Double rainbow during a thunderstorm Tuesday, while I was driving to Socorro, New Mexico (to use the microprobe at New Mexico Tech). Those are the Sandia Mountains, east of Albuquerque, in the background.
Sometimes I wonder how anyone in Albuquerque could be anything but a geologist. The Sandias are just there, one of the loveliest pink granites I've ever seen, with a little upper Paleozoic sedimentary icing on top. (And the granite is even a little deformed!) And then there's the Rio Grande running through town, wide and braided and looking very wet right now. And south of the city, basalt flows sitting on top of sediments, right there in the roadcut.
Ok, so it doesn't have enough water for its exploding population. (Bernalillo seems to have sprawled more every time I drive through.) But it's still a gorgeous place.
Also, Albuquerque has a Trader Joe's. I won't drive four hours for Trader Joe's, but I'll stop there whenever I'm driving past.
Thursday, May 8, 2008
Enchantment
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2 comments:
TJ's rocks. I used to drive 1 hour to get to one, back when they were rarer -- but it was always on my way to somewhere else. Now that they've made it east, I have one within walking distance!
When I moved to Albuquerque in 1990 as an enthusiastic young journalist, all I knew about geology had come from a 101 class in college and John McPhee. But you are so right. You can't look up or out here, in any direction, on any scale, and not grin or gasp. I can still remember looking up at that stripe along the top of the Sandias and saying to a colleague, "I wish I knew more geology."
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