Category: field camp

South Africa Mining / Exploration Geology Field Trip: A Preview

First of all, I want to apologize to my readers that blogging here on Georneys has been somewhat light over the past several weeks. There are a couple of reasons why.

The first reason is that my work as a geologist for a marine gold exploration company has been very busy. Work has been going very well, but as a new industry geologist I’ve been working hard to learn as much as possible and keep up with the work load. However, I’m really enjoying my job and feel extremely grateful to have found a good place for me to do what I love– geology.

The second reason is that a few weeks ago I was home alone in Cape Town, South Africa when robbers brazenly broke into the flat. I was not physically harmed, but I lost my laptop and was quite shaken by the experience. So, I’ve been resting and recovering. I had trouble sleeping for awhile, but I am slowly but surely returning to normal. My husband and I are in the process of installing some additional security– an unfortunate necessity here in South Africa. We’ve also bought extra hard drives and have signed up for on-line back-up (hard drive back-ups don’t help when the thieves steal hard drives, too!). I had a full computer back-up (carefully hidden away!) that was a couple of months old, but I did lose some vacation and geology pictures and a few other things. Everyone, please remember to back up your computers often! It’s heartbreaking to lose things when your laptop is stolen or when it crashes.

Second of all, I want to give you a preview of something to come here on Georneys: pictures and some guest posts by my husband Jackie, who is currently pursuing his masters degree in Exploration Geology at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa.  Jackie is working on his degree part-time over 2-3 years. There are two field trips associated with the degree, and Jackie is currently on the first field trip. He’s been visiting some amazing geological places throughout South Africa and has been taking plenty of pictures.

Below are a few pictures from Jackie’s field trip. Captions are courtesy of Jackie. These pictures are just from a BlackBerry phone– when my husband returns in a week or so, he’ll download the pictures from the proper camera. I can’t wait to see those!

The Bushveld Complex: UG1 chromitite seams in anorthosite. A geological wonder!
Mgolokwena open-pit platinum mine.
Molokwane North open pit (at Mgolokwena).

How Not to Lose Wireless GPS Receivers

In Fall of 2005 I participated in “The Stretch”, the trimester-long geology field camp run by Dartmouth College. In recent years, the field camp has taken place in the western continental US. Many years ago, the field camp also took place in Central America, Hawaii, and other locations.

The year I went on The Stretch, we studied geology in Wyoming, Montana, Utah, Nevada, California, and Arizona. We drove thousands of miles and did dozens of geology field projects, ranging from small one-day assignments to week-long mapping exercises. I recently discovered my old field notebooks and journal (I often wrote about my day in the evenings) from The Stretch, so I’ll probably blog occasionally about my field camp experience and post some pictures. I’ve already written about our ternary personalities exercise.

I had an amazing time on The Stretch. I was very lucky to spend an entire trimester studying geology with a wonderful group of students, professors, and TAs. Except for the driving days, I spent every day outside. I came back tan and happy with a head filled with geology. I often look back on photos from The Stretch and think about field camp fondly.

For our first mapping exercises on The Stretch, we learned traditional compass-and-paper mapping. Later on, we did some electronic mapping using tablet PCs and wireless GPS receivers. During previous Stretches, the somewhat expensive wireless GPS receivers would occasionally go missing. To solve this problem, one of our field instructors came up with a creative solution: velcroing the wireless GPS receivers to the tops of Dartmouth “Rox” hats. Students using the receivers had to wear these ridiculous hats. Periodically throughout the day, the professor would count the number of hat receivers to ensure that none had been lost.    

Me + “Rox” Hat + Wireless GPS Receiver, Arizona, Fall 2005.

But why a “Rox” hat? The Department of Earth Science at Dartmouth is known as the “Rox” Department as a play on Dartmouth’s motto. The college motto is “Vox clamantis in deserto” which translates to “A voice crying in the wilderness.” This is sort of a strange motto, but it comes from Dartmouth being a “frontier school” when it was founded back in 1769. Actually, Dartmouth is still somewhat in the wilderness– the Appalachian Trail even runs right through campus.

The Department of Earth Science has its own version of the Dartmouth motto: “Rox clamantis in deserto” which translates to “A rock crying in the wilderness.” Well, not really. “Rox” isn’t actually a Latin word. But it sounds cool. It’s okay- geologists aren’t always the best linguists. If the motto were in proper Latin, I think it would actually be “Petra clamantis in deserto” or perhaps “Lapis clamantis in deserto.” “Petra” and “Lapis” are some of my favorite words, but I have to admit they’re not as cool-sounding as the imaginary “Rox.” The Department of Earth Science also has its own version of the Dartmouth logo: rather than native Americans being illuminated by a glowing book of knowledge (hey Dartmouth, isn’t this logo sort of racist?), a dinosaur is about to be hit by a fiery meteor.

A rock crying out in the wilderness– I like it. After all, isn’t this what geologists do? We listen to the rocks. 

Traditional Dartmouth logo. Image taken from here.
Dartmouth’s Department of Earth Science logo. Note the typo in the motto (clamatis rather than clamantis). Again- geologist are not the best linguists. Image taken from the department website here.