Field Day

This weekend I had the pleasure (read: I had to get up at 8 to go to school on a weekend) of getting to do my first field work as a geology student. We were to map Holyrood Park, a big natural park in the middle of the city. It is home to the Holyrood Palace (where royalty stay. The Queen last came in last August) and Arthur's Seat, a bid peak over-looking the city that is the reminant of an ancient volcanoe 40x its size.

We went out the first day with a group under the tutelage of a teacher, who taught us to map. Measured dips, strikes, dip angle, location; identified rock types, intrusions, and fault scars; created our own intrepretation of how this bit of land formed. Note on the latter part--geology and geography employ a good deal of imagination. Because most of what we study is underground (think the iceberg rule: the part that you see is only 10% of the total iceberg) and most is completely eroded, leaving giant (hundreds of thousands to millions of years) gaps, you really must be creative in your prediction to how the landscape formed. Sometimes you can get a little ahead of yourself--"...and then giant hippopotami came and trampled the ground until it was compacted, and then a volcano erupted and lava flowed into a lake where it instantly cooled and was shot back by shear force to the valley that the hippos created and that's what we're looking at..." Anyways, you have to think a little fantastically sometimes.
But the wind was crazy on Saturday. Almost blew me over several times. If you were walking and a gust came up, it would make your feet stumble and you would look like you were walking drunk. It was damn cold too, but really, really pretty. A very Scottish day--crisp and stark and beautiul.
       We had to go back on Sunday (today) to finish up, and this time we were just in pairs. My partner was this guy born and raised in and around Edinburgh named Scott. It wasn't nearly as windy today, but still cold, and my hands got so cold I couldn't hold a pencil anymore. I must invest in some gloves (mitts). And then we accidentally trekked through a bog (it looked just like the long grassland that we were walking around in) and got my feet soaked up up to mid-calf. That was 10:00 in the morning, and we got done at 4:00. So my feet were really cold too.
     But we managed to go to a pub for lunch to watch the football match that was on. It was my partner's favorite team, and they were playing their biggest rivals. Rangers v. Celtics. Both Glasgow teams, but with a rivalry that goes back centuries. They even manage to bring religion into it; Rangers are protestant, and wave posters of the Queen up at games; Celtics of course are Catholic. But it was a good game--very very brutal. Some guy even had a big gash in his temple and no one blinked an eye.
              Then after we finished mapping, I got to go see another game in the student union. This one was Chelsea v. Liverpool, and Chelsea is my mate Malcolm's team. Its good to watch the game with someone who knows what's happening and will stand up shouting and cheering when a goal is scored.
But raining again now. I suspect you'll see that written here a lot. Oh yeah--that picture up there is of St. Anthony's Chapel ruins at the park. Built no later than 1400. The other picture is some of the rocks that we were mapping. Very green.  That whole formation is old lava that has protruded up.  This bottom one is to show you how close the park is to the city.  Its our Central Park.  (that picture has snow!  it was not snowing)

-Cheers