Source of book: Borrowed from the library.
A friend suggested this book after seeing pictures from our Spring Break trip to southern Nevada. We have actually explored quite a bit of the “Basin and Range” part of the Western United States, and had a basic knowledge of the geology. This book, however, is all about the geological history of the area, and where to find evidence of it.
I previously read and enjoyed The Patch by John McPhee. I knew he had written quite a number of books, but had not realized that he studied geology before becoming a journalist and writer. Basin and Range is one of a set of five that he wrote about the geology of North America. I look forward to reading the others.
For those not familiar with the “Basin and Range” area, here is the basic description. It mostly (but not entirely) coincides with the Great Basin of North America, the area in which all rivers flow, not to the oceans, but disappear inland. The Great Salt Lake in Utah is the largest terminus, but there are others. While most of the Basin and Range are in the Great Basin, parts of it extend beyond it. For example, the watershed for Southern Nevada flows into the Colorado River, and thence to the Gulf of California. It is not part of the Great Basin, but it is part of the Basin and Range system.
The Basin and Range is a series of mountain ranges running north and south, with valleys - basins - between them. The ranges stretch for hundreds of miles, from Idaho down into Mexico, and go on from west to east hundreds more, from California to Colorado.
The system was created when the North American plate began to pull apart about 17 million years ago. That’s really recent in geological time, actually. The rocks themselves are mostly older, of course, and consist of sandstones, shales, and limestones from when the area was a shallow sea.
The geological history is told throughout the book, interspersed with McPhee’s journey with his mentor, Princeton Geology professor Kenneth Deffeyes, who was quite the character. (Deffeyes passed in 2017. McPhee is still around, and still writing at age 90. (Actually, the two were the same age, but Deffeyes was the experienced geologist, while McPhee had switched to writing. The two of them took a trip along Interstate 80, both so McPhee could see the geology up close, and also so Deffeyes could explore for old silver mines that could have their tailings “reprocessed” using modern methods.
The book is, as usual with McPhee, delightfully well written. Whether or not you care about geology (and I do, because I care about knowledge and science and love nature), you will find the story fascinating. McPhee understands (and researches) what he writes, so he gets the details down. But he also brings a sense of humor, an ear and eye for human nature, and a genuine love of what he writes about. He also has the ability to bring complex topics to everyone, without either getting mired in jargon or dumbing things down. He assumes his readers can, with a little attention and good writing, understand new things.
He also is able to make fun of the jargon itself. Here is one of my favorite passages about that:
As years went by, such verbal deposits would thicken. Someone developed enough effrontery to call a piece of our earth an epieugeosyncline. There were those who said interfluve, when they meant between two streams, and a perfectly good word like mesopotamian would do. A cactolith, according to the American Geological Institute’s Glossary of Geology and Related Sciences, was “a quasi-horizontal chonolith composed of anastomosing ductoliths, whose distal ends curl like a harpolith, thin like a sphenolith, or bulge discordantly like an akmolith or ethmolith.” The same class of people who called one rock serpentine called another jacupirangite. Clinoptilolite, eclogite, migmatite, tincalconite, szaibelyite, pupellyite. Meyerhoffferite. The same class of people who called one rock paracelsian called another despujolsite. Mtakirchheimerite, phlogopite, katzenbuckelite, mboziite, noselite, neighborite, samsonite, pigeonite, muskoxite, pabstite, aenigmatite. Joesmithite.
Feel free to guess which of those are real and which he made up. He also took some digs at how all the rocks we thought we knew existed are now renamed. Granite is now dozens of subforms, and most of what we laypersons call granite is now classified as, say, granodiorite. (See: Sierra Nevada.) But, as he notes, all the old terms are still in common use.
The home terms still apply. The enthusiasm geologists show for adding new words to their conversation is, if anything, exceeded by their affection for the old. They are not about to drop granite. They say granodiorite when they are in church and granite the rest of the week.
McPhee also has his theory about why it was Charles Lyell whose geological theories became influential, but not the similar ones of James Hutton, who wrote decades earlier. After quoting an thoroughly incomprehensible - yet earthshattering - sentence that takes up a half a page, McPhee notes the difference between scientists and writers - in some cases.
In that long sentence lies the discovery of metamorphic rock. But just as metamorphism will turn shale into slate, sandstone into quartzite, and granite into gneiss, Hutton had turned words into pumice. Unsurprisingly, his insights did not at once spread far and wide.
I also thought I might mention an interesting scene high on a steep mountain. McPhee and Deffeyes have driven up this insane dirt road up one of the cliffs, and finally found this old silver mine that Deffeyes thinks has promise. (It turned out to be a great find - Deffeyes made a pretty mint on the mine tailings.) As with all mines, water is a necessity for processing ore. So the smelting works and town were located next to a seasonal stream. McPhee’s description is wonderful, and brought to my mind many of the abandoned mining towns an other mining-related ruins we have explored over the years.
Here at seven thousand feet in this narrow mountain draw had lived a hundred people, who had held their last election a hundred years ago. They had a restaurant, a brewery, a bookstore. They had seven saloons. And now there was not so much as one dilapidated structure. There were only the old unhappy cottonwoods, looking alien and discontented over the moist bed of the creek. Sixteen stood there, twisted, surviving - most of them over four feet thick. “Those cottonwoods try an environmentalist’s soul,” Deffeyes said. “They transpire water like running fountains. If you were to cut them down, the creek would run. Cottonwoods drink the Humboldt. Some of the tension in this country is that miners need water. Getting rid of trees would preserve water.”
I might mention that the Humboldt in question is the river that flows through northeastern Nevada, rather than the county in northwestern California that contains many of our redwood groves. Also great is his description of Lovelock, Nevada.
Here in the Big Meadows of the Humboldt, the principal employer is the co-op mill on the edge of town, which sends alfalfa all over the world. On the sidewalks are men in Stetsons, men in three-piece suits, men in windbreakers, tall gaunt overalled men with beards. There are women in Stetsons, boots, and jeans. A thin young man climbs out of a pickup that is painted in glossy swirls of yellow and purple, and has a roll bar, balloon tires, headphones, and seventeen lights.
I can attest that, with the exception of the headphones (now replaced by earbuds), not much has changed about rural Nevada. The trucks are diesel now, I guess, so “rolling coal” seems to be a pastime of the young men.
I realize I haven’t quoted much about the actual geology. I guess that is because any quote would be insufficient - I really would have to quote pages at a time. A glimpse of McPhee’s writing style, however, should give some insight into how he tells the stories of the rocks that make up the Basin and Range.
Basin and Range isn’t exactly an introduction to geology, but it is a good introduction to the specific history of a beautiful and unique part of our world.
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