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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 …

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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 …

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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.

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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.

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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 …

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10 June 2011

Friday fold: faulted fold

The Friday fold features fine faults from a forgotten font, and a failed foto-finding forage.

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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!

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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 …

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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 …

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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.

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