Welcome

I grew up on the edge of the great anthracite fields of northeastern Pennsylvania, surrounded by a landscape scraped and shaped by Laurentian glaciers.  Within a mile of my childhood home were the shallow remains of open pits where men pried limonite from the ground, feeding the small foundries which formed the bedrock of Pennsylvania’s Industrial Revolution.  Within a few more miles’ radius were limestone quarries for serving agriculture.  Long before, the native Lenni Lenape had quarried and chipped the jasper common in our township for tools. 

My parents both grew up in a small Missouri town in the heart of the Lead Belt, where my paternal great-grandfather had worked the mines of the St. Joseph Lead Company since age fourteen.  I spent some childhood summer trips wandering around a town where rusting vent pipes rose out of the pavement, the town was dominated by the huge tailing sand pile at one end (the “chat dump”), and touring the now-inactive Bonne Terre Mine was the only reason anyone came to visit anymore.
 

Later, I spent some time in college near one of the huge inland seas left by the receding Ice Age, Lake Michigan.  I spent days exploring the Warren Dunes, huge deposits of glacial drift larger (and much younger) than the beach dunes of the Atlantic Coast I was used to.  Once again, I found myself in a landscape shaped by ancient glaciation.

 

Finally in 1997 I found myself arriving in California, settling on the boundary between two of the Earth’s great lithographic plates.  Technically, I am not on the boundary proper; I am actually some miles to the east of it in the great forearc basin known as the San Joaquin Valley.  I live in the small “West Valley” town of Gustine, teaching school in nearby Newman.  From both, I get a satisfying view of the Diablo Range to the west, part of the Southern Coast Range of young uplift mountains raised by the strain and movement of the San Andreas Fault System.  My short commute runs parallel to the chain and I never tire of seeing them in their different seasons.

 

It seems appropriate that, having spent my life around history and landscapes which periodically stimulated my interest in geology, I have finally settled in one of the most geologically fascinating places in the world.  California is a playground for those with an interest in the Earth sciences, and I for one plan on spending the rest of my adult life digging around in the sandbox.  Through this blog, I’ll share my experiences, information, and musings as I do so.

One disclaimer, though; I am not a professional geologist.  I teach Science, certainly (among other subjects), but when it comes to Geology I am entirely self-taught beyond a single survey course in college; if you come here expecting highly-detailed research material, you will be disappointed. Nor am I what is traditionally called a “rockhound”; ‘hounds are good people but their interests are primarily specimen collecting and/or lapidary, and although I often collect specimens as part of my explorations it is not my primary focus.  My interest lies with how the rocks and landforms came to be where they are, and why they are the way they are, and then going out into the field and seeing the process in full living color.  This leaves me in a strange position of, what?  “Enlightened amateur geological interest?” 

        Profs to the left of me,

        Rockhounds to the right,

       Here I am---stuck in the middle with you. 

Well, it works for me, and if you have enough interest to follow my peregrinations and observations then it might for you, as well.

Welcome to Life on a Plate Boundary.