Two summers ago, my wife (then my very new wife) Lily and I participated in a two-week workshop for teachers on the energy resources of Wyoming. We also indulged in a visit to a mineral resource site: South Pass City, a site in the southern Wind River Uplift that was the second oldest incorporated town … Read more
The Friday before last, I was in DC for a fun geology/botany field trip, and I got the opportunity to stroll around the barn at historic Peirce Mill, a historical grain mill along Rock Creek in Rock Creek Park, Washington, DC. The barn is immediately south of Tilden Street NW. It appears to have been … Read more
A couple of weeks ago, I was killing time down in Front Royal, and I spent a pleasant hour in the Royal Oak Bookshop. I saw a used paperback copy of Tony Horwitz’s classic Confederates in the Attic there, and bought it, thinking I could give it away to a friend or visitor who didn’t … Read more
[youtube=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJNSw1XtU6c”] Here’s the link to the book on Amazon.
A weekend expedition to GigaPan the C&O Canal’s singular Paw Paw Tunnel results in an exposition on Devonian sedimentation, Alleghanian mountain-building, structural geology, and the incision of the Potomac River to produce entrenched meanders.
Callan reviews a book about the historical battle over the meaning of coral reefs. Protagonists include Charles Darwin and the son of Louis Agassiz. The book’s author, David Dobbs, answers some questions for Callan and readers.
Callan visits the Sea Point migmatite, a contact between intrusive granite and older metasedimentary rocks, along the west coast of South Africa near Cape Town. His guide? None other than AGU Blogosphere blogger Evelyn Mervine of Georneys!
Picking up from the astonishing first couple of outcrops we saw of strained Seine Group metaconglomerate from the boundary between the Wabigoon and Quetico sub-provinces of the Superior Craton, our group moved on down the road. It was lovely clear fall weather near Fort Frances, and shockingly warm. Our third stop of the morning was … Read more
My man Walcott contributed a lot of images to the USGS stockpile during his travels. Today, I’ll feature one from Bishop, California, from 1894: Got it from here. Rock hammer on the left for scale. The caption reads: Plicated layers of thin bedded chert in limestone etched by erosion, Lower Cambrian (?). Hill two miles … Read more
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.