You are browsing the archive for June 2011 - Page 2 of 3 - Mountain Beltway.
20 June 2011
“Boudinage” is my favorite geology word
The current edition of the Accretionary Wedge geology blog carnival (hosted by Evelyn Mervine of Georneys) is built around the theme of favorite geology words. My favorite geology word is derived from the French boudin, for sausage. It’s “boudinage,” and it’s best said with a heavy French accent and a leering, dirty expression. “Boo-din-ahhdj” I love pronouncing it; it’s a delicious word, like a good boudin itself. So what is …
17 June 2011
Friday fold: a granite dike
This Friday, I give you a fold from the shores of the Rockfish River, south of Charlottesville, in Virginia’s Blue Ridge basement complex, and just down the road from the Lawhorne Mill High Strain Zone. The fold distorts (and improves) a felsic dike cutting the darker granite of the basement. You can make this (stitched composite) picture bigger by clicking it: Here’s the texture of the dike granite: Here’s the …
16 June 2011
Lawhorne Mill High Strain Zone
Callan attends a field trip in the Blue Ridge of Virginia, looking first at a Paleozoic shear zone that disrupts (and improves) Mesoproterozoic basement complex rocks.
15 June 2011
Small creatures
Two macrobugs from yesterday’s field trip to the Rockfish River area south of Charlottesville… … a really fast orange-and-maroon grub: …and an elegant fly: We also saw some rocks, but I’ll have to blog about them later because right now I have to pack up for summer travels.
13 June 2011
Rockies stratigraphic column checklist
I just drew up a little checklist for the different formations my Rockies students will be seeing next starting next week out in Montana: The original black and white images (two columns on two pages) come from Self-Guided Field Trips Near Bozeman (1982), by Stephan G. Custer, Donald L. Smith, Molly Walker, and 1982’s crop of geology graduate students at Montana State University in Bozeman, Montana. This stratigraphic column, which …
10 June 2011
Friday fold: faulted fold
The Friday fold features fine faults from a forgotten font, and a failed foto-finding forage.
9 June 2011
The annual summer routine of Mr. Callan X. Bentley
Callan gets ready for a summer of travels out in the Rocky Mountains, including teaching a field geology course, participating in a workshop about teaching energy, visiting the Burgess Shale, and… getting married!
Portrait of a cricket
Spied this lovely cricket while hiking the White Oak Canyon Trail in Shenandoah National Park yesterday: I realize there’s been a pretty high bugs : rocks ratio on Mountain Beltway of late; I’m just in summer mode, I reckon. And Virginia’s arthropod profligacy keeps bringing me into contact with these extraordinary segmented denizens of the forests, soil, and air. I can’t help but photograph them… Sorry if the bugs aren’t …
8 June 2011
A rose quartz gravestone
On Monday when I went to Powell’s grave, I noticed a few “boulder with a plaque” gravestones, the most distinctive of which was this lovely chunk of rose quartz: Quartz is a good choice, since it’s very very very stable at Earth surface conditions, and thus will stick around a lot longer than, say, a marble tombstone. I still think I’d rather opt for a rock bearing tectonic structures or …
7 June 2011
The grave of John Wesley Powell
Callan visits the grave of John Wesley Powell, second director of the USGS and explorer of the Grand Canyon, on an afternoon in Arlington National Cemetery.
Callan Bentley is Associate Professor of Geology at Piedmont Virginia Community College in Charlottesville, Virginia. He is a Fellow of the Geological Society of America. For his work on this blog, the National Association of Geoscience Teachers recognized him with the James Shea Award. He has also won the Outstanding Faculty Award from the State Council on Higher Education in Virginia, and the Biggs Award for Excellence in Geoscience Teaching from the Geoscience Education Division of the Geological Society of America. In previous years, Callan served as a contributing editor at EARTH magazine, President of the Geological Society of Washington and President the Geo2YC division of NAGT.