What I Love About Scientists

Say it, Kim:

I do geology because it’s beautiful. I love being outside, scrambling through brush, and then looking up and seeing the mountain across the valley, or the potholes in a streambed, and feeling as though the breath has just been knocked out of me. I’m fascinated by the stories hidden in the textures of metamorphic rocks. I like to spin the stage on a petrographic microscope and watch the pretty colors. (Come on. I can’t be the only person who does this.) I like the twisted shapes of multiple crenulations seen in thin section, and the smoothness of slickenlines on a fault plane. And I like being confused: walking up to an outcrop and wondering what on earth could have made it like that, and does it really make sense given what everyone else has said about it.

2 Comments

  1. And I like being confused: walking up to an outcrop and wondering what on earth could have made it like that, and does it really make sense given what everyone else has said about it.

    I’m an avid backpacker, and new folks have to be briefed that I’ll lag behind while botanizing. The process is similar to Kim’s, only that I’m looking at living things, slowly moving across the geology.

    Anyway, yes exactly. Well said.

    Best,

    D

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