That Old Tectonic Feeling…

This is the story of one of those innocent questions that came up from a student. In asking about plate tectonics, they wondered about the origin of the term “tectonics”. This led to a merry chase…

The place you expect to start is the Oxford English Dictionary. And there indeed is an entry for tectonic as a word that went back to the mid-1600s. But then it wasn’t a geological term; it referred to construction or building practices. Now geology is one of the more thieving branches of science (we steal words and make them do something else…or even make off with seeming misspellings or incorrect usages, as in remanent and terrane), so it makes sense that somebody at some point decided that building mountains was an act of earthy construction and hence tectonism and so stole the term.

But the OED claims the earliest geological usage was in 1894. This felt quite late; lots of geological work was already in existence. So GG went to the History, Philosophy and Geoheritage Division of GSA and asked if anybody there knew. Christopher McCauley took up the challenge and noted that etmonline pointed to an 1887 origin. He also noted the Greek roots and so concluded that the ‘geological “tectonics” = literally “the building or fabrication of the Earth’s crust (or its structures)”.’

Aja Tolman then carried it farther back, noting that Eduard Seuss’s Die Enstehung der Alpen used the term in 1857, though he felt the more geologic usage came after an 1873 quake.

Ken Taylor then pointed to Gabriel Gohau’s Histoire de la tectonique (Paris: Vuibert / Adapt-Snes, 2010). There, Gohau finds that “the beginnings of modern tectonics are situated mainly in Élie de Beaumont, 1829.”

So we’ve got some heavy hitters in Suess and de Beaumont. But Mott Greene whose book on 19th century geology reflects his expertise, noted in an email to Jody Bourgeois that a prominent 1888 glossary of terms did not include tectonic. He contends it is not in Suess’s The Face of the Earth in either German or English and that the first use would appear to be Karl von Zittel in his History of Geology and Paleontology (1899). That section uses the term so casually, though, that you’d think it was in circulation before then.

Walter Szeliga then got ahold of this and started clawing through the old papers. It turned out that Suess had used geoteckonisch and tektonisch in his 1868 paper Über die Eruptivgesteine des Smrekouz-Gebirges 

Rasoul Sorkhabi then chimed in with an 1850 volume where geotektonik was used: Karl Friedrich Naumann’s Lehrbuch der Geognoise (A Textbook of Geognosy). Alerted to that usage, Szeliga then went to a couple older contributions where the term might plausibly have been present (Dana (1840’s) and Rogers and Rogers (1820’s), both addressing the Appalachians) and found that the term was not present there.

And so that is where the trail was finally left. Gohau alluded to Beaumont having presented the beginnings of modern tectonics back in 1829, but that phrasing doesn’t necessarily mean that the term tectonic was used then. It was out there and employed by Suess in the middle 19th century, though it seems American geologists were not quick to hop onto this term (Gilbert didn’t use it in his 1890 Lake Bonneville masterpiece, for instance, though he did latch onto the more recently coined “isostasy”). It would seem that tectonic seeped into the literature in Europe and lingered a long time before its heroic turn as a key part of plate tectonics.

Down the memory hole…

For awhile we in the U.S. bathed in adoring light those who were born from roughly 1901 and 1927 as members of the “greatest generation,” a term popularized by Tom Brokaw. These folks endured the Great Depression and fought WW II and the Cold War. That generation was also responsible for constructing a global framework of cooperation and respect for other nations that included the notion of major international trade as a plus for international stability. Domestically, they saw development of vaccines that eliminated many dangerous diseases. Tax rates both of income and estates prevented the accumulation of extreme wealth. That generation was largely responsible for investments in science and technology that led to things from the moon landing to microwave ovens.

Those folks, the youngest of whom would be 97 right now, are virtually absent from any political discussion. Their example, which a few years ago seemed etched in stone as a model to follow, is now dissolving under an acid wash of extremism. Just what are we losing sight of? Let’s review.

What’s it all about?

Ah, the end of the year. When we look back and wonder if we achieved what we hoped to achieve, appreciated that which is good, etc. We all have our personal ranking of things, whether it be family or friends or success of some kind of another. But what of civilization? Is there anything positive about civilization that makes it worthwhile as more than life support for several billion humans?

Certainly not warfare to gain territory. If civilization includes pretty much all human cultures, then warfare is, at most, a zero sum game. So while we often learn the names of conquerers from ages ago, this hardly seems to be a civilization-advancing behavior.

Trail Trials

GG is just back from a 6 day backpack with PassToPass, an organization that seeks to help Parkinson’s disease patients improve their quality of life through getting outdoors, in particular on multiday backpacks (GG was along as a support hiker). This was the first multi-day, multilocation trip GG had done in several years, so there were a lot of reminders of some of the downsides of camplife. Things like condensation inside a tent, wearing a pack each day, etc. And it got GG to thinking about how much of American history can be distilled into hikes, whether the National Road, the Oregon Trail, the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) or the Long Walk, especially as his drive back passed Oregon Trail info stands at nearly every offramp in Oregon…

Of course the most familiar to most Americans is the Oregon Trail. GG did stop to visit the National Historic Oregon Trail Interpretive Center outside Baker City, which tries to recap the experience of those who chose to travel west. Not surprisingly, the gift store had versions of the old Oregon Trail game (“You have died of dysentery”). The 10 to 20 mile a day distances Oregon Trail people covered will sound familiar to many backpackers, as might the need to care for stock for those using llamas or horses. The business of carrying your whole life in a breakdown prone wagon might be more exotic to modern backpackers while resonating with others. Toss in the Santa Fe Trail, the California Trail, the Mormon Trail (where they used handcarts) and a few others and it seems this business of moving on to greener pastures defines a lot of America (even if the old Turner hypothesis has taken its lumps).

This business of long distance foot travel didn’t end there. Arguably the modern conservation movement began when John Muir decided to walk down the Mississippi from Wisconsin. His gambols over the Sierra led to the creation of the John Muir Trail. But longer trails were soon to be found; the PCT and Appalachian trail being the first official national scenic trails. And so we now have the evolution of thru-hiking, of walking immense distances for, um, GG guesses pleasure. Toss in the Continental Divide Trail, the Colorado Trail and probably a dozen others and the opportunity to pit yourself against a continent’s worth of landscape has never been easier.

Then there are some other, less happy, trails. The Trail of Tears records the expulsion of the Cherokee and adjoining Native nations into “Indian territory” west of the Mississippi. Unlike the willing members of the Oregon Trail caravans, the participants here were carrying their homes under threat of death from accompanying soldiers. The Long Walk of the Navajo into the Bosque Redondo in New Mexico was a similar exile, though the Navajo were able to negotiate a return after suffering tremendously in the Bosque Redondo.

Perhaps the oddest part is that both the emigrant trails and the Native expulsions saw considerable death and suffering (almost to the point where you could lift sections of the description of one and drop them into the description of the other without them being out of place). In a way, Americans heading west volunteered for a journey only a bit less dangerous than the forced migration of tribes: roughly one in ten Oregon Trail pioneers died on the way west. In a way, the widespread acceptance of such a risk suggests that American citizens were not particularly well treated (the museum display had one panel for “why did they leave?” that points to economic factors–families were starving in the panic of 1837, for instance). Now some motivation was misleading information (some descriptions made it seem like a mobile picnic), some was calculated risk, and some may well have been desperation, but it would be hard to suggest that folks who were comfortable in their lives would venture on such a quest.

So a lot of American history is represented in these trails, old and new. Something to ponder if you are out on the trails with backpack on…

Disneyland on the Mountain (book review)

Since GG completed his tome on the Sierra, a few books have come out that fill out some of the history GG had focused on. This is the second one on Mineral King GG has become aware of (after Dawn at Mineral King Valley). While Dawn at Mineral King Valley was tightly focused on the legal action, this book looks more broadly. This is partially possible because the Disney archives have become accessible, and in part because the authors are looking beyond the usual protagonists.

The Mineral King story has often been told in a one-sided manner. The Disney side pretty much wanted to forget it ever happened (as GG noted in his book, an NPS employee who had sought to buy the main parcel from Disney was greeted with a company seeming to not know anything about the purchase), so the volumes on Disney skipped Mineral King or left it as a small sidelight to an otherwise successful career. The cabin residents in Mineral King were sidelined in the stories written from the Sierra Club side, maybe in part because the Club and the cabin owners would disagree after the valley was put into Sequoia. This book helps to overcome those slights.

Cascading renaming

Well, Mt. Evans is no more. And few if any are shedding tears. The peak is henceforth Mt. Blue Sky, certainly one of the most poetic place names in Colorado (and one that GG finds some joy in just typing its name. Blue Sky…yeah, that feels right).

Now there is recognition that the Mt. Evans Wilderness does not contain a peak named Mt. Evans and so needs renaming too (not that lacking a central peak of the same name is unprecedented; for a long time Denali National Park had no peak formally named Denali within it as the peak’s name was Mt. McKinley…which thankfully was retired in 2015 over the objections of Ohioans). Anyways, that renaming of the Wilderness helps to remind us that peak names often drift into other corners. And one of those corners is geology.

High Country Waterworks

OK, this is a diversion (I should be doing something else) but maybe airing this will reveal the answer to a particular mystery GG encountered…

Here in Colorado we have a ton of Wilderness areas that embrace high mountains and their nearby cirques and lakes. For those who aren’t paying attention, they lavish praise on the natural beauty of many of these features…missing out on the rather intense modifications that have occurred as folks lower down have scrambled for water rights. One of the larger examples is Grand Lake on the west side of the divide having a tunnel at its eastern end to send water under the Continental Divide to Lake Estes at Estes Park; others capture the Blue River to send to Denver or the outflow from Mt. Holy Cross going to Colorado Springs. But these large systems are well below the alpine areas GG is considering.

Far closer to the high peaks are a number of waterworks. In the Indian Peaks Wilderness, a dam holds back Jasper Lake and Skyscraper reservoir. Isabelle Lake in the same Wilderness has a hole in the bottom that the Left Hand Water District uses to suck out the majority of the lake in late season for its customers. Up in the Rawah Mountains is a section of ditch used now by the Camp Lake Trail at 10,500′; originally set to capture some of the headwaters of the Laramie River, it was abandoned when farmers in Wyoming got an injunction against it. Rocky Mountain National Park had several old dams within it at Lawn Lake, Pear Lake, Sandbeach Lake, and Bluebird Lake; Lawn Lake’s dam failed in 1982 leading the park to remove the other dams. The Grand Ditch is a major eyesore on the eastern side of the Never Summer Mountains within the park that carries Colorado River waters into the Cache la Poudre and east into the Plains. These is even a piece of diversion up on the Continental Divide: the Eureka Ditch on Bighorn Flats at 11,800′ diverts surface flow from the west slope through Sprague Pass to the east side of the divide.

So monkeying around with water up high is quite the Colorado sport. Now the mystery. All of the above are pretty obviously making for storage for late in the year or moving water from one drainage to another. But the pieces GG found near Thunder Lake and Box Lake of some attempt at some diversions make no sense he can deduce.

“Wild New World” review

Dan Flores’s 2022 book, Wild New World, would be better titled “Extinction!” or maybe “Unwilding!” While the subtitle is “The epic story of animals and people in America”, it is more the story of animals dying at the hands of people.

To be fair, the story of people and (wild) animals in America is mostly one of carnage, and so it was going to be hard to avoid, but at times it feels like Flores is as dedicated to his blood sport of naming names and numbers as any of the hunters he skewers were to amassing those numbers. As such, it becomes a difficult read at times as the author turns his sights on fairly well known assaults on bison, passenger pigeons, and wolves in great detail. In a way it is a pity as he skimps on what might have proven a provocative and enlightening period of time.

The Endangered, Engendered Species Conundrum

We have, as a nation, embarked on attempts to not kill off other species. But we might find ourselves in the peculiar position of having to return to older behaviors to protect a species that we created…

What inspires this is a report in High Country News that a rare butterfly in Oregon needs certain open meadows…open meadows that were artificially created by Native Americans who lived in the area. When they were driven from control of the land, the seasonal burning that they had used to keep the meadows open was abandoned. While some meadows were then plowed up and farmed, some were left to return to forest, depriving the butterfly of its main food source. The story goes on to discuss the rediscovery of the butterfly, the intense effort it took to figure out what it needed to survive, and how returning to the burning practices of local Natives was a key part of rescuing the butterfly.

But here is the question: Is this butterfly one we created (well, that ancestral Natives created)? In the absence of human activity, did this butterfly exist? Or was there a speciation event that occurred as clearing of meadows proceeded some few thousand years ago? Could it be that this species was not natural in the sense of a species that would exist without the presence of humanity, but one that only emerged because of human interference with nature?

At present this is nothing more than wild speculation; this could well be a species that goes back hundreds of thousands of years and some other mechanism created openings in the forest prior to the arrival of humans. Somebody could compare its genome with nearby similar butterflies and estimate a time since divergence. An answer under about 10,000 years would be quite interesting. Regardless, the possibility poses an interesting question: If we (as a species) are responsible for the creation of a species, are we as morally obligated to save it as other species that were not our (unintentional) creations?

It could be that our species’s influence on the natural world is older and deeper than we’ve understood it to be.

Wilderness in “High Sierra: A Love Story”

Elsewhere GG will discuss the geological speculations in Kim Stanley Robinson’s latest book, “The High Sierra: A Love Story” but here he wants to consider wilderness (and Wilderness) as discussed in the penultimate chapter in the book. [GG has discussed wilderness a lot; just search on wilderness and you can sample some of that].

Robinson seeks to defend the protection of the range by advancing a simple argument. Complaining about wilderness never having been empty of people (and therefore without merit) is trivial compared to the fact that the most valuable lands to Native Americans were lowlands that have been thoroughly privatized. Besides, people weren’t actually living in the high country of the Sierra anyways. And as we now face a need to preserve wild ecosystems, these wildernesses that were preserved are an essential part of any rewilding program.

There is a lot to unpack. Yes, the most damaging land withdrawals were from lowlands and not the alpine scenery so beloved by Robinson. But the myth of virgin landscapes didn’t come from those privatized lowlands, it came from the writings of Muir and his followers, reveling in the lands they described as free of human impurity. And that myth has done real damage, from the massive suppression of forest fires to wholesale changes in ecosystems previously managed by Native peoples. So yes, damage to Native peoples was a lot worse in other places, but the erasure of them from lands nearly everywhere was greatly aided by their erasure from these “wild” places.

And was nobody living in the mountains? Really? This from an author who rhapsodizes about the vast piles of obsidian flakes he finds at scenic spots in the high mountains? Go back and read the accounts of the Bartleson-Bidwell party’s crossing of the Sierra. There were native folks all over the place that this party kept trying to maneuver around. Or even the encounters that Fremont’s famed winter crossing of the Sierra had; they were constantly seeking information from local Indians. Or the requests from the Whitney survey (which included Robinson hero Clarence King) for an armed military detachment to accompany their field party into the mountains just a couple years before Muir’s appearance. Or maybe sit with a park archeologist and discuss the number of archeological sites in the high country. No, people did not live in this landscape all year long…but they did live in it in the summers, burning the edges of meadows, harvesting onions and other plants, hunting game. That part of the lives of those people was ripped away, and while, as Robinson notes, this was mostly by the actions of miners and hunters and timber barons and railroad builders, it was further justified by claiming these people simply weren’t ever here. Pretending their presence was utterly ephemeral and immaterial is disregarding reality.