Today we took a drive to, and in, the Jemez Mountains to look at volcanic domes that created obsidian nodules ("Apache tears"), pearlite and quartz. We started at 8:30 this morning, and we just got back at 6pm. It's been a really long day, but an awesome one. This will be mostly pictures because it was a little dull--just hiking--but the rocks we found were spectacular. The ride there was probably one of the most entertaining rides in a car I've ever had.
The ride took about 3 hours. Maybe 1.5 hours to get to the mountains, and 1.5 hours to get to where we were starting our hike (close to the Carnovas Canyon Rhyolite domes). The second leg was, in a way, terrifying. But that was only because I'd never been off-roading before. I use the term "off-roading" liberally because we were on a road, but it might as well have been off of the road, too.
Driving up and down mountains on a road with rocks protruding, pot holes at least a foot deep, and bears running across it was interesting to say the least. If you've ever been on the ride at Disneyland for Indiana Jones, imagine that kind of jerking around , but instead of being led around on a track, there's actually someone driving. The first few minutes of it was not fun at all, but after a while I got used to the rhythm of it, and we would say things like "That was a good one!" if we got jerked around particularly hard. I wouldn't be surprised if my butt were sore tomorrow from the bouncing around, but it was actually REALLY fun (besides the fact that we were scared for the car)! Note: the guy to my left, Jake, is exaggerating just a little bit, haha.
When we got to our stopping point, we ended up having to wait for the other suburban, because Celeste, the GSI, had made a wrong turn and started driving past where we were. During that time, we scoured the land for any obsidian or artifacts we could find, and believe me, there was a lot to find without digging. There was an old mountain camp that was deteriorating, including 3 different log cabins in about an acre vicinity to each other. The roofs of all of these had fallen in, and so we didn't walk in them, but around them were rusty cans, bullets, and some not-so-old bullets. We were assuming someone was doing target practice out there or something of that nature. I don't know how long we waited, but it might have been about an hour. When the other car finally came, we sat down and had lunch.
After lunch was a lesson on how to match GPS coordinates to a 7.5 minute Topographical map. This was really interesting because I had very little experience with maps and mapping, let alone finding my location on a precisely laid out map. It was very cool, and when we found ourselves, the map was labeled with the camp that was no longer in use. The map was something like 50 years old, so the camp might have even been in use back then. Once the lesson was over, we got set up to hike to a series of volcanic domes that had once been active, and had geodes of quartz, nodules of obsidian, and perlite, a composition that houses formed obsidian.
We off-roaded on foot to one of the domes, climbed the south-eastern side (as far as I could tell), and everywhere there were these bulbs of unbroken geodes scattered across the ground. Shackley (the professor) broke open a few with his rock hammer, and they were full of quartz! Surprise! Then we climbed up and over the dome, to the north-western side of another dome, where there were "Apache tears", or tiny nodules of obsidian, scattered all over the ground. These were here because the perlite that made up most of the dome was eroding away, allowing the obsidian to come to the surface. Also because of the erosion, the nodules of obsidian were rather small. On the right, this shows that most nodules I found were smaller than a quarter, although a few were slightly bigger. On the left, this is a geode that Shackley broke with his rock hammer. Inside is all white quartz.
Shackley did some flint knapping (working the stone to make something out of it) and demonstrated how nicely the obsidian broke into a flake. Below is a picture which shows that the glass is such good quality that it reflects light in a rainbow. Very cool. The rings at the top indicate the area where Shackley struck the nodule (also known as the proximal end). Because of the high quality of this obsidian, Native Americans from all over came to this place.
A story that Shackley told us was about the peoples of the Zuni Mountains. The Zuni people have a language that is like no other in North America, and they sing many songs in their own language. However, they also had a few songs that were sung in what they thought were gibberish. This is because the songs had been passed down from generation to generation without explanation of where it came from. They sang these songs in a song-circle with Natives from the Jemez Mountains, 100 or so miles North of the Zunis, and the Jemez peoples knew the language! Turned out that a long time ago, there had been a connection between the two peoples, which had been long forgotten. This is proven in that people from the Zuni mountains mostly used obsidian from the Jemez Mountains (where we were today).
The hike back was nothing, since we were actually not that far from a road. Shackley had just brought us off-road I'm guessing to make it hard/show us the domes. On the way back we stopped at the Ponderosa Winery, and tasted some wine. I obviously couldn't buy some due to my age (grumble, grumble...) but there was a cute dog that all the non-21-year-olds were playing with. His name was Ralph, and he reminded me a LOT of Belle. A bunch of us kept taking pictures of him, which I'm sure happens all the time. It was adorable :) I was sooooo tired by the time we got back that I just sat staring at my computer for a few hours and was knocked out by 11.
More to come soon! I haven't written the past few days, but this was possibly one of the most interesting days this week.
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