bunged the camera in front of him and hoped for the best, although I couldn't see where we were aiming:

Dragonfly eyes

Looks a bit insouciant, doesn't he just? Rather like he's bellying up with an elbow on a bar, about to order a cold one. I liked him very much, and wished there was some reasonable way to prevent nature taking its course, but of course there's not. You can't rush an elderly dragonfly to the hospital and demand emergency resuscitation. So after a bit, I just eased him off into the weeds, where nature could finish taking its course without intervention from half a ton of passenger vehicle. I took one last photo, with my hand for scale, so you can have an idea of how very large he was:

Goodbye, dragonfly

My index finger is about 3 1/2 inches from knuckle to tip, for those who like precision. That translates into a seriously large dragonfly. I'm very nearly sure he's one of the darners, but they all look so similar I'm not sure exactly which he might be.

Strangely, these skinny creatures with their transparent wings don't feel delicate. Their little legs are sturdy, and their bodies hard and smooth. Even though this one had one pair of feet over the Styx, he seemed quite tough. They're even quite tough after hitting the hood of a Honda Civic at 60 miles per hour - we ended up with one plastered to the front during the trip, and while everything else had spattered, it was still a whole, recognizable dragonfly, although a bit crispy and very, very deceased. I have even more respect for these guys after seeing that. They're certainly not as dainty as they look.

After savoring my closest encounter with a dragonfly yet, we drove on. Hang on, my darlings, because it's about to get a wee bit explosive.

Crazy Columns and Ice-Polished Rocks: Salt Creek Falls

I'm not going to say a damned word about lineaments. Let's just say that traveling down Route 58 is something of an intrigue: you're crossing the Cascades, but it doesn't feel that way. You're on a long, nearly straight road that doesn't seem to go up much. Mountains rear all round you, and yet here you are, merrily zipping through them. There are some extraordinary things about the Pacific Northwest: these long, straight, bizarre structural features, some of which are barely accepted as real and others as yet only suspected, are among the most perplexing. But they're very nice to take a road trip on.

So there you are, zipping along, unfussed by steep grades or switchbacks, and then, just before you get to Willamette Pass, you've got this little attraction. Well, I say little. It's only the second-highest waterfall in all of Oregon.

Salt Creek Falls

Salt Creek Falls is a marvel of falling water, but it's not quite as interesting as the geology that surrounds it. I mean, yes, tall as Niagara, "most powerful waterfall in southern Oregon," yeah, fine. Whatevs. You know what I was looking at after having gawked at the pretty falling water for two minutes? That's right, the rocks.

There's a story here, and it begins on a tall, bald outcrop that'll draw a geologist's eye faster than any amount of falling water.

First Rule of Great GeoTrips: Start at OMSI and Build II - Fossil Madness!

One of the beautiful things about OMSI is the Paleontology Lab. This is a place where a mere rope stands between you and delights like this:

Triceratops in jacket - snazzy!

I believe they're freeing a triceratops from its matrix of rock. Again, the distractions of friends kept me from paying as much attention to the details as I might have done (no complaints about that!), but one can absorb quite a bit snapping a few photos and drooling over a few touchable displays.

Here's something I adored:

Spike!

Okay, so it's not real. It's a resin cast. But it was taken from an actual stegosaurus, and stegosaurus is cool. The fact the tail spikes are called thagomizers because of a Far Side cartoon is fucking awesome. I got to touch a cast of a thagomizer, people. That tickles me right down to me toes.

I've always liked the Steg. Other kids in my grade-school class went in for T-Rex, but I figured a dinosaur with armor plates and freaking tail spikes that could potentially beat a T-Rex to death was way cooler. Besides, we have a special relationship, Steg and I. When I was out sick in kindergarten on the day when we were making clay dinos with cookie cutters, my teacher saved me a stegosaurus. I hung it on my wall and petted it and loved it, although I didn't name it George. You can keep your silly T-Rex, y'all. I have a bloody awesome stegosaurus. My Steg can kick your Rex's arse.

I'm more convinced of that than ever, because that tail spike was at least two feet long, and damned thick. You would not want to be walloped with one. Allosaurus certainly did not want, but got anyway. Yeow.

Here's another bit of yum:

Mesosaurus brasiliensis

Mesosaurus brasiliensis should gladden the hearts of all geologists. This is a Permian freshwater critter, a marine reptile that nommed on fish and swam around in lakes and rivers in what became South America and South Africa. It couldn't cross oceans, and there were no such things as bilges back in the Permian in which stowaways might travel. Turns out this aquatic reptile is excellent evidence that South America and South Africa were once joined - score one for plate tectonics!

There are leaves, too, though I didn't photograph the sign for them, so I haven't the foggiest what they are:

Fossil leaves

The preserved veins are incredible. The leaf margins don't seem to have been preserved well, which is unfortunate, because having preserved leaf margins would tell me whether these are from a temperate or tropical forest. Experts probably don't need no stinkin' leaf margins to figure it out.

Ooo. More triceratops!

This is what fossil preparers deal with. Respect them.

Hard to believe something coherent will emerge from that mess, but the folks who take the tiny little tools and scrape the rocky matrix away a fragment at a time make it happen.

Sometimes, though, all you have to do is split open a slab, and a thing of beauty emerges:

Archaeopteryx replica

How gorgeous is that? Archaeopteryx is a fascinating creature, which I should know much more about. Alas, all I know is that it's a creature with features of both bird and dinosaur, the first feathered dinosaur found, and there's been a recent dust-up over its place in the avian family tree, which Brian Switek dispatched nicely in an ode Archaeopteryx richly deserved. For myself, simply admiring.

Another Triceratops Interlude

You've gotta respect people who can wrap a huge, heavy rock full of delicate bones in plaster and haul the bastard back to the lab. After having hoofed a great many pounds of hand samples back to the car and then up the stairs, my hat, as it were, is off.

Brachiopods?

I believe, though I do not know, foolishly not having photographed the accompanying informative sign, that these are fossil brachiopods. They look quite a lot like clams and so forth, but there are differences between bivalves and brachiopods which explain why bivalves are now common as muck and living brachiopods are much rarer, although brachiopods were far more common in the past. Those wanting more information are encouraged to consult this handy .pdf.

Coquina!

I love this stuff. I love a rock that is, basically, all shells and can make cannonballs bounce. So when I had a chance to get my hands on some coquina for the first time ever, you can bet I fondled it. It's harder than you'd expect for something famously soft enough to absorb enormous balls of metal hurtling toward them at speeds meant to destroy. It feels quite solid. And very, very shelly.

Baleen whale fossils

Here we have vertebrae and ribs from a 20 million year old baleen whale, found in the Astoria Formation. Yes, some cool shit can be found in the Astoria Formation. Makes me want to go and play in it. I mean, bloody hell, this was found by a beach comber. Somebody bring me an extra-large comb, and let's go comb some beaches!

After all that fossil madness, it was time to rejoin the others down in the non-earth science area, and enjoy a photo op with Glacial Till, one of the best geotweeps I've ever had.

When we met up with Michael Klaas of Uncovered Earth later that evening, we got so busy chatting we forgot the photo op. We won't be so remiss again! Meeting the two of them was high on the list of highlights of this trip, and I can't wait to drag them out into the field.

Then it was off to Park Lane Suites, which has some very nice gneiss in its lobby, and together with the fact it's convenient and comfy, is among the reasons I recommend it for your Portland lodging needs.

Earth Erotica

My non-geo friends don't get dry mouths and pounding hearts when passing road cuts. Sometimes, I think they're blind to beauty. Unclothed rocks are some of the most beautiful sights on earth.

Behold this road cut near Kingman, Arizona that had me screaming for the camera:

Road cut on I40, Kingman, AZ

That's a beauty that loves even elderly digital cameras. She has faults - that makes her even more alluring. She makes me want to take risks, find a place to pull off the interstate, run my hands along her, explore every nuance of her appearance, know her every detail. Unfortunately, we had a schedule, and we only got that one tantalizing glance across the freeway, and then she was gone. The nice thing about the earth, though, is that she doesn't vanish into the night. She'll be there when I go back, lovely as ever.

There are surfaces, and we only sometimes get to see beneath them. The earth's beauty is far more than skin deep, but it's so often only the skin we see, and that cloaked with water, draped with plants, capped with buildings. But I grew up in canyon country, where the continent likes off-the-shoulder fashions and takes a minimalist approach to coverings. She's adventurous, daring, not afraid to show off. You don't even need a nice road cut to see her layers - go anywhere, find a place where running water's done some daring design, and you'll be struck speechless.

Box Canyon, Wupatki National Monument

This gorgeous little canyon, cut into the Kaibab limestone, was so wonderful I had to steal my intrepid companion's camera for a decent shot - my old beast wouldn't do it justice. The near-sunset light, breaking through clouds, turned the stone creamy white and rich honey gold by turns as it shifted. This is old stone in an aging landscape, dusted with young volcanics, and the combination of youth and maturity brings out the best in both. You want to talk about a pounding heart: this sight had me literally off my feet, lying on a smooth expanse of bare stone in an attempt to catch her best angle.

Box Canyon, Mt. Rainier

In Arizona, there's not much hiding the earth from view. In the Pacific Northwest, she often goes bundled up, and so those places where you can get a look beneath all the biology becomes even more intriguing. Here, the Cowlitz River, just starting out, has cut a box canyon through Mt. Rainier's skin, polished it to a brilliant jet-black luster, and then set it against white water. There's now jewelry made by human hands that enhances natural beauty quite so well as that.

Road cut near Hurricane Ridge, Olympic Mountains

In the mountains, the roads wind along her and she dances, sometimes in brilliant colors, the sea floor raised up on land and cut away, showing off what deep water usually hides. Basalt is beautiful where it wraps round the Olympics, a crescent cloak that in these places looks like a veil whipped around a spinning belly dancer. This road is one of those that will reduce anyone with the slightest sensitivity to geology to incoherent outbursts of appreciative sounds.

Road cut at Ross Dam, Cascades

Sometimes, to get somewhere and make something we consider useful, we cut down through massive mountain shoulders, and find that the rock we thought rather featureless and dull is endlessly intriguing. Orthogneiss glimmers and sparkles up close, threaded with white veins, riddled with faults that, like a dinner companion with a fascinating life story and a flair for the dramatic, keeps us entranced for hours. Other people might spend their time with the lovely blue lake and the snow-capped peaks - we're likely to have our noses up against bare stone, listening, admiring, and always wanting more.

Road cut on Highway 97, Oregon

I've seen people take variously-colored sands and make art of them, but the earth does it effortlessly. Streams and lakes layer sediments in a cacophony of colors, then dry up and vanish, leaving puzzles behind. We stop the car. We walk alongside, we explore, we tease out those stories. These are the things that send my heart racing, leave my skin tingling, make me feel like I can fly. Beneath most surfaces, there's fascination. And the more I know this great and glorious Gaia, the more I love her.

For AW #37, with love.

Poor, Pathetic Paraceratherium: Who Killed the Kitsch?

Whilst I await Brian Switek's Archaeopteryx post in order to round out our visit to OMSI, I figured I'd do you up an unexpected roadside attraction. If you drive Highway 97 from Klamath Falls to Crater Lake, you'll stumble across this decaying beast near Chemult:

Ginormous Mystery Beastie

A few questions come to mind, all beginning with WTF: WTF is it? WTF is it doing here in front of a truck accessories store? And WTF is a truck accessories store doing in the middle of nowhere with a prehistoric beastie in its front yard?

We had some serious geology to do, but the impulse proved irresistible. We stopped for a photo op.

I'm afraid this IS his good side

As near as we can tell, this crumbling behemoth is a Paraceratherium. These ancient, hulking land mammals - so large they dwarfed mammoths - lived back in the Eocene and Oligocene. I haven't found anything to tell me whether any roamed Oregon. They seem to have been mostly a Eurasian and Asian denizen. But Oregon had a healthy population of rhino relatives, so I suppose he's not all that out of place.

Don't get on his bad side

He looks imposing, I know, but he was a strict herbivore. At eighteen feet tall, thirty long, and in the mid-size sauropod weight class, I imagine that if vegetation could talk, it would whisper terrorized tales of the thunderous approach of the mighty masticator. Trees and shrubs would tell tales of the Paraceratherium who would come after misbehaving saplings and chomp them all up with its great big teeth. This thing was seriously hungry and huge - more than enough to inspire horror stories.

Verily, I am dwarfed by the might of the masticator

But it would seem to have nothing to do with truck accessory shops. A little Google-fu, however, and ye olde mystery is solved. We begin here, where a search for Paraceratherium and Oregon returns a question, answered in comments: what is this dude doing here? Turns out he was part of a roadside attraction called Thunderbeast Park, which closed back in the 90s. The truck shop people let the attractions go to seed, and apparently get very cross whenever people ask them about it. Bad business sense, if you ask me - not everyone driving by needs shiny new rims, but if they ran the theme park on the side, they could make a tidy sum on the side charging them a few bucks a pop to ogle old Oligocene oddities. Alas, they have chosen the way of guard dogs and grumpiness instead. But the Paraceratherium in the parking lot can be enjoyed quickly enough that irritated employees don't have time to chase you off.

Brian Switek snagged photos of one of the missing beasts from readers who were there before the park closed - if anyone has more, send 'em his way.

A little further searching reveals the genius behind the giant - Ernie Nelson, who also created Oregon's apparently extant Prehistoric Gardens. It seems Thunderbeast Park was star-crossed from its inception, but the Prehistoric Gardens, cared for by Ernie himself, thrived. Gotta go see that place next!

One last shot

I hope someone, somehow, rescues this poor pathetic Paraceratherium before he's completely dead, restores him to his former glory, and sticks him in a friendlier roadside spot where kids can marvel and adults can amuse themselves. This grand old beast deserves better than he's got.

First Rule of Great GeoTrips: Start at OMSI and Build

When you have a gajillion friends in Portland and an intrepid companion who isn't all that interested in geology but willing to suffer through a bunch of rock pounding so he can see some scenery, and you can get an extra day off work, it's not a bad idea to start your geo adventures at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. Especially when two of your friends have two rambunctious grandkids. OMSI is a scientific wonderland for kids - plenty of activities, interactive exhibits, and things to keep them entertained while the adults do boring stuff like... play with all the exhibits.

And I'm all for a museum that posts signs like this one on its perimeter fence:

Sign outside OMSI, Willamette River side

There's tons of stuff to play with. There's an earthquake house, which we all had immense fun with. The Van de Graff generator - a big hollow metal ball with a crank - intrigued pretty much everybody. Anything that can make pie tins fly, people's hair stand on end, and create big blue sparks is a surefire win. The exhibit showing the development of a fetus from blastocyst to full-term baby is a must-see for those who can stomach it - we're not talking replicas here, but actual human fetuses preserved by Gunther von Hagens, he of Body Worlds fame. All of the embryos and fetuses in the display didn't survive due to natural causes or accidents. They're fascinating, but disturbing, so steel yourself before taking a look.

There's far more - machines and such, which my intrepid companion will likely blog about in a bit. Glacial Till and I, being geo-nerds, hightailed it to the Earth Science Hall. We were pressed for time and too busy meeting in meatspace for the first time to get really in-depth, but we saw some wonderful stuff.

Roadtrippin'

Out of pre-loaded posts for ye. Also out of energy. But here's a few outtakes to tide ye over 'til I can coherently write something about our adventures. Which may not be for several days - I expect to be comatose upon arriving home.

Additionally, I'm not certain the cat will allow me to live after abandoning her for so long.

Mah first experience with Mt. Mazama ash:

Near Crescent Cutoff on Hwy. 58. The stuff's full of little pieces of pumice. Little, that is, until you consider how far they were hurled by the mountain, which was probably 20-30 miles away as the crow flies. Pumice shouldn't fly that far. The fact that it did should tell you something that'll keep you awake at night.

And Mt. Mazama its own self.

There was an in-joke at the bookstore I worked at. We had an inordinate number of customers come in and describe what they were looking for thusly: "I need this book, I don't remember the title or the author or what it's about, but it's this big and it's blue." That's about what it's like looking down on Crater Lake for the first time. For just a moment, you forget the context of what you're looking at. All you can think is, "Holy shit, it's this big and it's blue!" I have to go to Home Depot when I get back and get those little paint sample cards, so I can match up the color of the lake. It's so blue that I've seen cobalt blue paint that didn't look quite so intense. The color shifts with every change in light and perspective, but it never stops being an overwhelming, brilliant blue.

And, finally, moi at Fort Rock:

Here's what you need to know about it, and what we'll go in to in more detail later on: this is a bloody volcano that erupted under a Pleistocene lake. Under the lake. That's why it's hollow.

If that isn't weird geology, there's no such thing as weird geology.

Tomorrow, it's off to Newberry and McKenzie Pass, and then back to Corvallis. If I'm lucky, we'll make it home to Seattle that night, because as incredible as all the geology's been, I miss mah kitteh. And I'll need about ten years to sort through all the photos.

You're in for treats, my darlings. Stay tuned...

The Bee's Knees and Other Stories

My relationship with insects has fundamentally changed since I acquired a camera with excellent macro abilities. Creepy-crawlies just creeped me out. I had an intellectual understanding that critters had important functions in food chains and other sorts o' things, but as for admiring them... yeah, not so much.

There was a time when I'd look on a crane fly with disgust rather than pleasure. But then I bought this camera, and turned it on an insect because it was a convenient thing to test the macro function on, and suddenly, the unregarded arthropods and suchlike were revealed as gorgeous lifeforms deserving of admiration.

There's your common crane fly. It came to live with us briefly this summer, flying in through the door my cat insists stay open. It landed on the wall above the stove, and sat there with its transparent wings all iridescent in the light. Yes, it's a turf pest, and lawn owners everywhere probably aren't fond of them. But they cause no harm to humans (other than messing up their pristine lawns) and they're actually quite lovely.

Even lowly flies become rather more attractive prospects when you've got the proper camera and they've chosen the right background:

I've caught myself looking at them closely, admiring their little bodies with their various colors and their odd hairs. I look into their eyes and marvel at the compound complexities. Mind you, I whip out the Windex of Doom when too many of them sneak into the house and take up positions on my bathroom mirror, but I don't mind one or two zipping about the place. I'd better not. My cat doesn't understand the concept of closing the door, and insects don't understand the concept of indoors mine-outside yours.

According to Savage Chickens, there's an excellent way to deal with both arachnophobia and spiders in the house. I'll have to try it. Not arachnophobic, anymore, but it would still be nice if the poor little beggars wouldn't come in here just to starve to death, or meet my Great Northern Tissue of Doom if they insist on living somewhere like my bed.

Before I got this camera, I would've watched from a vaguely interested distance whilst the millipede I'd disturbed dug its way back into the ground. As the lighting conditions were teh suck, I decided to place this one on a more contrasty background before letting it go its merry way:

It started out curled up, but quickly uncurled and got to exploring, with tiny little feet tickling my palm. And it didn't feel creepy or gross - it felt adorable. I let it walk off my hand and find its happy place again. For a moment, there, I forgot all about the soil I was investigating, and just enjoyed an unexpected encounter with one of the denizens of said soil.

But what's really changed is my relationship with bees.

I used to be terrified of bees (despite not having an allergy that would justify said terror). I used to flee from every bee, certain the little bastards wanted nothing more than to sting me. Then I got this camera. Suddenly, my fear of bees completely vanished. I adore them now. If they're occupied with noms, I can get up quite close, and they don't mind me a bit. They're not out to get me, they're just making a living. As long as I don't trap them or threaten their hive, they seem perfectly content to let me snap away while they get on with the living. But I shall put my beautiful bees below the fold, because I know some of you aren't so admiring, and often for good reason.