What’s the most daring thing you’ve ever licked- something that you’re happy to talk about in polite company which isn’t a body part?
When I was very small, I licked a slug and some squashed caterpillars I’d collected in a bucket and then pulped with a potato masher (I think I relived that episode as a student on a particularly depraved University field trip but my memory is hazy.)
Then, in my twenties, when I really should’ve known better, I managed to get my tongue stuck on a deep-frozen door key in the middle of an Albertan winter. Sad to say, I was sober, so I can’t claim student inebriation as mitigation for that brainless chapter in The Life Of Ralph.
“The 4 stages of addiction: Experimentation, Regular Use, Problem Use, Addiction / Dependency”
My name’s Ralph. I write the urbancrows blog and I’m an addict. I’m years in to my addiction and I now embrace it. It’s an integral part of me, so I’ve stopped looking for help. I’m way past that.
Now that I’m older and a little more affluent, I can pay dealers to satisfy my cravings. Sure, it costs me more than before to scratch the itch, but my suppliers are reliable and I can get the best quality stuff so I don’t have to hit as often as I used to.
Yes, I collect mineral samples.(PS: the mineral photos are at the end)
The endless Chilean desert has claimed me this week. Five days tooling around the Atacama with 2 fellow geologists is a great way to avoid the zombie-market-COVID-19-toilet-paper apocalypse.
Indeed there is after last week’s meltdown.
The three of us have been self isolating in a Toyota 4×4, well stocked with pringles, sun screen, rancid boots and single-use water bottles. We’ve been looking at 2 silver mining projects between the Chilean towns of Taltal in the south, and Iquique in the north. The projects are roughly 400km apart as a hugely overworked crow flies, with nothing but desert and dust between them.
If you’re reading the urbancrows blog, there’s an above average chance that you might be a trained geologist, you poor soul. Which means you spent 3 or 4 years slaving away as an undergraduate at University learning shit about rocks; sometimes a bit too much for your own good.
Have I ever told you about the useless shit I learned at college?
And wasn’t University fun? Field school. Beer. Labs. Beer. Lectures. Exams. Less beer. Failed courses. Coffee. Retakes. Below average degree. Career re-evaluation. Ah..the best days of our lives.
Out you popped, newly baked and pink cheeked from whatever cradle of higher learning you attended; a keen, young earth scientist, stuffed full of sciency knowledge. Head held high, you felt like you really understood the inner workings of our fragile blue rock. Those were the days.
Mine geologists –whatever their species, open pit or underground- will eventually end up supervising drill machines.
Open pit mine geologists rely heavily on sampling the cuttings produced by production blast hole rigs. The assay results help to map the average grade of the ore before it’s mined and sent to the metallurgical plant. They may also have core drills working in and around the pit testing for deeper, unexplored parts of the ore body.
An underground core drill. Definitely not ca. 1986.
Months back I went on a bit of a rant about my contempt for the myriad metaphysical powers that some people ascribe to crystals. Kundalini tickling, energizing chakras, transporting you to alternate dimensions – apparently there’s nothing a nicely formed kyanite crystal can’t unlock. And according to some charlatans believers, the common ore-forming minerals – the ones I’ve spent my career exploring for, like galena and chalcopyrite – also possess amazing restorative powers which I wish I’d known more about in my first incarnation as a humble field geologist.
It’s all bollocks as far as I’m concerned, but each to their own.
Then an old colleague, Kirsten, forwarded me a wonderful link to a comedy sketch about, yes you guessed it, crystal power mumbo-jumbo. I won’t bore you by trying to describe it; just click on the link and enjoy. Suffice to say, I have renewed respect for rose quartz.
(Update: If you’re outside Canada & having trouble viewing the video, my friend Karen sent me a second link that works in the UK. I’ve posted it below.)
(I hadn’t
planned on a Part 2 to my recent Yemeni post, but this story climbed out of my distant
memories and seemed to fit.)
Western-style mineral exploration, as practiced by the typical Vancouver junior, is all about efficiency; how to maximize the data you can tease from the ground for each dollar spent. Or rather it should be about efficiency. Experienced hands know that when the markets get excited and frothy about metals, even Blind Freddy and His Dog can raise cash, as my colleague Graham would say. So I guess the concept of efficiency waxes and wanes in tandem with investor interest in resources.
St. Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, Sofia. I explored it.
The Communists, in contrast, were not known for efficient exploration. In last week’s post I took a look at the Communist-sponsored regional exploration of southern Yemen; a piecemeal and ill thought-out mess where the left hand had no clue what the right hand was up to.
Earth scientists are a well-educated bunch, although we don’t always come across as clever when we’re 5 beers in to our cups. Most geologists –other than self-taught prospectors- have some form of university degree. Many of my colleagues were so enamored with the University study-drink-drink-more-study-repeat routine that they did what I did, and went back to university to earn a master’s degrees or doctorate on top of their undergrad’ degrees. Clever bunch, geologists. But eventually, assuming you have no wish to be an academic geologist or a waiter, reality bites and some sort of salaried earth science career is needed to fund the pub breaks.
I hate work but I have to fund this somehow.
In June 1984, much to my surprise, I graduated with a decent degree. A few months later I was poking forlornly around the City of London, knocking on doors and handing out a naively-bad resume to any mining company that would take it. I got my break when Anglo American interviewed me minutes after I walked into their head office looking for anyone from HR to talk to. A month later I was on a plane to Jo’burg to start a 3-year contract as a mine geologist in the deep-level gold mines in what was then the Western Transvaal (now Gauteng Province). After 2 days in the city signing paperwork, I was shipped off to the small mining town of Orkney, where I was billeted in the single mineworkers hostel and unceremoniously thrown into the deep end as a shaft geologist on Vaal Reefs 5 Shaft.
Geology students are trained to identify the commonest rock- and ore-forming minerals. It’s a vital skill for professional geologist. Sulphides, silicates, oxides, phosphates; we slog through dozens of them in our petrology labs, learning to identify the important ones using properties like colour, hardness, lustre (the way it shines or doesn’t), cleavage (how they split), density and such. As a kid, I loved this aspect of geology and by my early teens I could already identify the most common economic minerals such as galena (lead), sphalerite (zinc), chalcopyrite (copper), hematite (iron) and the flashier oxides and carbonates like malachite, rhodocrosite and azurite.
I Was Conned
But lately I’ve had this
nagging feeling that I was conned at University in my undergraduate days. I
missed out on an entire earth-science discipline, and I’m still stewing over
it. I touched on this feeling of disquiet in an earlier post (Crystal
Power).
I was conned. Honest guv. Second row up, far right.
In a futile attempt to scratch the itch, I decided to take a deeper look at the mineral properties we should’ve been learning about; the ones that haven’t made the mainstream textbooks yet. More’s the pity because I think these could be far more diagnostic and helpful to field geologists, particularly geologists with inter-dimensional Kundalini issues or Chakratic aura problems.
In an earlier blog post, I took an unpleasant but necessary dive into the murky waters of earth science to ask the question “What Is A Geologist?” All very useful if you spot one in the wild, but it left many questions unanswered. At the top of the ask-list is something you’ll hear whispered by the senior management of every major mining company. Skulking in Blenz in Bentall #5, sipping on their triple shot, half-sweet, non-fat, caramel macchiatos with extra soy foam, contemplating the latest quarterly compensation figures, someone finally looks around the group and asks: “What the bloody hell do our geologists do anyway?”
Not to worry. Urbancrows is here to help with Part 1 of an interminably long series of posts “Things Geologists Do.” I promise by the end of the series you’ll have a renewed appreciation for them. You’ll gasp at their daily trials, and you’ll end up pushing HR to big-up their annual salary increment. Really.
Trust me, I’m a geologist. A bit greyer now though.
