Let's get this show on the road.
Can everybody see or hear me?
Thank you.
Thank you all for coming here.
And on behalf of
Western Libraries,
I am delighted to welcome you
here to our Speaking of Maps.
This is our second presentation
of Speaking of Maps.
We try to do one every quarter,
at least, that is our hope.
So this is the one for the fall.
My name is Rob Lopresti,
and I am the map librarian.
I am technically on professional
leave this quarter, which
means Peter Smith back
there is the map librarian.
Hi, Peter.
But I get to do
the introduction.
Lucky me.
And you are sitting
in the map collection.
We have a couple
hundred thousand maps.
We have maps from
all over the world.
The closer you
are to Bellingham,
the more maps you'll find,
if that makes any sense.
In other words, we
have more about Mt.
Baker than we do about Mt.
Kilimanjaro.
But we do have maps
from all over the world.
And you're welcome
to come in here.
Our hours are on the door.
We also have a website
which not only tells you
about our collection,
but also has
lots of electronic
maps, links, and so on.
And I would like to thank
Mark Greenberg, the Dean
of Libraries, for helping
make this possible, Dennis
Matthews, who actually runs this
place on a day-to-day basis.
He's in charge of
the map collection,
and he actually knows where
things are much better than I
do-- you're welcome to
talk to him at any point--
and our students here,
who helped set this up.
And I want to let you know
that copies of Dave's book,
which they will
be talking about,
are available through the
Associated Student's Bookstore
right back there, for sale,
so feel free to pick them up.
This is your last chance
to grab some goodies
before the talk starts.
Feel free.
And we have a sign up
sheet for future events,
which you are welcome
to sign up for,
so we will let you know when
there is going to be anything.
That will be there.
Also, my business cards
and Dennis' business cards
are there, as well.
So let's get to the main event.
Dave Tucker is a resident
of Bellingham, Washington.
He has a master's in
geology from Western.
He is a research associate
in the geology department
of Western.
He is the director of the Mt.
Baker Volcano Research Center,
which is an all volunteer,
nonprofit organization
that raises
funds to support
research and education
about our beloved
local active volcano.
He also leaves
public field trips
and gives presentations about
the geology of northwest
Washington, and is the author
of the popular blog Northwest
Geology Field Trips.
and he is the author
of a book, which he is about
to tell you about, I think,
which was published by
Mountain Press Publishing, OK?
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Rob.
[APPLAUSE]
I'm glad I have the chance
to come down here and talk.
OK, can you all hear me
without a microphone,
because I'm going to be
a dancing, you know--
with a sledge hammer.
And I need to stand here.
So you can hear me OK here?
I don't need to go
stand at the podium?
All right, thanks.
I'm happy to see a
crowd here today.
I'm Dave Tucker.
Rob introduced me.
I see some familiar
faces in the audience.
I am a Bellingham guy.
I'll never be a local,
because I didn't grow up here.
I didn't come to Bellingham till
I was 20, over 40 years ago.
I'll never be a local.
But I love to do public
geology education.
That's the thing that I
am most interested in.
When I was writing my thesis
on Hannegan volcanics,
volcanic rocks to
the northeast of Mt.
Shuksan back in the early part
of this century, the earliest
days of this century, actually--
the rocks were a little
bit younger then--
I turned in the first draft of
the introduction to my thesis
to my advisor, Sue DeBari
in the geology department.
And she said, great,
I'll read through this
and get back to you tomorrow.
So I walked out the
door and went back down
to my grad student, little
tiny cubby hole of an office.
Sue comes downstairs
about 10 minutes later.
She says, Dave,
you have to decide
if you're writing a scientific
paper or a popular field guide,
because your introduction
sounds like an Introduction
to a book for the public,
not a scientific paper.
You have to rewrite
your introduction.
And right then, I
realized, you know,
that's really what
I want to be doing,
is doing education about
geology for the general public,
not for, necessarily,
research geologists,
although I've certainly
published papers and done
presentations for geologists.
But I really like doing
outreach to the public.
And that's kind of
the direction I've
taken since I left graduate
school here in 2004.
I've never been a
professional geologist.
I am not a
professional geologist,
although I've been hired to
work on people's field projects,
and I've done plenty of my
own field research around Mt.
Baker and a few other places.
So I ended up writing this book.
And my story today is how the
book came to be, what's in it,
and some of the
inside scoop that you
wouldn't hear if you didn't
hear me tell you about it.
Well, I guess it's now going
to be in the university
archives in this
video, so then anybody
can get the inside
scoop, and will never
have to come to a
presentation again.
You got that?
Good.
OK, let's go.
I grew up in the Northwest.
I grew up in Steliacoom,
just outside of Tacoma,
and in view of the Cascades.
And in high school, I
got into mountaineering.
And I climbed up and
down on the big volcanoes
and the little tiny peaks.
Anything to be out in the
mountains was good for me.
And at that time, as
far as I was concerned,
there were two kinds of-- any
rock climbers in the crowd
here?
Any retired rock climbers?
Any has-been rock climbers?
You know what GFC and NGFC are?
Good for climbing,
not good for climbing.
Other than that, there's
no other kinds of rock, OK?
You can easily do geology
in those two terms,
as far as I was concerned.
So NGFC rock was rock, you know,
where you could find a handhold
that you really liked.
And you just picked it up and
took it with you all day long.
And GFC is like the stuff on
the right hand side there.
I started getting really,
really interested in,
what are these rocks
that I was climbing on?
And why are these
volcanoes the way they are?
This was back in
the mid-late '60s.
And we didn't really
know that much
about the Cascade volcanoes.
We didn't really
have an understanding
of the origin of the
Cascade Mountains,
for that matter, because plate
tectonics, the overall theory
that kind of ties together
much of geology today,
was a brand new theory.
In fact, when I did my
undergraduate geology
at the University of Washington,
in my geology class of 1970,
the professor said,
OK, today, we're
going to talk about plate
tectonics for 15 minutes.
And then, we're going to
move on to real geology.
I even have my notes
from the class.
I still have that.
He said, because plate
tectonics is such a new idea
that somebody is probably
going to overturn it
in the next few years.
So we're not going to waste
time teaching undergraduates
about plate tectonics.
Well, that guy was wrong.
So I wanted to learn more about
the rocks that I was climbing
on and the volcanoes in
my backyard, this one
that we all know and love.
Anybody know where
this photograph
is taken, by the way?
This is--
Twin Sisters?
I'm sorry?
Twin Sisters?
No, this is taken--
it's a telephoto
lens, it's cheating--
this is taken at the Mt.
Baker Volcano Research Center,
Volcano Observatory Site Number
One, at the top
of Taylor Street.
So with a telephoto lens, you
can get between the houses
and get a really nice view
of the active crater, Sherman
Crater, of Mt.
Baker.
So in the mid '90s,
I was very nearly
ready to retire from my
third or fourth career.
At that time, I was a
mountaineering guide
and instructor.
And I was working on Mt.
Baker and teaching
crevasse rescue,
glacier travel courses
for the County Parks,
back when they did
that kind of a program
because they didn't care
about liability in those days.
And there was a woman in the
course, a rather short woman,
learning how to get in
and out of crevasses,
but mostly how to get
out, because the idea
is to learn how not to get in.
And I never had a
chance to talk to her
the whole day that we
were out until we're
almost back to the car, and
I found myself bringing up
the rear of the hike.
And I asked her who she was, and
why she was taking that course.
Her name was Liz Schermer,
from the geology department
at Western.
And like I said, I'd always
had a fascination with geology
since my early climbing days.
But I'd taken some
classes in university
back in the early '70s.
I took classes from Don
Easterbrook, sitting here.
And it turns out that
Liz was brushing up
on some of her
mountain travel skills
so she could start working
with this fellow, Wes Hildreth,
from the US Geological Survey,
who was just, at that time,
beginning the first in-depth
geologic field studies at Mt.
Baker.
I mean, in detail, mapping
all the different lava
flows, all the
different rock units,
and trying to put together
a comprehensive story
of the eruptive
history of the volcano.
I got all excited.
Wow, a geologist coming
to work on, you know,
my backyard volcano.
And I said, well, I'm willing
to help on that project.
So Liz put me in touch with Wes.
And I ended up working
with Wes as a volunteer
over the next ten
summers doing field work.
And on the way, he introduced
me to this other fine fellow,
Kevin Scott, also from
the Geological Survey,
who was researching the
Holocene history of Mt.
Baker, the post-glacial
period, especially the collapse
and lahar history.
So I ended up working
with Kevin, as well.
And that was kind of my
introduction to field geology.
And one day, my first
year in 1994, Wes
said, hey, Dave, do you know
anything about the Hannegan
Calderas volcanics?
And I said, I really don't know
anything about them, you know,
there's--
I know where they are.
So we hiked into Hannegan
Pass, about a five mile hike
into Hannegan
Pass, where we have
this view of the south
face of Hannegan Peak.
And Wes, who's one of the
world's foremost experts
on Calderas, very large collapse
structures, got all excited.
We looked at it and gave these
rocks the highest accolade
that any rock can get from
Wes Hildreth, pretty fancy.
Then he turned to me and said,
that's your master's thesis.
Like, what, master's thesis?
He said, yeah.
He says, you need to
go back to school.
I said, Wes, I'm 58 years old.
He said, what's that
got to do with anything?
Go to graduate school
and study these rocks,
and tell us the story,
the geologic story.
So I did.
I ended up going to Western
and studying these rocks.
This is a 1,000
foot high rock face.
It's all volcanic
ash, now lithified,
or hardened into rock,
and as the result
of a single eruption.
So we think of Mt.
St. Helens 1980 as pretty
big because it dumped
a few inches of ash on Yakima.
But here's something that
dumped 1,000 feet of ash
at the site of the eruption.
That ended up being a great
story, a great research
project, and a couple
of publications for me.
And these are the rocks
that I was describing
when Sue DeBari told me that
I needed to decide if I wanted
to write for scientists, or if I
wanted to write for the public.
So I wrote for
scientists for a while,
but then got into
the public thing.
So I eventually formed an
organization called the Mt.
Baker Volcano Research Center,
a nonprofit all volunteer group.
And we lead field
trips around Mt.
Baker, and provide
funding for students
in both graduate and
undergraduate who
are doing field work on Mt.
Baker, not necessarily
geologic work.
We can fund glaciological
work, fund biological work.
We funded an ice worm
study this past year.
It had nothing to
do with geology,
but an interesting topic.
And so we raised the money by
selling T-shirts and by people
buying seats on field
trips, or places in line
on the trail, the field trip.
And over the years,
we've raised enough money
to support some student
research projects.
And it's being outside talking
to the public I really,
really love.
And it kind of led to
the idea of my book.
This is the crater of Mt.
Baker, Sherman Crater, which is
constantly pumping out gases,
volcanic gases, mostly steam.
And you can see
those on a nice day.
We collect gas samples
from inside the crater
to keep tabs on what's going
on at depth below the volcano.
We take dozens of temperature
readings every year
in the crater.
And we collect gas samples to
be analyzed by the Geological
Survey to see if there's
any chemical changes which
could indicate movement of
magma or injection of new magma
at depth beneath the volcano.
It's an essential part
of volcano monitoring.
This is my day job.
I clean roofs and
gutters for a living.
Like I said, I'm not a
professional geologist.
But I feel like I understand
this topic well enough that I
could go ahead and follow
through on my original idea,
and do public geology education.
This pays a lot better
than being a geologist,
let me tell you.
So I started writing a road
and trail geology guide to Mt.
Baker, and started shopping
it around about six years ago.
And I approached a
number of publishers
who all told me
that, you know, this
is too localized a book for us.
One of the publishers I went
to, Mountain Press Publishers
in Missoula, said, that's really
a great idea, but, you know,
we've never heard about Mt.
Baker.
And when I explained where
it was, they said, oh yeah,
that's up in that little
northwest corner of Washington.
And we can't ever
imagine anybody wanting
to buy a book about that.
But how about a book for our
Geology Underfoot series?
Wow, how does that work?
So they explained to me
about writing these books.
I had never written
a book before,
or had a book
published, and I'd never
really gotten serious about it.
The next thing I know, I
made an agreement with them
to produce a book to be
published in one year.
And that was in April 2010.
The book was published
this past June.
So you can see that the one year
idea was a little out to lunch.
And after requesting extensions
for the second or third time
with my editor,
James Lansbury, I
said, you know, I
feel kind of sheepish
having asked to get this
book done in one year
because clearly,
it's not doable.
And he said, well, I
knew it wasn't doable.
I just figured you
must be independently
wealthy or something
with absolutely nothing
to do with your free time,
which was certainly not true.
So anyway, the book came out.
It is part of a series of
books called Geology Underfoot.
The publisher is the same people
who do the Roadside Geology
Series, so many of you are
familiar with those books.
But these Underfoot series
get you out of the car,
or off your bicycle,
or out of the bus,
however it is you're
transporting yourself,
and gets you up close and
personal with the rocks.
And they are written
by people who
are familiar with the
geology of the area
and who have some
semblance of how
to present that
material to the public,
to explain geologic wonders
of these various areas.
So my book is the
eighth in the series.
The Geology Underfoot
in Southern Idaho
is now coming out
within the next--
less than a year, I think.
That'll be Number 9.
And I understand
that there's somebody
who's getting started on a
Geology Underfoot in some part
or another of Oregon.
Now, you cannot write a book
like this without the help
of a lot of people.
So I dedicate the book
to two faculty members
at Western, Doctors
Chris Suczec and Maury
Schwartz, who were instrumental
in helping me write.
They're both very,
very good writers.
They held my hand through a
lot of the writing process.
They both read large
parts of the manuscript,
did a peer review of
some of the chapters.
Unfortunately,
neither one of them
lived to see the book published.
It's a big loss
to the department
to have these two gone.
But I really had
to give them credit
for helping me become a
writer, at least good enough
to send it to the editor, who
then helped me become a writer.
So the format of
the book, like all
the Geology Underfoot books, is
take you to specific locations
and get you out of
the car and either
walk to the other side
of the parking lot,
or hike seven miles,
somewhere in between,
in the different vignettes,
to see what the geology is
in these locations.
So here we have the
list of locations.
It's a map.
So Mt.
Baker, Bellingham--
you can see I
have a vignette right
down here in Chuckanut.
I have one right here on
campus in the Geology Museum
up at Western, in
the geology building,
in the environmental
studies building.
And then, the rest
of the vignettes
are scattered around the state.
And of course, you
can't write about places
without visiting them.
So this is my road
track over the years.
And I think you'll see
that most of these places
were visited more than
one time, because I
would have to go back, and,
oh, those pictures were lousy.
Is that road still open?
I would have to go back to
locations to double check.
I also sent the draft
of each chapter with all
the illustrations-- sometimes
they were just pencil
sketches--
both to geologists
who had done field
work in that specific location.
Don Easterbrook sitting
here reviewed my Double
Bluff chapter there, number 11.
So some field researcher who
was familiar with the area
did a peer review.
I also sent each chapter to
at least two different people
in the target audience,
friends of mine or people
who read my Northwest
Geology Field Trips blog.
I would just send
them a manuscript
and they would go to that
place using the directions
that I had provided.
And they would see if the
chapter made sense to them.
Some of these people were
total strangers to me.
They were just
people who offered
to help through
reading the blog,
or were enthusiastic
about the book.
So the book had a lot of
field checking before it even
went to the editor.
And I think it really shows.
It's pretty accurate,
in terms of directions.
No one has yet sent me
any hate mail saying,
I couldn't get to such
and such a place yet.
I don't know if anybody's
read the whole book yet.
Anyway, so I
traveled around a lot
over the course of the years.
The hardest part
about writing a book
was what is not going to go in,
because the geology of Western
Washington is far more varied
than most people would think.
It's much more than glacial
deposits and volcanoes
in the Cascades.
There's a lot of really, really
wonderful geologic sites.
And I actually started
writing chapters
on each of these
vignettes, which
is what the publisher calls
a chapter, which eventually
did not get into the book.
Some of them were
completely written
and ready to be edited,
have been reviewed,
field checked, everything.
And for space
considerations, because I
was way over my word
budget, it was simplest just
to delete chapters rather
than try to hack a word here
and a sentence there.
So some of those chapters
ended up not going in.
Others kind of made sense
not to put them in because,
like, the Twin Sisters
are a wonderful place
to see a piece of the mantle,
deep from below the crust.
But there's really
not many places
where the general
public would be
able to go and lay hands on
the rock, and study the rocks.
So I didn't want to have
anything that you could only
look at from the distance.
I've gotten a lot of
flack for not including
the one called rounded
rocks, and crummy beaches,
why we don't have sandy
beaches in the Salish Sea
that seems to be
a popular topic.
So I may yet have to include a
chapter like that on my blog.
You know, and it's really
hard to decide what
wasn't going to go in the book.
But eventually, I pulled
together the chapters.
So I had to write the book
for the general public.
But I did not want to
dumb the book down.
I figure my audience
are people who
are interested in
natural history,
interested in the
earth around them.
They may not have a
geologic background.
They may have never taken
any geology courses.
But they're intelligent
enough to be curious
and to be willing to
use a glossary-- there's
a big fat glossary in
the back of the book.
And in order to
learn new things.
So I intentionally used
some technical terms.
I tried to make it
as understandable
as possible by a
non-geologist as I could.
And that was another reason why
I sent each of the vignettes
out to target audience
people to read
and critique for me, which
really helped with the things
that I had not
explained very well.
So we're going to go
through one of the vignettes
here a little bit,
how it came to be.
And this is the one right here
in the backyard about honeycomb
weathering at
Larrabee State Park.
So each vignette
begins with a map
to tell you how to get there.
And I used a shaded relief
digital elevation model,
base maps, which were
prepared by a couple
of graduate students
up at Western.
I hired them to provide me
with just the shaded topography
there, no labels, no roads, no
other information on the map.
And I loaded that shaded
relief map into an art program
called Adobe Illustrator,
and then drew
in all the lines, colors,
labels, in that program.
And then, the chapter takes
you, like all the chapters--
I take you to specific
locations where
I try to explain what's
going on, what you're seeing.
So this honeycomb weathering
down at Larrabee State Park
is a beautiful feature.
It's puzzled a lot of people
for a lot of the time,
for a long time.
And a fellow who did his
master's thesis here at Western
back in the preceding century
in the '70s, George Mustoe,
as some of you will know,
did his master's thesis
on the process by which this
honeycomb weathering develops
in rocks.
It's a weathering a
process that involves
algae, the interaction of algae,
salt crystals, and sandstone.
So it's in part a
biological process,
and part a chemical process.
And George's work is now
famous and well-known,
and cited all the time when
people do follow-up studies
on this honeycomb weathering.
So each chapter includes a
stop or two, or three, or four.
And I give you directions to
get to that specific location.
Right here, down
on the beach, just
below the bandshell
at Larrabee--
I'm sure most of the
people in this room
have been down to this
little beach a lot of times--
the boat ramp is just
around the corner
on the other side of this rock.
And so, I try to
explain the origin
of these honeycombs, or
Tafoni, as they're called
in the geologic literature.
And I'm not going to belabor
the whole process here
in our presentation tonight.
You can read the book if
you're that interested.
But I used a lot of photographs
that were provided to me.
George Musto provided this one.
This is a scanning
electron microscope view
of salt crystals
that are growing
amongst algae, which are growing
on the surface of the rock.
This is a big part
of the process that
allows these honeycomb
weathering features
to develop on the rock.
I solicited photographs from
friends and from my blog,
and said, hey, you know, I don't
have a photograph of Blue Lake
up near Washington Pass,
or I have a photograph
and it's really lousy.
And here it is.
Can you do better than that?
May I use it in the book,
and I'll give you credit
and I'll send you a copy?
So I would have
people providing me--
I got seven or eight submissions
of Blue Lake, for instance,
and I chose the one
that I really liked.
And that person got
their name in the book.
I've never met them.
This is one that
George provided me.
Most of the photographs
in the book are mine,
but I would say 10
percent or maybe a few
more than that are other people.
So once again, the book takes
you to specific locations
where you can learn about
the geology right up front.
The book is quite
different-- these books are
very different from the Roadside
Geology series of books, which
are very unsatisfying
if you have much
of an interest in geology,
because you drive down the road
and you're looking
out the window,
and you're trying
to figure out what
it is you're seeing as
your passenger reads
the text to you.
And they're generally
not very good maps.
They need a lot of review,
need a lot of fixing up,
those books.
And if you really want
to lay hands on the rock,
you need a book like this
Geology Underfoot series.
So that is the reason
that Mountain Press
decided to come out with the
Geology Underfoot Series,
as a sort of
hands-on opportunity
to learn some
geology, as opposed
to just have something
vaguely explained here.
Stop 2 is down at Clayton
Beach in the Larrabee Park
vignette, a place that
I've been hanging out
for a long, long, long time.
I used to do a lot of
rock climbing down here
on these structures,
which are beautiful.
Many people see
people down there
in a beautiful golden sunset
taking artistic photos.
One interesting thing
I learned while I
was writing this
particular chapter
is that these features in the
rock, these weathering features
in the rock, change over time.
So here are two photos
that were provided
to me from Ray Pestrong
and John Boxerman
at San Francisco State.
And they have done
a study on changes
in these-- so 1977 and exactly
the same place in 2005.
And they had numbered
things on the rock
so that they could go back
and relocate the same place.
And you look at this photo,
which is from the book,
carefully, and you can begin
to see some real changes
over a short period of
time, less than, you know,
about 30 years.
Once again, photos
provided for the book
for illustrative purposes
from a total stranger.
I get a little
moralistic in the book.
These are very popular
for rock climbing.
And they can be very, very
damaging to these structures.
I feel real guilty for
the ones I broke off
back in my day as a
rock climber down there.
So in the book, I say that
they should not be climbed on.
I don't know if
that's ethical of me
or not, because I
used to climb on them,
but I wasn't paying
attention in those days.
I just wanted to get up.
So there's sort of the
structure of a sample chapter.
Another chapter that I have
is the Geology Museum right
over here in the
ES building, where
I focus on the story
of the giant flightless
bird, Diatryma.
We found a fossil footprint
up near Kendall, Washington,
up the North Fork
Nooksack River in 2009.
And it's quite a long story,
and a wonderful story of how
we managed to save a fossil--
I would hope everyone
here has been to see it--
a fossil bird
footprint this big.
And I go into the whole
story and the significance
of that giant flightless
bird, Diatryma,
and whether it was a predator
or a fruit eating bird.
Well, I learned a lot
writing this book,
figuring out how to
present it to the public.
And some of the chapters
really stand out for me.
I think the most fun
place was Ape Cave.
How many people have
been down there at Mt.
St. Helens?
Not very many.
OK, well, it's
vignette number seven.
And you could be down
there tomorrow morning,
if you get going right now.
I'll pause long enough
for you to leave.
Oh, get a copy of
the book first.
Ape Cave is a lava tube.
It is probably the single most
heavily visited geologic site
in the state, thousands
of visitors every year.
So I tell the story of
how lava tubes develop.
They're like subway
caves underground
inside the lava flow.
And most people
go into Ape Cave,
and they walk down the
stairs that the Forest
Service built that go down into
the entrance into this cave.
And they walk down towards
the end of the cave and back.
It's about a mile round
trip, completely underground.
And then they go
back up the ladder.
But I also tell the story of
the upper part, the wilder part,
of Ape Cave, which doesn't
get nearly as many visitors.
And it has some really
fascinating geologic features,
including some of which
appear to be unique, perhaps
in the world.
So this was a fun trip.
I went with my friend
John Scurlock, who
is a pilot and photographer.
Some of you may be
familiar with John.
And it was in November,
there about six inches
of snow on the ground, and
it was pouring down rain.
Even though we were
30 feet underground,
water was percolating
through the fractured lava
flow above us.
And we did this cave
trip with our umbrellas
up, which really
made it memorable.
And then, we had to hike back in
the dark on the surface trail,
and in the pouring rain,
and starting to sleet.
So I'll never forget that one.
But it was a lot of
fun, and required
quite a bit of reading of the
scientific literature for me,
and learning some new things
in order to relay this story.
Ape Cave has been told before
in some geology guidebooks,
but I don't think anywhere
in the kind of detail
that I go into in this chapter.
There's an urban chapter,
downtown Seattle,
building stone tour, fascinating
rocks from all over the world.
My friend David B.
Williams from Seattle,
who is a science writer--
he does geology books--
he just published
a book called Too
High, Too Steep,
about the removal of
hills in downtown Seattle.
It's a fabulous book.
He was just at
Village Books, too.
But he knew the locations of
some of these really great
building stones in Seattle.
But he didn't really know
the geologic story of them.
So he invited me to
go for a walk with him
and include this
chapter in my book,
in exchange for
explaining to him what
I thought these rocks might be.
So that meant an awful
lot of research on my own,
to try and understand
what these rocks were,
where did they come
from-- that was
quite a bit of detective work.
Like the Morton gneiss
there in Minnesota
is probably the oldest building
stone in the world, three
and a half million years old.
The pizza crust in the lobby
of the Grand Hyatt Hotel--
this is not the
surface of the moon.
This is not photographs.
This is translucent rock, rock
slabs, that are pretty big--
there's my wife Kim for scale--
that are a quarter
of an inch thick.
And there are bright
lights behind it.
So the rock is translucent.
For those of you who have ever
studied geologic thin sections,
looking at very thin,
microscopically thin,
sections of rock
through a microscope,
doing rock studies,
petrologic studies,
this is kind of a
gigantic version
of that microscopic study.
And David B.
Williams and I spent
a long time trying to figure
out, is this really rock?
It feels like plastic.
And we finally managed
to kind of just
poke our heads around the corner
through a gap about that thick.
You could see the backside
of it, not polished--
definitely rock--
and the big bright lights.
And then, we could actually see
the thickness of these slabs,
about a quarter of an inch.
That was a hell of a story.
So you can do this walking
tour downtown Seattle.
It's about a mile,
starting at Pioneer Square
and ending up at the Grand
Hyatt near Westlake Center,
and see some really
interesting geology, including
learning a lot about
urbanite, man-made stone,
asphalt, concrete. and so on.
Some of the geology
is very, very complex.
Some of it is still
not understood,
or at least agreed really
well by geologists.
You can understand
the rocks pretty well,
but when you try to
put the rocks together
into the big picture
of what happened here,
what is the story that
the rocks tell you
about the history
of the earth, there
is quite a bit of complexity
and even controversy
in some of these rocks.
And one of these is
the Skagit Gneiss
in the Skagit Gorge between
Newhalem and Diablo area.
So this one was very
difficult to explain.
And I got a serious
case of frustration.
And I just couldn't write,
total writer's block,
for almost three months.
I just couldn't figure
out how to explain
this story without
writing a technical paper.
And a geologist in Western's
geology department, Ned Brown,
agreed to review my story.
He's done a lot of
work in these rocks.
And I finally put together,
cobbled together, a draft
that I wasn't very happy with.
And I sent it to Ned.
And he sent it back
to me the next day,
and he said, good start.
That really sent
me into a tailspin.
But I think I eventually got
it pretty well figured out
with reviews from--
well, plenty of help from people
like Ned Brown and Liz Schermer
up on campus, to
help me explain this.
But it's very complicated
in the northern Cascades.
Each of those--
there's a map of--
very crude, basic geologic
map of the North Cascades.
Here's the Skagit River, so
Concrete is right there, Mt.
Baker, and then the highway,
going over Highway 20.
And so, each of these colors
represents a different type
of rock.
And these rocks are
not necessarily related
to each other.
They're different ages.
They look totally
different from each other.
It's a very complicated
geologic history.
And somehow, I
had to at least go
through the basic
explanation in that chapter.
So I had to figure out how
to do that, out of that mess.
Then I had to explain concepts
like, how do rocks get squished
and crushed and deformed?
How do minerals grow in
different shapes from the way
they originally were,
through directed pressure,
compression inside the crust?
The whole plate tectonics
story is part of this.
So it was a big,
complicated topic.
And I really had a
hard time with it.
But I think it turned out OK.
Ned signed my copy
and said, pretty good.
The least walking,
down at Willapa Bay.
You get out your car and
you walk 100 yards out
on the mudflat, and you're done.
Here, you can see spruce
stumps that are growing
in the inner tidal area.
So at high tide, these
stumps are underwater.
And these trees have been dated
to the winter between the 1699
and the 1700 growing season,
by counting tree rings.
Some carbon dating
has been done,
some ring dates, some
dendrochronology,
or tree ring dating,
has been done.
Some detective
work has been done
to try to figure
out, why did the land
and when did the land, get
subsided below sea level?
Combine that with
historical records
from Japan of the tsunamis
without an earthquake.
And of course, the
Japanese were very
good at keeping track of dates.
So putting two and two
together, and coming up
with something probably
extremely close to 4,
you come up with a
magnitude 9 earthquake
off our coast on the
night of January 26, 1700.
So everybody sound
asleep, ground
shakes, the coastline
subsides 5-10 feet.
So places that are just
barely above the waves
are suddenly submerged
below sea level.
It may have included
people's houses.
Fifteen minutes later, the
tsunamis started arriving.
There are Native American
stories of the Thunderbird
and the Whale that are bound
from northern California
all the way up into
Vancouver Island.
And stories told in my
grandfather's grandfather's
day, or my grandfather's
mother's great grandmother
lost her life when suddenly
the sea came into our village.
So there's all these stories.
And of course, you
can't date this event
from the Native
American stories.
They didn't do time like we do.
But just kind of putting two
and two together, once again,
and trying to make
sense of the time period
that was discussed
in these stories,
it made sense that we're
talking about the same magnitude
9 earthquake here off our
coast on January 26, 1700
that sent tsunamis to Japan.
and killed people.
So here's a place
where you can go see,
you can touch these
stumps, trees that were--
and you're standing on land--
that subsided below sea level
on that day, on that night.
And you can see forest
soil underneath these trees
stumps on the beach, which are,
you know, covered at high tide.
But I think it's probably
the best place to go actually
see the remnants of the
last really big magnitude 9
earthquake here.
And I discuss what causes them,
and why we cannot say that
we're overdue for the next
one, unlike the New Yorker,
for those of you who
have read that article.
The most walking is a 7
and 1/2 mile round trip
on the north side of Mt.
St. Helens at the Johnston
Ridge Visitors Center,
where I talk a little bit about
the May 18, 1980 eruption.
But that story is told in many,
many, may different places.
So I talk specifically about
the rocks and the deposits
from that eruption that
you're actually walking over
as you walk along the trail.
It's very, very,
scenic, very dramatic.
And it's not a difficult
trail, despite the length.
I highly recommend-- not
now, it's snowing, I'm sure.
This was a really frustrating
chapter, Washaway Beach,
at the north end of Willapa
Bay, Pacific County.
Anybody know where
this place is?
There's a place
where homes have been
built right on bluffs, very low
bluffs, just above the beach.
And the storm waves, mostly,
are eroding these bluffs
from the banks.
And the houses are
collapsing on the beach.
And you walk down the beach.
And you see sewer fittings
sticking up out of the beach.
And even offshore
in the waves, you
can see plumbing
pipes sticking up.
So there used to be
people living there.
Their homes were
destroyed bit by bit
by bit, as these bluffs recede.
And people-- nobody's been
killed because of this,
because they've seen
it coming, and they've
had time to vacate their
house as one corner starts
to subside.
It's been an ongoing process
for a very long time.
And it's a wonderful
place to kind of go see
the direct effects of geologic
events on human beings,
and sort of a lesson in folly.
It's a great place
to visit and see
this house that's being
protected, surrounded
by the beach, almost.
This is that house in 1990.
And that's 400 yards.
Here is a 2011 photograph.
There's the house.
So this is easily in a human
lifetime, a small portion
of a human lifetime.
See the star?
It marks in the house.
So I just thought
this was a great place
to include in the book.
And I had my doubts
about my directions
out to a very specific place
there on Washaway Beach.
So I went back for a couple of
more photographs to find this.
Beach is closed.
No public access.
It was fully written, except
for a couple of photographs
and a detail in the
description of how to get
to a particular location.
No trespassing.
So the entire chapter was
deleted after completion.
On the other hand, it helped
cut down on my word total.
Maybe it was a
blessing in disguise.
I have since heard that
the signs are gone.
So you can still go there.
But you're not going to get
directions out of my book.
Sorry.
So the book is chock-full
of diagrams that I made.
I had to figure
out how to explain
geologic concepts to
people who might not
be familiar with them.
So here is an example of how
these preliminary-- of how
these diagrams were made.
I start with a pencil
sketch-- yes, paper, pencil,
sitting at my desk, you
know, drinking a beer
and eating chips and
fending my cats off
while I make these diagrams.
And then I would
scan the diagram,
which is trying to
convey a basic concept--
in this case, how does
magma rise up in the crust--
and I would scan the
diagram and trace it
in Adobe Illustrator,
a digital tracing.
I just used my mouse to
draw over the pencil lines.
And then I can delete
the pencil drawing.
And then I can start
playing around with it,
changing shapes bit by bit.
I can try colors, trial
and error, what looks good.
OK, not too bad.
How about some labels?
No, I like that color better.
No, I like that color better.
No, let's go to that one.
So I can always change
colors around in the program.
And I had to decide
what am I going
to label so that the diagrams
are not too complicated,
but that the things that are
necessary to be explained
are explained?
So then, I get the
completed diagram,
and I send it off to my
target audience reviewers.
And I say, do you get this?
Just the diagram and the caption
should be able to explain it.
And they wrote back and
said, no, I don't get it.
What would you do?
I don't know.
Explain it to me better.
Re-draw it.
And then, of course, it has
to pass my peer reviewers
to be sure that
these diagrams are
within scientific believability.
And then, of course, it has
to fly past the publisher.
Yeah, yeah, well, we're not
going to reproduce that.
Colors are really bad, or
it's too big, or whatever.
Send it back.
Anyway, I made an awful
lot of diagrams this way,
the idea being trying
to explain complicated
processes where a picture
is worth a thousand words,
because I was over
my word limit.
After I got my copy of
the book-- by the way,
the publisher sent the first
box of books to Village Books,
and I had to go down
and buy a copy--
But I get royalties from that.
Probably didn't
pay my gas up here.
I started looking the book
over, and I realized, you know,
my finger's in
eight photographs.
My rock hammer is in
only one photograph.
How do you do a
geology book and only
have one photograph
of a rock hammer?
Don, how many photographs
of your rock hammer
do you have in your books?
10,000, probably.
Yeah, 10,000, see?
I mean, my pocketknife is
in more than eight photos.
Here's a joke.
How do you tell
that you're looking
at a collection of photographs
taken by a geologist?
There's more photographs
of their hammer
than of their spouse.
Well, not in my book.
Kim actually appears in
two different photographs.
And all my kids and grandkids
are represented in the book.
They're in different
photographs,
although my stepdaughter
wanted to be in a photograph
where she couldn't
be recognized.
So all the kids are in the
book, including the pug.
See the pug in this photo?
There's my stepdaughter
wanting to be sure
that she was
incognito, but still
being scientifically helpful.
Know where this is?
You've really got to go
check out the Rolling Boulder
up at Whatcom Community College.
Fantastic to tell the
story of that rock.
You know, this rock,
which means hair cut.
This is the glacial erratic
down in Coupeville, Kim
providing scale.
So I'll wrap up my
little presentation
with the word about
the cover art.
It's not a photograph.
People have said, you know,
that's a great photograph
of Mt.
St. Helens.
Well, OK.
So if that's Mt.
St. Helens, then what's
this stuff over here?
There's, you know, a
geographic disconnect.
But it's an erupting volcano.
It has to be Mt.
St. Helens, but only
if it's a photograph.
So Eric Knight in Los Angeles
specializes in geologic art.
So he painted this.
And it was the publisher's
decision what was going to be
on the cover, not the author's.
So he painted this view of
a future eruption of Mt.
Rainier and what the
effects of it could be.
And so we see the west side Mt.
Rainier, and lahar is coming
down through the Gulf River
drainage, and through the
location of the town of Orting,
which is built on top of a
500-year-old volcanic mudflow,
and then floods in large
volumes of sediment
going out into the
Tacoma tide flats.
It's a very detailed diagram.
There's the Tacoma Dome.
You can recognize individual
buildings in this painting
that Eric did.
So we took the sketches
of the painting
and we sent it to quite a number
of people of Cascade Volcano
Observatory, and people
like Kevin Scott,
who have studied the
eruptive history of Mt.
Rainier, to say,
is this realistic?
Or is it believable?
Yes, it's one possible scenario.
And Eric and I liked
the art so much--
I'm glad he liked
it, he did it--
that we decided that he
would make posters of these.
So I have some of the
posters, wall size posters,
of this cover art
without, you know,
my name on it and
all that stuff.
So just like this, only you
don't even have writing out.
They're in the back
of the room there.
I'll sell them to you
for fifteen bucks.
So no book like
this, like I said,
can be written by yourself.
A whole lot of
people helped out.
And I've done my best
to give them credit.
Like I said, every
single chapter
was peer-reviewed
by a geologist who
has done fieldwork in the area
and who is, in most cases,
published on the topic in
the scientific literature.
So I have a contract
with Village Books
to publish a road and
trail guide to Mt.
Baker geology.
It'll be out next summer.
It's a step-by-step guide on Mt.
Baker roads and trails.
After that, I'm
writing a book on what
it was like here
during the Ice Age,
where did all the ice come
from, how many times did ice
come down out of the
interior of Canada
and cover the Salish Sea?
We had about close to a
mile of ice sitting here
just a few thousand years ago.
So that story--
I'm working with a publisher
on getting that started.
And I'm looking
to retire someday
from my roof cleaning
business and doing geology
guiding as a retirement
business, which would probably,
you know, keep me
in beer and chips
and gas for the van
I'd have to rent,
the insurance, and nothing else.
Not starting to sound so good,
now that I think about it.
Anyway, so I thank
you all for coming.
And I'm happy to
take any questions.
[APPLAUSE]
Does anybody want to
know anything else,
or do you just want to go
straight to the cookies?
Yes, Don?
I would argue with
you about one point.
Please do, Don.
You're good at that.
--and that is that anyone with
a master's degree from Western
who can survive 10
years as a field
assistant with Wes Hildreth
is a professional geologist.
Let's say that I was
paid in dinners at Milano
and a beer or two every
evening, and with a hard floor
to sleep on in the little
inns up in Glacier.
Yeah, yeah, so, yeah.
OK, thank you, Don.
I'll take that credit.
Thank you.
Any other questions?
Yes?
[INAUDIBLE]
Miss Librarian,
what's your question?
Come on over here, and
say that to me again.
So any chance your publisher
will consider a Volume 2?
Volume 2.
No.
'We don't do Volume
2," quote, unquote.
But I've got a lot of material.
So I could conceivably
publish my own book,
find another publisher
to do, you know,
the rejects from the first book.
I shouldn't use
that term, should I?
I could call it Geology
Underfoot Rejected.
So I don't know.
I guess it's possible, but
not through this series.
They've banned the [INAUDIBLE].
Yes?
Quick question.
In the slide that you had
of the taking temperature
measurements--
In the fumaroles
in Sherman Crater?
--there was a bunch
of yellowish stuff.
Is that sulfur, or was that
sort of lichen, or something?
There is no macroscopic
life in Sherman Crater.
It's 9,900 feet
above sea level--
9,500 feet above sea level.
All the yellow rock that you
saw in the fumarole photo
is sulfur-ridged rocks.
or sulfatorically altered rocks.
Yes?
And I'm curious
about the same photo.
You all used the same hole,
or do you dig the drill--
We don't drill holes.
We stick our collection
tubes into the fumarole,
into the steam vent, and collect
gas straight out of the steam
vent.
So we don't do any drilling
when we do that gas sampling
in Sherman Crater.
It looked like
there was a hole--
I'm sorry?
It looked like that you
had pushed in a pipe--
We put a pipe into the
fumarole vent to channel the--
Oh, I gotcha--
--to channel the gas
out of the fumarole vent
and into a vacuum flask.
So you could use the
different fumes--
Yeah, we find a prop-- we
find a fumarole that gives us
good volume, good flow, yes.
Yes?
What do you plan to do
with the chapters that
didn't make it into the book?
What am I going to do?
I think some of
those chapters I'll
end up writing up
in a brief report
and putting them on the blog.
I meant to put in
metamorphic minerals, or--
Yeah.
I'm not sure which ones
I'm going to write,
and whether I would include
those in there or not.
I don't really have the vision--
thinking about what I want
to do with those unwritten--
mostly, well, partially
unwritten, de-written,
uncompleted chapters.
Stay tuned.
Any more questions?
Yeah?
Rob?
Yeah, going back to the Seattle
rocks, city rocks, [INAUDIBLE]..
Did you figure out what kind
of rock the pizza crusts were?
Oh, yes, the pizza crust rock
is a rock called travertine,
which is a hot spring deposit.
And it probably
comes from Mexico,
although possibly comes from
Turkey, probably from Turkey.
It's a hot spring
deposit rock that's
just cut into very thin slabs.
And where was this?
Where was that?
That's the translucent
pizza crust
rock in the Grand Hyatt Hotel.
Oh, OK?
Any more questions?
Yes?
I was just curious with
your work and study,
did you go to visit
the mudslide area--
At Oso?
Or the--
The Oso landslide occurred when
the book was mostly written.
And I had a chance to--
I could have included it at
the very end of the writing
process.
But they were
still doing rescue.
And it wasn't open
to the public.
And I didn't want to be
giving people directions to go
into there who didn't
know if it was ever going
to be opened to the public.
It might be preserved
as a memorial.
So I did not include
Oso in the book.
Yeah.
I actually was more curious if
you personally have gone to--
Oh, oh, yes.
Yes, I have been there.
I've been there with geologists,
landslide geologists,
and have trumped
through the mud,
and seen very, very
tragic wreckage.
I have been there.
Any other questions?
OK, well, if you're interested
in a copy of the book,
they're for sale
on the back table.
And there's also the posters,
which my two lovely assistants
will be happy to sell to you.
And otherwise, there's
juice and cookies.
And the evening is drawing nigh.
Thank you so much.
If you consider signing up to
your left, future events here.
Future-- oh yeah,
there's a sign-up sheet
to know about more
events coming up.
[APPLAUSE]
