I've been away and am going away again tomorrow, but I wanted to put up some photos from my fieldtrip!
We stayed in the shearers' quarters of the Glens of Tekoa farm near Culverden. We had plumbing, electricity, and beds with fitted sheets and pillows (so we slept in our sleeping bags, but on mattresses). Here is a photo of the living/common room:
That fireplace was the best thing ever... even after fine days, it was nice to have a fire in the evenings, and it was a good place to dry wet tramping boots.The first few days were intensely frustrating. There was a lot of information being hurled at us and a lot of information expected of us. I had no idea, off the top of my head, what the coarse-grained counterpart of trachyte was... Tom and Rose, our trip leaders, would ask those leading questions, like Dave (sed/strat TA, for those who don't know him), but I would have absolutely no idea. It was like an affirmation that I knew significantly less than the other students and that I was going to be a big fail at field work.
The second night, we had an assignment due. We had to map a small section of our mapping area and create a cross section. The cross section was pretty straightforward, but the mapping was so hard... I had to ask Tom and Rose pretty much every step of the way, and I think they were discouraged by how poorly we were all doing. They thought we would be done by ten, but my entire table was still working at 11:30. This was after our first full day in the field, too, so we were all absolutely exhausted.
Those first few days, we all stayed together and traveled together as a pack. It was good to have Rose and Tom there to explain everything as we went at that early stage, and it helped us get through the area faster. At one point, we sent Tim across a small gorge to bring back a sample for all of us. Taking all of us over there, with our varying degrees of fitness, would have taken forever, whereas Tim just zipped over for everyone. I really really love this photo because later I realised how much the outcrop looks like a bird. For scale, you can see Tim as a black dot on the bird's neck.
The third day, things started to improve. Having done the mapping the night before, I had a little bit of a better idea what to be looking for, but I still felt stupid, especially since I could never find where I was on the map. The turning point was really when Lucy and I found the third dike. My mapping group consisted of my mapping partner, Lucy, and two North Islanders named David and Tim. We had different groups on different days, but they were my core group. On Day 3, we were instructed to map out the rest of the river and look for three dikes among the graywacke.
Dike 1: We were all together when we found it, but Tim and Davo were the ones who really solidified that it was a trachyte dike.
Dike 2: Lucy and I, determined to find it on our own, carried on ahead in search of the second dike. We came to a heavily weathered section of graywacke that looked like it could have been a baked margin, and stopped to look at it. We were fairly certain that it was not the second dike, but decided to stop and see what they thought. Tim and Davo caught up and agreed that it was not the second dike, and then Tim pointed fifty metres past us and said, "But that is." So there it was, hanging out on the river bank, right next to us, and Lucy and I were pretty gutted.
Dike 3: EVEN MORE determined to find the third dike on our own, Lucy and I carried on ahead again. And guess what! We found it! Baked margin, phenocrysts, vessicles and all. It was magnificent. We were triumphant! We showed it to Tim and Davey when they caught up, and they agreed that it was the third dike. They did not sound sufficiently impressed :p Here it is:
After that, the fieldtrip was spectacular. It was a lot of physical and mental work, but pretty rewarding in the end. Tim taught me a nifty trick for finding north with my watch when the sun is out, and by the end of the fifth day, I was pretty proficient at finding myself on the map. All three of them helped me out a lot, plus Rose and Tom, who were hugely patient and helpful.
Glens of Tekoa itself is a farm run by the McRaes, and it is beautiful. It is right along the Mandamus River, which runs through the valley. There are ridges to either side (held up by trachyte or syenite dikes) and a large syncline on the eastern side held up by limestone.
The last day, we had the morning to ourselves to do whatever because the mapping area was finished and the late morning was for clean up and departure. A small group of the diehards went to find a small waterfall up in one of the side valleys. It was not very far away at all, and well worth the walk. It was nice to have that small group of people who had treated the fieldtrip as a trip/adventure and not as an assignment/chore.
The last day, it snowed. It was a little chilly, but we went to find the water fall anyway. It didn't snow down by us, but up in the hills where we had just been days before, mapping.
So yeah, that was the fieldtrip. I can't really put it into words why, but it affected me a lot. I made some good friends and did some good work, and it was sort of sad to come back. Other people were rejoicing at the thought of their warm beds and twenty-four hours of dry feet, and I guess I was happy to be back, but not really in the same way.The next day, Shalom, Erin, and Sam took me tramping up in Hawdon Valley, and that helped me reacclimatize a lot. I'll make that a separate post, so keep reading! If you have any questions about the fieldtrip, because I haven't been all that specific and I've mainly written around the photos that I most wanted to share, email me or leave me a comment, and I'll talk your ear off about it :)
No comments:
Post a Comment