September 20, 2016
The following post is part three of a seven-part series where JSG grad students reveal what they were up to over summer break. Enjoy!
Alarm goes off at 6am, I stumble out the tent to find Lily Jackson has already started boiling water to make coffee for the 40 students. Margo Odlum, Sarah George and I wrangle open the 15 foot box truck and begin to heft coolers full of hundreds of mini-muffins over to some picnic tables to set out food for breakfast and lunch. Once they all shuffle through we clean up the trash and then pack it all away before we head out for the field by 8am.
We drive the eight car traveling circus to our map area in Los Alamos, New Mexico and spend this day helping students map the paleotopography before a Quaternary Caldera (super volcano) eruption and the resulting volcanic deposits. We then herd the students back to camp and the TA’s cook dinner for the encircling group of hungry students/vultures. Most of the early days of field camp were packed with 14 hour days of geologizing, grading, food service, and professional driving. But ask anyone who has been a part of field camp why would you pull these kinds of hours, it’s because you absolutely love doing it.
I spent the first six weeks of summer TAing UT’s summer field camp 2016 a.k.a. GEO660A/B. Unlike most field schools we are a traveling camp with eight university vehicles and a supporting box truck that traveled over 5,000 miles roundtrip from Austin to Helena, MT.
During our tour de west we traveled to eight different localities each focusing on answering different geologic problems and building various field geology skill sets. From working in the Book Cliffs of Utah and Colorado measuring stratigraphic section to interpret ancient coastlines and deltas along the Cretaceous Interior Seaway; mapping geologic structures in Montana to understand how the crust accommodates shortening and builds mountains in response to an ancient Andean-type subduction margin over 100 million years ago; to unraveling complicated geologic history of silver-zinc ore deposits in a once profitable mining district. This camp gets a flavor of all the different geologic-pies which is challenging but never the less rewarding. The summer was made by the awesome group of students who endured the hardships, didn’t complain, and helped the faculty all along the way.
