geology
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A friend of mine once told me that, statistically, you’re more likely to grow up to do your childhood dream job than anything else. I don’t doubt her. I know artists and blacksmiths, jewelry makers and authors, people making a living on crafts you would expect from a bustling European village circa 1765. For my…
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Four years ago, I trekked through dense pinyon-juniper forests on behalf of the United States Bureau of Land Management (BLM). We were trying to assess plant community recovery and fire management following three thinning techniques: mulching, controlled burns, and selective removal. They had no control plots, but this isn’t about their shoddy experimental design, or…
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The first major loss I felt as a child happened in the town of Dinosaur, Colorado in a KOA overlooked by a billboard for McDonald’s that my parents tried desperately to hide from all 3 of their children. I had a small figurine of a coelophysis, a souvenir from a paleontology museum in Fruita. I…
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Campi Flegrei, also known as the Phlegrean fields, is a series of 24 volcanic calderas in the ocean outside of Naples, Italy. One of these, the Solfatara crater, was considered the home of the Roman God of Fire Vulcan due to the amount of volcanic activity evident in the area. The caldera itself underlies the…
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Hidden among the rolling fields of corn and soy in Antelope county, Nebraska sit the Ashfall Fossil Beds. This unique death assemblage tells the story of a massive volcanic event that covered the American midwest in ash some 10 million years ago. The animals interred here represent the fauna that flocked to a savannah watering…
from the pen of icarus blake 