DAY 1: Drive
I got up early, showered, finished packing...I packed my lunch (which consisted of all my food that would go bad). I left at about 10am for the geo building with my big backpack with my boots and sleeping bag hanging off the back...and my day pack on the front. It was a good look.
After loading stuff up, I was heading to the vans and then I started talking to Tim about Thai Boxing and Mixed Martial Arts...so I ended up riding in his van and talking about beating people up and stuff. We had a ipod connector and an ipod...so we listened to Kiwi hard rock music for the whole time. It was an interesting ride and about 4 hours long. We went all the way across the south island to the border of Fiordland National Park. It was beautiful! It is so great to know everyone a little better! This trip was way more fun because I am friends with more of the people.
On the way in we stopped at the first geologic stop...I felt so much more comfortable with the people and taking notes in my notebook. I was so excited about this trip it was ridiculous! Studying igneous and metamorphic rocks just makes me giddy inside.
Once we arrived they were splitting people up into cabin areas because there were so many of us! We wouldn’t all fit at the main camp so about 10 of us girls went to Monowai Village about 15 min down the road. We named ourselves The Others. The Others had a play set and a common room. Part of The Others were to stay in these little boxes very very little boxes. There were two beds in each box. We had so much fun!
We got picked up and came back to the main camp for dinner. They fed us pretty well the whole trip. :) This trip was very organized, we had schedules and handouts for each day and a whole handout for the report that spells out how to do each section. I know the expectations much better for this trip versus Maerewhenua. The report is 10-15 pages plus a cross-section, map, 2 strat columns and 2 cronostrat columns. We split the group into 3 groups for the three different days. The MOA team from Maerewhenua lost a member and I wasn’t with Whiteny or Jenn :( ... but we had a fantastic group still. I had a steaming cup of Milo out of the mug Aunt Kristi gave me before I left. It has pictures of all the people I love! It made me so happy! Then we headed back to Monowai Village to our boxes.
DAY 2: Tertiary Day West
We awoke, shuttled to base camp, ate breakfast, drank some much needed mochalo (my new word for a milo mocha), got our handy dandy handout and loaded the vans. Richard was the teacher for this day. Richard is a very knowledgeable structural geologist. He explains things well, but also gives more information than necessary sometimes. It was freezing cold in the morning and my field notebook shows the evidence of my frozen hands. We saw some interesting dipping beds of mudstone with interbedded turbidite layers.
He taught us about turbidites, which are pretty cool for a sed structure. We also went to a conglomerate outcrop and busted open the pebbles inside to decipher what the source area was. Fun stuff. I also saw my very first Armored Mud Ball...if you really care, ask me what it is. We went on a few short hikes from the vans to see specific formations and which way they were dipping, what they were made of and just about everything else. (I will try not to bore you will geology specifics) Next, we followed a river to see the outcrops it had formed by erosion and map the cross-section of the area. This included a syncline, an anticline, a fault, igneous and sedimentary formations. It was some tricky stuff and I am really glad it was explained after we were done.
We stopped for lunch right by Monowai Village where The Others are located and played on our playset :)
We had 12 localities for this day. After we returned to camp, showered, ate dinner and had a cup or two of Milo we attended a evening lecture about the area of the field we had been in that day. It was a really good for clarifying what we had seen in the field and pulling all the info together. Richard talked for a long time so I didn’t do a ton of work on this section. Back in my box (cabin) I worked on the series of strata and their ages. Then I couldn’t keep my eyes open and I went to sleep...I usually got about 5-7 hours during this trip. Not too shabby. I’m always a little on the grumpy side when I wake up, no matter how much sleep I got.
DAY 3: Borland Pass
THIS WAS MY FAVORITE DAY!!!! I don’t even know where to start!! Laura and I decided to dress like real kiwi geologists and wear thermal pants with shorts. Laura’s thermals are baby blue and mine a bright salmon. I wore a belt over the whole getup so I could carry my rock hammer too. It was pretty snazzy.
The sunrise after breakfast was magnificent! It went from serbert to fire to cotton candy. Pictures can’t do it justice. I was in awe.
Today Alan was our teacher. He is an incredible geologist and professor. He looks like a wizard. He is so good at explaining what is going on while making you think about it yourself. He makes the students feel comfortable and willing to answer questions. He can still swing a rock hammer like he is 25 but he most certainly is not 25 years old. Possibly 25 Ma. He loves metamorphic and igneous rocks....and so do I!
I have two new favorite things after this day. Metamorphic minerals and igneous pegmatite. We saw Gniess, Schist, Diorite and Granite. Most of my rock samples are from this day. I love being able to see the minerals in a rock! Sedimentary rocks are just really old squished up minerals...which is such a sad state compared to the beautiful crystals formed from magma or under extreme pressures or temperatures!!
I have forgotten so much of my mineralogy :( I wish I could take it Mineralogy 2 at Miami....but oh wait...it doesn’t exist. Anyway, we studied a lot of igneous cross cutting relationships in order to decide which rocks came first and when metamorphism occurred in this area. I was pretty much high on life this entire day! I learned so many new things...like apalite. So cool.
I answered more questions than I ever do because this is what I actually love! It sprinkled on and off a bit and it was extremely windy on the top of the ridge, but the weather was being extremely good for us. Our first stop was Borland Saddle...we hiked up above the tree line (the tree line is a approximately 1000m/1k in New Zealand). As we climbed a ridge we could see steep mountains on all sides and glacial lakes down in the valley below us. Alan said that this was the side of one of the largest subarial landslides. As we were standing on the top it began to rain a bit and the wind picked up considerably and the only thing I could think about was how much I wanted to do field work for my post-grad in Fiordland. Alan and Tim were making jokes about how this was a good day in Fiordland...I want to go back and live right by that lake down in the valley.
This is a picture of me in front of Fiordland on Borland Pass. I'm in my element :)
We then drove along the road cuts that showed a complex web of cross cutting dikes, sills, plutons and metamorphic activity. We took the time to describe each formation, guess about the minerals it contains, ID it and decipher the story of the rocks for each stop.
We stopped by a little mountain stream for lunch and a bout of boulder bashing. Lunch was two delicious PB&Js and a bunch of fruit. We ate and then clamored about looking at rocks and breaking them open to see the inside. I found some great samples at this location. Simon found a diorite pegmatite that had magnetite and pyrite in it. This is a very interesting thing because the oxidation states of Fe in pyrite and magnetite are different, however they crystallized in the same rock. Very interesting.
We got back early, I showered then came back for dinner prep then played a little Frisbee and soccer before dinner. After dinner I helped cleaned up, dishes and mop before I was able to go to the evening lecture. It felt good to help with that sort of thing...It makes me feel a lot more helpful and part of a team than just a “camper” or something. Alan gave a great short lecture then set us loose to work on a chronological history of the area and a cross-section. Simon and I, with the help of Tim, had a little difficulty with the history, but by 10:30 I nailed it and went off to bed :) [Then we lost one of The Others. She had been really frustrated that evening and she went on a walk by herself at night and we didn’t know where she was...we ate some chocolate that I got out for her without her...then we found her.]
This was my absolute favorite day of the trip! The entire time I was thinking that there was no place I would rather be. God made NZ so beautiful, so geologically exceptional, so complex and so stinking loveable!
DAY 4: Tertiary Day East
It was raining the morning of the 4th day and I was so glad that I had been in the group to go up to the Borland Saddle on a clear ish day. However today was the day with Dushan in the rain. We had our normal breakfast and Milo then we loaded up the vans and headed to the east of our area. Here we saw some mudstone and turbidites, same formation as the ones from Tertiary Day West. We saw diorite breccia, with clasts ranging from 3-6 cm. I had never seen a igneous breccia like that before. We saw some very interesting fault contacts between formations that showed a displacement of very longs periods of time. Because it was raining, I took very poor notes and my notebook and maps got pretty wet. It was still interesting and I think I got the gist of it ;) I was pretty wet this whole day.
At one location we had to hike through a field of giant turnips. I’m not actually sure they are giant because I’m not sure what size “normal” turnips are. These were sizable tubers. I was told they are grown for the sheep to eat. Laura and Mackenzie both stole one. After the turnip field we followed a river for a ways and measured strikes and dips and watched as before our eyes the paleoenvironment (environment the rocks were formed in) changed from near shore turbidites to deep water calcareous mudstone with calcareous turbidites. It was pretty interesting to understand that as we were walking we were moving up the tilted stack of sedimentary rocks and as a result forward in time and by looking at the rocks we were virtually reading the story of the area. Stories solidified in stone. I would take a good book or a good outcrop to keep me occupied any day.
We went on a massive hike up to the top of a mountain/hill to see a view of an eroded anticline. It was really awesome to be able to see the landscape of the rocks we had been looking at up close all day. On the way down I noticed that all the Americans were wearing quite bright raincoats...and I noticed that we had the very important ingredients of the rainbow...so we made a raincoatbow!
Then we got done really early so Dushan took us to Lake Monowai and we took some pictures and goofed off for a bit before going back to camp to shower and eat. For dinner they had a massive amount of food and two Speight’s beers for everyone! I had never seen so many grinning geology students after a rainy field day :) It was delicious. Dushan’s evening lecture was good, he was short and to the point so we could get to work and he helped us out with the strat column a bit. There was also a big bowl of lollies (AKA candy of any kind) for us all. I stayed pretty late working on the map of the area, then we caught a ride back with a certain demonstrator who had found the extra Speight’s :P
Turnip party.
Sleep.
DAY 5: Clean and Drive Home
Today we got up (reluctantly) and cleaned out cabins, cleaned the common areas and vanned it up. I rode in a van with all Kiwis and one other America girl. Her name is Margurite, she is incredible. She is always smiling and thinking about other people, not herself. She is like sunshine embodied in a person. :) It was really fun to talk to the Kiwis on the ride back...we had some good laughs. After arriving back at the geo building I took some of the extra food then I did my usual walk back to my flat with all my stuff. This walk is always a good one. I reflect on the trip, wish it wasn’t over, smile to myself about how incredible my life is, then think about the laundry I need to do. It’s the best.
After doing laundry and sorting out a few things online with banking and Miami classes. I meandered down to eat then headed to the library to work on some statistics. I didn’t get anything done lol because Whitney and Jenn were there and we facebook stocked a bunch of random people. Plus they had made guacamole and brought chips!!!
All in all I think I am fast on my way to becoming a REAL geologist. I had a great trip but I am very saddened that this is our last field camp. I don’t want these learning/adventure/pressure/bonding/incredible experiences to be over. I will just have to keep doing new things and remember this great times. “Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened” as my friend Emma once said. And oh am I smiling!!
No comments:
Post a Comment