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This web site harbors a few gems and surprises. This page contains a gem.
Geological fieldwork - roughing it for a while to examine, map and sample rocks - is special, and
becoming rare. On this page, I tell you about a few of my fieldwork experiences.
The joys of fieldwork
Ideally, my life contains lots of music and modern dance,
the occasional dinner with friends and a movie now and then. It also more or less sums up the life I led when
I was a geology student, except that it also included lots of geological fieldwork. People who've never done
fieldwork don't know how special it is and people who do it all the time may not realize how much you can miss it.
Geological fieldwork is something special that relatively few people know about, which is
why I decided to whip up this page. (What a shame that almost all my photos are in storage on another
continent!) In the Netherlands,
there is a book called Nooit meer slapen (Never sleep again) and more
recently, meteoreologist and climate researcher Richard Bintanja published his novel Poolreizen (Polar Trips), but
that's it, to my knowledge.
I cherish my fieldwork memories, have always loved being out there, and
don't like being glued to a desk chair or computer (or microscope!).
Fieldwork means spending (often) long days, usually also Saturdays and Sundays, in the wild, studying and mapping rocks.
If you weren't yet at the start of the fieldwork, you will become superfit in no time. You take hammers along, and chisels,
and a geologist's magnifying glass and perhaps some hydrochloric acid - and a geologist's compass.
You need such a compass to measure certain angles and directions in the rocks, but you also need it to orient yourself.
In Spain, I once found myself having walked off my topological map after I had
decided to follow a certain formation (as a group of rocks of one lithology you're mapping can be called). I did that out of
curiosity, as it would tell me something about the geological history of the area (whether it remained submerged - sea -
or became land again). After a lot of walking, I arrived home
in my little village somewhere between 10:30 and 11. PM, that is. Could be worse. I didn't have a flashlight, though! I had
already prepared myself for having to sleep in the open and wait till dawn to be able to see again.
You take many other items such as water, food, and a whistle. The whistle is for the event
that you fall and break a leg or something like that, so that you can direct people searching for you to your whereabouts.
You do climb quite a few rocks, after all.
I found that soft canvas shoes work best for climbing, but that's personal. (Relatively weak knees, but very strong ankles.)
When you get to your temporary home in the afternoon or evening, you sit down, write, and work on your geological map. Don't worry,
you also enjoy lots of good food and laughter, have many cafe con leches and other beverages, and ice cream.
(Where did I learn to drink wine? In France and in Spain,
while on fieldwork. It's normal to have some wine at dinner in those countries.) Unless the fieldwork is in, say, Sweden.
They don't even have wine there! (But great ice cream.) I wrote
about fieldwork in Sweden elsewhere.
My first encounter with field geology took place in October 1984 and was pretty intensive.
My report thoroughly impressed the geologist in
charge of the whole thing (Harm Rondeel, for those who wonder; he left a note with an exclamation mark
on the first page). Unlike most, I had not written it largely while still on the trip. I wanted to do it really well.
I'd sat down after I arrived home, worked very late, quickly ran off in between
to take my driver license exam (passed), continued and rushed the report to the
Vrije Universiteit.
I'd also taken some nice rock samples home and a broken camera, which led someone to give me an dustproof and
watertight camera (a Minolta Weathermatic, watertight up to five meters under water)
for my next birthday. That's a very good camera and it's still faithfully doing service.
From other fieldworks, I remember lots of rain and sleet and freezing my ass off (pardon my French) and
bread and cheese bought at little local shops in Belgium. Candy bars quickly purchased for
those who'd gotten very hungry by hand-drilling
deep into the sand in an ice-pushed ridge in Germany, as I had brought my racing bike along.
And drinking Mosel wine in our rooms when we were on fieldwork somewhere along the Mosel river in Germany, but the
details of that Mosel fieldwork are strangely vague. That's odd. I can't think of a reason at all why that might
be the case. I do
remember having bought a blue skirt at a local shop. The color wasn't periwinkle (myrtle) but
came close, was a particular sky blue that I don't know how to describe better as somewhere between periwinkle and
sky blue.
I'd say I spent a total of about three months on fieldwork in Spain. Spain brought long conversations
on a staircase in a little village near Albarracín, near Teruel and about 100 kilometers south of Zaragoza, if
I recall correctly. We talked about studying - and about how I did not come from a rich family, which they had
assumed as, after all, I was at university - and herbs and about someone's grandfather having planted a particular tree.
Spain brought many other little joys. Being invited by the Spanish to join their large group
and eating yummy little snails (caracoles) in the village square of Yecla and learning that they were harboring a refugee from
South America. Chile,
I think it was. The best tortilla española I've ever had was from that place
on the corner in Yecla, which had the most delicious other tapas as too).
The place on the corner of the big square in
Alicante - about 80 kilometers to the east of Yecla - didn't do a bad tortilla either, but it was not as good
as the one in Yecla.
Of Alicante I remember the port, where I wandered around, and a few very steamy days (literally!)
and a guy I encountered in the ports area who asked me out to the movies and I suggested Bambi.
People who know me may be surprised to learn that I did go to a bullfight there as well. Once. It was an interesting
experience.
By the way, this part of Spain is almost entirely limestone, and looks very barren. Desolate. Many American
westerns where shot here, or so I've been told. There is little rainfall, but when there is rain,
apparently it can be torrential, cutting deep into the earth and leaving
behind gullies called barrancos.
Nobody of the Spanish usually spoke anything but Spanish. Exceptions were an English teacher and people who went to
pick grapes in France and usually were able to say two words in French, but I've forgotten what they were.
"Bonjour" and "merci", likely. It also brings back memories of hearing castanets
(castañuelas) in the evening
(girls on the street walking by) and
of a guy in black, including hat, who
fancied himself a singer - but oh, what a shock when he actually did start to sing - and who accompanied himself
on guitar. He told me he loved me and became rather confused when I replied "Muchas gracias!" and
went on to assume I had misunderstood him. I had not. I was simply a bit older than I looked
and he thought I was. I had not been born yesterday.
I also remember sleeping in a tent in southern France on a camp site that
had not opened for the season yet (and hence, showering with cold water) and
many gorgeous granites and pegmatites, with tourmaline and other exotic
minerals, and a lot of granate and large felspar crystals. There were fields
with lots of thyme and lavender. I remember rescuing a young bird that had
accidentally ended up in one of our bedrooms, and a few other things that
put a smile on my face such as a watch plate that had rotated, making its
owner wonder how much wine he'd drunk exactly.
Of the fieldwork in the Sierra de Albarracín, I remember the wonderful surprise when I was having a bad day
and then found a few wild strawberries shielded from the sun by some leaves, and I had those for lunch. Or rather,
for dessert.
This area has a lot of gorgeous Buntsandstein, a red-colored rock that
weathers spectacularly, dictated by the lithology (pebbles or not, for
example). (Think Grand Canyon, only much prettier, more like a fairytale
landscape.) It also had some clays, in thin intercalations, and lots of
limestone. An issue that intrigued me and which I delved into later was the
redox behavior and mobility of iron in these rocks (red - trivalent - in the
Buntsandstein, in the coatings that covered the quartz grains, and green -
divalent - in the clay layers).
I
remember a dust road that was so cluttered with butterflies - literally - that I had to be very careful not to
step on any. I just happened to be there at the right time of the year.
And that reminds me of Paco Peligroso (currently carrying out fieldwork in Asia), who
told me about having pitched his tent somewhere in Spain
in the middle of the night once and waking up in a field of
poppies the following morning. I've seen a picture of that field. I think it was somewhere near Pamplona.
Awesome was that time when I was perched on a mountain top, having lunch, and suddenly heard a soft
rustling sound above me. I looked up... and held my breath.
A large bird, possibly a golden eagle, was flying by and had decided to come and have
a look at that figure on the mountain top. It then arched away again, toward its partner flying at a little distance.
I later saw the pair again, several times, near and on the rocks where they apparently had their nest.
There was this wild boar that suddenly crossed the road in the middle of the night and the
driver of that car telling me that he'd put up the little bell (from the bottles of the Spanish aniseed drink of which
I have forgotten the name)
so that it alerted him when the car was going over a bump or pothole. I told him I'd know that without the bell,
after which he removed the bell from the ceiling, and I regretted my words.
The very bad sunburn (second degree, likely) I suffered in Yecla I'd rather forget, and so would my legs,
but they recovered. That was during my
first summer in Spain, my first time in Spain. I still remember seeing my first real palm tree, during a stop
on the bus trip to Alicante.)
There is a picture somewhere of a very happy me, in the middle of the remnants of a lava flow, collecting
gorgeous greenish-yellow apatite crystals. It was thorium apatite (radioactive), but we knew that.
And Rick - who was the other rockhound
or devotee or fanatic or whatever you wanted to call us in the group - and I climbed the lava plug in the Sierra de las
Cabras near Cancaríx
and hunted for K-richterite, a rare amphibole, while trying to avoid snakes and throwing everything into the
"ruisende struikgewas" (singing a Dutch song that was popular at the time, which we made
refer to snakes in the shrubs). I only ever saw one snakeskin, never a live snake, while on fieldwork,
and not a single scorpion either, let alone a pair. We'd been told to watch out for those and avoid them. Scorpions.
The last time I was in Spain for fieldwork, someone suggested I travel part of the way home
together with her.
"Sure, " I replied.
I don't remember the details. She was staying in another village and I think our two groups decided to meet
for dinner one evening.
The end of the fieldwork was near and I was very tired. You can still tell.
As the two of us were chugchugging away, a few days later, it suddenly occurred to me to
ask her "But isn't Irún on the Atlantic coast, at the western end of the Pyrenean mountains?"
She confirmed. "Well, I'm on the wrong train then, as I am supposed to be going to Perpignan to
catch a train there."
So I spent a day and a night at Hendaye, where I changed my ticket,
then got an early train to Toulouse (la ville rose) where I arrived around midnight in a bad thunderstorm
and spent nearly three lovely days before catching the next service from Perpignan, back to Amsterdam. On
the way to Hendaye,
we chatted with
some guys; I remember that one said he had the same name (Angel). I don't remember whether my travel
mate caught another train there or not. It's possible that she joined her parents in Irún, on
the Spanish side of the border, vacationing.
What was funny was that after weeks in Spain and doing the best I could, my French was suddenly very rusty. I said so
in French to the guy at the hotel desk in Hendaye. He replied in
Spanish "Just talk in whatever language you feel like."
What a wonderful response!
People I did fieldwork with are Diana Woei Tioen Kie (who later became famous as a weather woman on TV)
and Sacha de Rijk
(both several times), Douwe van Rees, Rick Beetsma, Petra Boonen and Marchel
Peijnenburg, Barbara (whose last name I don't remember at the moment, but whom I liked a lot),
Gerard Bos, Claudia Hennink and others. Field staff included Frank Nobel, Frans van
Hoeflaken, Kees Linthout, Piet Maaskant, Jacques Touret, Frank Beunk and Anne
Fortuin.
One of them later confessed that he'd entertained the idea of picking me up and throwing me into a lake, when
I refused to go into the water... LOL (I don't swim, not really, but it was very hot that day.) And Rick and Marchel
later came to the rescue when I did go into a lake,
and suddenly went under in a part of the lake where I thought I could safely stand on the lake's floor, but
that was much deeper than I thought it was.
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Nobody of the Spanish usually spoke anything but Spanish. Exceptions were an English teacher and people who went to
pick grapes in France and usually were able to say two words in French, but I've forgotten what they were.
"Bonjour" and "merci", likely. It also brings back memories of hearing castanets
(castañuelas) in the evening
(girls on the street walking by) and
of a guy in black, including hat, who
fancied himself a singer - but oh, what a shock when he actually did start to sing - and who accompanied himself
on guitar. He told me he loved me and became rather confused when I replied "Muchas gracias!" and
went on to assume I had misunderstood him. I had not. I was simply a bit older than I looked
and he thought I was. I had not been born yesterday.
I
remember a dust road that was so cluttered with butterflies - literally - that I had to be very careful not to
step on any. I just happened to be there at the right time of the year.
And that reminds me of Paco Peligroso (currently carrying out fieldwork in Asia), who
told me about having pitched his tent somewhere in Spain
in the middle of the night once and waking up in a field of
poppies the following morning. I've seen a picture of that field. I think it was somewhere near Pamplona.
There was this wild boar that suddenly crossed the road in the middle of the night and the
driver of that car telling me that he'd put up the little bell (from the bottles of the Spanish aniseed drink of which
I have forgotten the name)
so that it alerted him when the car was going over a bump or pothole. I told him I'd know that without the bell,
after which he removed the bell from the ceiling, and I regretted my words.
