Basin+&+Range+JB

Annals Of the Former World I - Bases and Range I- Jessica Bruce

This McPhee article starts out with the typical Latitude longitude stuff which does not lure me in. You know after the first few pages that this is going to be about geology but I did not realize to what degree. I found myself reading but not absorbing really much of the first few pages. You truly realize the geology basis of this story on page 76 when McPhee rants on with terms such as " Clinoptlotite, metakirchheimerite, katznenbuchelite, mbozite, szaobelyite, neighborite, muckoxite" and the list goes on. Within that page I recognized very few words. At first I questioned why McPhee would do such a thing, does he not realize that the people reading his article would more then likely be confused like me? I know he does not do it to prove his wits, he does not need to do that. He wants to make his article as accurate as possible and clearly that means including terms like the ones previously mentioned.

We are introduced to Deffeyes, a scholar and a man who knows his rocks. Mcphee describes him as "a big man with a tenured waistline. His hair flies behind him like Ludwig Van Beethoven. He lectures in sneakers. His voice is syllabic, elocitionary, operatic". This is another great example of the importance that description plays in McPhees articles. I can see Deffeyes as if he is standing right in front of me, the description lacks nothing.

During a trip with Deffeyes, Mcphee askes "What one might expect from a close inspection of roadcuts" he said "they were windows into the world as it was in other times. From this quote you realize that Deffeyes views things from a different perspective. Looking down through a road cut most of us would never consider it to be most of our history. It gives you a small depiction of what is to come of the knowledge that Deffeyes holds.

Deffeyes has traveled all over to look at rocks, almost to far. I found myself just becoming engaged in an area when all of a sudden they were moved on to somewheres else. I barely remember any of the places they had stopped, which makes me wonder if Mcphee touched on to many locations. The one place I remember most prominently throughout the whole article was the Great Salt Lake. " Chemically, this is one of the toughest enviroments in the world " said Deffeyes " You swing more the salriest to thr most dilute waters on the planet in a matter of hours. Some of the most primitive things living are all that can take that. The brine is nearly saturated with sodium choloride. For a short period each year, so much water comes down out of the Wasatch that large parts of the lake surface are relatively fresh. Any creature living there gets an osmotic shoch that amounts to hundreds of pounds per square inch. No higher plants can take that, no higher animals - no multicelled organisms. Few bacteria. Few algae. Brine Shrimp, which live there, die by the millions from the shock".

This quote from Deffeye made me realize f how truly treachorous this enviroment is. I was amazed that something like this even existed, just the idea that barely any life can survive exists gives you a picture in your head of total isolation.

" I have seen the salt lakes incredibly beautiful in winter dusk under snow streamer curtains of cloud moving fast through the sky, with the wall of the Wasatch a deep rose and the lake islands rising from what seemed to be rippled slate" wrote Mcphee. The two description are so contraidctory. I can envision myself sitting at dusk lookinh out at its beauty. You can still sense a lonely realm surrounding McPhees description which allows us to see the lake no for its treachories but for its natural charm. After both descriptions about salt lake I felt complelled to go there to see it myself. Was is truly the lonely abode he speaks of?

The salt lake was really the only place I can recall in great detail from the article. The story was very geology based and I really did not enjoy it as much as "Travels of the Rock". It was much more technical then I had hoped but McPhee was trying to gives us the exact description of what Deffeyes was doing in his profession and where his geological pleasures lied.