Why does one person have to get all the credit for discovering, creating or developing something when there were others on the scene as well? Someone gets the most funding, writes the flashiest book, has the most connections, and the most ambition and, well, there you are. Even if this person him/her self acknowledges these other remarkable people, only 1 person gets that award. And everyone else vanishes like snow on the sea.
Of course, I am bitter and devastated by my failure to be anything close to the best at anything, despite trying. IX told me the story in Aesop's Fables about the fox and calling the grapes sour just because he couldn't reach high enough to get them. I'm more like the fox than someone making social commentary.
There are people with extraordinary brilliance, drive, knowledge and courage, after all, who have left bodies of work that prove their worth; paintings, music, sculpture, novels, poems et al. Aren't they fully deserving of credit and everlasting celebrity? They may have had more advantages and luck, but does that matter?
Actually, I'm much more pathetic than the fox. I was foolish to think I could get the grapes, too, but if they had suddenly grown heavy and dropped down on me and I ate one, I'd see the fox looking at me saying "See! I told you!"
You may be wondering what all of this has to do with geology. Well, it's about the Colorado and Green Rivers and Grand Canyon and who exactly discovered what. It's murky when it comes to exploration.
One of my favorite geological terms is "The Great Unconformity". This refers to a layer of the Grand Canyon near its base that has eroded away leaving no trace. Radiometric age dating shows that the gap of time between the 2 layers is over 1 billion years. Other sites in the world have only "unconformities" or "angular unconformities", but not GREAT unconformities!
These pictures show the location of the G.U. at close range. Too close I think to get any kind of perspective. Back to flickr...
Does that help?
The Gates of Lodore on the Green River in Colorado
This entry was supposed to be about the 1869 Powell Expedition down the entire length of the Colorado and Green Rivers which included portions that had never been explored and were unchartered. But there isn't a whole hell of a lot to say about
it except what's in the previous sentence unless I want to go into all kinds of tedious historical detail. But there is a link with all my musings about notoriety here, though. Powell took more credit for the expedition and geological discoveries than was his due. Apparently, he didn't even include the names of his team in his memoirs and books. He was undoubtedly a great leader, but maybe egomaniacal. Oh, and he gets even MORE credit because he had only one arm. He lost it in the Civil War. Who can beat that combination? But maybe he really WAS such an amazing hero for mapping and navigating the Colorado River etc. What the hell do I know. I am just the sour fox. The terrible picture is the Powell camp where they first embarked. 
Did you know that the blue Colorado River you see today is not at all what the river looked like at the time? Damn dam lakes have absorbed all the silt that the river carried to the Gulf of California and also used to further abrade and erode the rocks it cut through. It was muddy and yellow. That's how it got its name. (I get the 'color' part but I guess the r of the 'dor' eroded. But without the dams and their gleaming lakes, we could never enjoy these new vistas...
Well, I think that says it all.
No comments:
Post a Comment