Erratic Behaviour

Day 45: Yesterday was a long day for me. I had business north of Seattle in the early afternoon with an open period of five hours before Morris practice. I am not one for going shopping, so I'd mapped out a couple of "earthcaches," geology-themed containerless geocaches. Both required visits to glacial erratics, large rocks which were transported to the area by glacial action. It was too slick to climb the biggest one and I didn't have a hand lens to help identify the lichens on the smaller, but I was reminded of an event from my childhood by these boulders.

While my father was alive, we lived in this general area. It was rural then, unlike its present suburban sprawl, and my dad decided to dig a garden at the edge of our orchard. He hadn't dug far before he hit the point of a problem rock. He kept digging, digging, digging, but he wasn't finding any particular slope to the rock's shoulders. He dug some more, the hole getting ever wider and marginally deeper as he tried to find the boundaries of the boulder. It became something of an obsession, and dinner conversation frequently rolled around to how he might get it out of the hole once he could get a chain around it, but fortunately for our old Ford sedan, that day never came. Daddy gave up after exposing a Volkswagen-sized portion of the offending object and simply shovelled all his hard-won dirt back in the hole. It may still be there for all I know, waiting for someone to dig it out and make an Earthcache out of it.

Foghorn Hike

Day 10: In the immortal words of Monty Python, "And now for something completely different." Pursuit of a few earthcaches (containerless geocaches with a geologic theme) took me to Seattle's Discovery Park rather late in the day and under gathering fog. I parked where the cache owner had suggested, and my GPSr indicated that the straight-line, as-the-crow-flies estimate to the location was 0.79 miles. I made mental allowance for a winding trail and figured it was a mile one way. I had an hour before dark. Yeah, piece of cake. The trail went along flat for a bothersome distance and then began descending over a series of wooden stairs. Stairs are never welcome in my book; the interval is always too long, too short, too high or too shallow to match my normal stride. These were shallow and frequent, i.e., more footfalls required to cover less distance, due to be even more annoying on the ascent. Watching the arrow on the GPS, I noticed that I'd gone past the cache, "past" referring to a two-dimensional concept in a three-dimensional world. It was still at least a hundred feet below me. This is par for the course, nothing abnormal here. But then I came to a paved road and a two-car parking spot. What? You mean I could have driven here, as pressed for time as I am? On a busy day, those spots would be the first to fill, but in these conditions, they were both vacant. When I finally reached the beach, I became aware of two things: one, the cache was now 0.3 mi. away and two, the tide was in (but going out). The fog was getting thicker, and as much as I'd have liked to sit and listen to the foghorns sounding in the distance, the dimming of the light was becoming more apparent. Too late to turn back, I went on to the earthcache, recorded the data I needed to log it, and then began a wind-sprint back up the stairs. It wasn't quite "pitch-black night" when I got back to the car, but close enough that I was having trouble seeing where I was going if I passed through a grove of trees. I'd had quite all the exercise I needed for one day, thank you, and the next stop on my evening schedule was Morris dance practice.

An Abundance Of Geology

Day 337: Once above verdant Summerland, hikers enter a bleak terrain where trees do not grow, wildflowers are sparse, rocks are abundant and snowfields linger all year. Many would say that this landscape is ugly and boring, but in fact it is one of the most geologically-rich areas of Mount Rainier National Park. Here, ancient glaciers have scoured exposed domes and prehistoric lava flows have congealed into hexagonal columns of andesite which tower above the rugged floor of the landscape, and metamorphic processes are in evidence at every turn. One of these processes was what engaged my interest on this day: a matrix studded with quartz-filled vesicles known as amygdules poised somewhere between Summerland and the spine of Panhandle Gap.

My attention had been caught by this marvel of geology over forty years ago when I passed through the area for the first time during a hike of the Wonderland Trail. A rockhound then, I was intrigued but not sufficiently resourced to track down the mechanism which created it. Like my specimen of diaspore, this phenomenon went on the shelf (mentally, if not physically) for future analysis. Recently, it was brought to my attention again by one of our Park geologists who not only explained the origin of amygdules, but posed a challenge to seek them out below Panhandle Gap. Since I already had a speaking acquaintance with the rock in question, it seemed only logical that I should be first to meet the challenge. However, the ointment had two flies in it: weather, and the busy Labor Day weekend.

I am a morning person by nature. Holiday or not, I knew I could find parking at the trailhead if I arrived early enough. I rose at 3:30, drove two hours, hiked the first mile of the trail by headlamp and thus managed to be well ahead of the hordes. After fiddling around at Summerland for a while, I headed on up into amygdule country and once on site, took measurements and calculated strain ratios to determine how much the lava had been stretched as it cooled. I am pleased to announce that my conclusions met with the geologist's approval when I submitted them yesterday evening.

Then, because it was September Morn, I continued on to Panhandle Gap, one of my favourite places in the Park, bleak though it may be. I spent an hour there before a pair of hikers came through...and then another and another and another...and then I realized it was time to leave. Holiday notwithstanding, I'd managed to capture several hours of precious solitude, and I'd learned something in the process. What good will it ever do me? Probably none, but I have the immense satisfaction of knowing that now if I ever need to hold forth on the subject of amygdules, I can do so convincingly and correctly.