January 29, 2004
Field trip
“We are about to embark on what is arguably the coolest geologic field trip in history.”
This magnificent claim was made by no less than Dr Steven Squyres, the Mars mission’s principal science investigator. It makes me mindful of our freshman Geology lab assistant’s encouraging words when first we struck out into the surrounding Texas hills, rock hammers and sample bags in hand.
Science was required for all undergraduates. So naturally, I asked around the frat house what was the snap freshman science course. Little did I know at the time, but that’s how I became a geologist. It was a long and sometime arduous path, diverted by the Great Middle War, but diligently resumed finally to issue in two degrees and many cool geologic field trips, if I say so myself.
I avoided the romance of the Texas oil bidness through no fault of my own — or God’s either, I might add — when I got the notion that I’d study for the priesthood. At the time, I was geologizing for the highway department, “breaking rocks for the state,” as my bishop put it, when I embarked on what’s become an even cooler field trip itself.