Wandering through Time

Crossing the San Rafael Swell

Geology has always fascinated me. I recently found a newspaper article my mom kept where I placed second in the 5th grade science fair for a display on fluorescent minerals. My family spent many weekends rockhounding, and we had a big pile of cool rocks down by the garage, so I guess it's in my blood.

Living out West where you can actually see what's under and around you (very little vegetation) also helps. And when you're outside a lot wandering around, you learn to recognize things, even though you may not actually know what they are—geologic formations, in my case.

This may have been a huge barrier island in the interior of the sea.

So, to continue describing the field trip of last weekend, after leaving the Book Cliffs, we drove to the San Rafael Swell, a landform I've spent many many moons wandering and exploring.

The San Rafael is actually a huge anticline, a result of forces during the Laramide Orogeny some 60 or so million years ago, which was the causative force behind many of this part of the country's uplifted landforms. But we weren't looking at that, we were instead looking at the results of a huge inland sea, the Western Interior Seaway, which covered the area some 100 million years ago.

As we stopped and looked at various formations, our professor discussed how to tell what was going on—whether or not the sea was moving further inland (transgressing) or moving out (regressing) as the sea levels changed.

Dakota Formation meets Cedar Mountain Formation—here, the sea was moving inward as sea levels rose.

It's mind boggling what geologists know, and as I learn more and more, I have immense respect for the body of work that's behind the science.

And it's kind of funny how what one knows layers our perceptions of things. Understanding how the planet works really opens your eyes to a new reality, a fascinating world, which reminds me of the morning not too long ago when I was coming into my geology class and an administrator asked me about what was on the broadcast screen. He looked puzzled and asked why we were talking about religious stuff in a geology class.

I laughed and gave him a quick explanation of what the word transgression meant in this context, whereupon he looked relieved.

Nice thing about geology is you're usually a good distance from any church cause you're already in heaven.

Here Cedar Mountain Formation meets the Morrison Formation, land of dinosaur bones. There's a huge unconformity here, layers of missing time.

Our field trip ended at the eastern base of the Swell, where everyone else headed back north and I headed into the twilight, back to my own territory—although when you study geology, it seems the whole planet becomes your territory.