Wyoming Dinosaur Ranch Blog

This is a phrase used all together too much in western Kentucky these days.  There was of course a tremendous ice storm this last week of January 2009 over there and virtually all common forms of communications ceased to function over a wide area.  I heard a news report saying that it was now the plan for more Emergency Operations Centers (EOC’S) to integrate Amateur Radio stations into their infrastructure.  Wow.  What is Old is New Again.

With all the modern technologies out there, Cell Phone, Internet, Dial Up Voice and Satellite Internet, you’d think that Emergency Managers (and american families) would never have to do without communication.  Well as it works out, the first thing to go in a disaster is communication.  This recent ice storm shut down the power to over 700,000 households and many entire cities.  When electrical service is down more than 12 hours, most telephone (thusly internet) service and cable company battery backup time is exceeded and you are off line and out of touch with the outside world.  Such is the way of disasters that interrupt electrical power.

 The scale of this outage isn’t lost on this amateur radio operator.  Nor were it’s effects of effectively isolating anyone without a charged satellite phone or a Ham Radio Station ignored by the sheer inconvenience to those effected.  I hope you and they learned something from this.  

If you personally don’t have an amateur radio license, get to know the ham nearby you and help him put up his antenna.  At least don’t complain when he puts up a tower across the street for his antenna. Alternatively, become an amateur radio operator.  The FCC has removed the morse code requirement from the test and www.qrz.com has sample tests from the actual pool of questions.  Either way, you will get to be able to reach out to let relatives where you are and what your condition is.  When everything else fails, amateur radio will always work.  

Our power grid is easily interrupted by natural and man made influences.  Imagine an EMP terrorist attack on the eastern United States.   Power would be interrupted for many months if not years over a wide area making the power outage in Kentucky this week look like a picnic in the woods.  How would you or your community communicate with the rest of the world when even satellite phones wouldn’t work.  There will always be a ham radio operator with his trusty backup emergency rig that works on 12 volt.  

A licensed, experienced operator will be the backbone of any EOC, neighbor hood cooperative survival network, or small town center.  They never go hungry, go without water but would certainly occasionally pull long shifts without sleep.  If you have a working two way radio, you will survive any widespread shutdown of electrical service.  You will be taken care of because you will be an important part of dealing with the disaster locally.  

This is the fastest way of preparing for a natural or manmade disaster. It is important to become part of the solution, not part of the problem.  Cross training in other emergency management disciplines is also useful because as you operate the radio, you are already familiar with nomenclature and acronyms which permeate the emergency management culture these days.  Become a medic, get certified in a Community Emergency Response Team, become a pre-trained Red Cross Volunteer and certainly get your amateur radio license.

This is not to say that you should avoid having your own survival supplies.  Who do you suppose is more comfortable in Kentucky these days.  Those with a 1000 gallon propane tank running a pre-installed generator big enough to run their water well and refrigerator, or those living without such things.  Those with stored water, food and alternative methods of heating their homes, or those without.  You decide how you should be living or should I say preparing.

Geology is Detective Work

Everyone likes a good book.  Now days the genre has changed.  With the proliferation of the internet, reading books may go the way of the Wooly Mammoth. Geologists, while having read their fair share of text books and technical articles also spend a great deal of their time (besides web time) reading the pages of the earth’s book. I once had a student who was always the last one up the hill.  I just thought he was slow and out of shape. One day I saw him open his always bulging backpack and to my astonishment, a dozen heavy college textbooks fell out.  After shaking my head, my only public comment was, “the only books you need in the field is the outcrop in front of you and your field notebook”. (He passed the class by an act of charity.)

In a previous Geologic Column, I wrote about how the present is the key to the past (and the future).  Lets remember this rule as I discuss the turning of the pages of earth’s book.

Individual rock layers are commonly visible as you drive down the highway around Powder River County.  (70 mile per hour geology!) They stick out visually in sharp contrast as they are usually harder than surrounding rock (which weathers away).  They might be a cap rock protecting the softer sediment below or just a huge monolithic chunk of sand that sticks out of a hillside.  My point is that each rock unit that can be easily identified as different from the surrounding rocks, has a different, unique series of events that led to it’s formation and preservation.  This sequence of events is a snapshot on the page of the book I reference above.

The science of stratigraphy is the study of the origin of rock layers.  (Biggest term of the week time!) Geologists use principles of “paleo-environmental stratigraphy” to determine the ancient environment that enabled the deposition of the sediment (any detritus such as dirt, sand, silt, clay up to boulders in size) that led to the hard rock we see today. Geologists use physical characteristics of the original sediment preserved in the rock to do the detective work which figures out the paleoenvironment (ancient conditions including climate, whether water had anything to do with the deposit, what happened shortly after the sediment was buried, etc.). Lets use a big ledge of hard sandstone over a soft layer of muddy shale as an example.

Where today is sandstone made?  Locally, the Powder River moves a lot of sand that has been weathered off the land by that all too rare precipitation event. A walk down the river bottom will show you a lot of different environments for sediment to accumulate.  The quite pools of water (a bowl) cut off from the main river flow, will always have a layer of fine mud covering the bottom of the sediment below (which is mostly sand/silt). Over time, the pool may fill up with mud. This lens of mud could then easily be covered by a thick blanket of sand from the next flood.  So our sequence of a sand dish pool, filled with mud and covered with a blanket of sand is buried over the years by more such sequences.  With the passage of time, the sequence hardens because of chemical changes from ground water and compression from the weight above. Presto-chango and you have rock and a rock layer sequence telling you a story.  If nature does that long enough hundreds of feet of sand/shale/sand sequences accumulate and you have a rock formation form.

I collect all sort of fossil remains from the local rock formation named “Hell Creek”.  It was formed more than 65 million years ago (Upper Cretaceous Period) by similar environmental conditions to that described above.  (Have you ever seen an animal bone in a river bottom?) It is hundreds of feet thick, is very fossiliferous and the rivers that formed it were fed sand by the trillions of truckloads from the newly rising Rocky mountains to the west.  If I take you to Hell Creek outcrops in the field, I can show you numerous sandy dishes filled with a fine muddy shale capped with a blanket sand.  I can watch the process today live, real time (albeit slow motion) or I can see the results of the same process in the rocks almost anywhere in the county.  All you have to do is look at the picture on the page. The present is the key to the past!

More on those fossils in a later Geologic Column.

FB

Geologic Column
By Frank Bliss

Folks are always telling me they have found some really cool “dinosaur eggs”.  I tell them they are probably not dinosaur eggs.  These rounded, spherical or elongated rocks that are often rusty red or yellow in color often fall out of sandstone outcrops.  These objects also often take on the persona of a cannon ball to the non-geologists out there.  Heck, they are heavy, round, redish and look like the right caliber for an 8 pounder. There is a simple (sort of) explanation.

These fairly common and certainly very interesting objects are called Concretions.  They are not man made and are not reptilian in origin either.  They are, in fact, naturally made by a somewhat complex series of events concluded with a simple process of cementation.  The following process is necessary for their formation.

Please bear with me here and use your minds eye.  Try to think of a thick bed of uniform sandstone as a 3 dimensional fabric (like a finely woven cloth but in three not two dimensions).  This 3 dimensional fabric allows water to flow freely through the holes between the sand grains.  A uniform fabric allows water to flow smoothly without obstruction unless a fragment of something other than sand (fossil, twig, root, rock, etc) disrupts a smooth passage of water.  Moving water (like in pipes in your house) creates an electrical field which in a uniform flow is (guess what) uniform.  Any disturbance in the water flow creates a disturbance in the electrical field which causes an “electric potential gradient”.  (don’t let that term scare you!)   An “electric potential gradient” means that the disturbed area might be more electrically positive (or negative) than the rest of the sand body.  This causes charged dissolved minerals in the water (ions) to be attracted to that area. These minerals that are attracted to that charged area literally accumulate there and cement the sand grains together like concrete (remember the term concretion!).

In other words, minerals in water flowing through the sand selectively cements together sand grains around a nucleus.  This process generally leads to very spherical, often concentric growths. Adjacent spheres may even grow together or an odd shaped nucleus can give very unusual final forms.  I think they are neat enough to take home when they are small enough to carry.  I have seen them the size of a small car and often they weigh many tons.

Over the years, I have collected a nice assortment of sizes, shapes, and types of cemented concretions which mostly reside in my gardens.  The composition of the cement varies greatly and includes: pyrite, marcasite, hematite, calcite, halite, dolomite and various silica minerals.  The iron cements are the most common around here though. Some rare concretions may even have very nice fossils (nucleous) within. Fortunately for us, Powder River County has more than it’s fair share of these nifty natural objects. Now you know they are not eggs or old cannon balls.  I don’t know too much about cannon balls but I’ll cover dinosaur eggs in a later geologic column.
FB

There is nothing like making a U-turn.  Having invested a significant amount of time and resources to a particular path, it seems like our wise voters (some of which can’t tie their own shoes) have arranged to change horses and paths mid-stream.  So there we are.  May the winners save the economy because the options are not good.  Having said that…..

Being blunt, it looks like the Obama administration is Clinton 2.0 with all his senior advisors being drawn from old Washington types with a great deal of ideological zeal and experience in promoting same.  I had my issues with Clinton mostly related to stains on the floor of the oval office but he was a fairly moderate centrist as a result of his intense reliance of polls.  The difference between Clinton 1.0 and 2.0 is that the balance of power that was in effect during the Clinton Administration is non-existent now (in the Obama admin.) with the far left running the congress (at least on the leadership level).  The Democratic Rubric of Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country has certainly been reworked into “Ask what your country can do for you”.  This will certainly lead to problems if left unchecked over a period of time.

It seems there is going to be a very major reworking of entitlements, taxes and jobs, essentially giving more than 50 percent of the voting block these benefits.  Thusly ensuring a power base that is happy to be essentially paid for their vote.  We begin to follow the road first tread by the Roman Empire where the productive people started to feed the majority of the population who by that time were entitlement drunk followed by a very rapid decline in the society.  It is likely that we have not learned from history and our horse is heading in that direction.

By necessity, the first few years of the Obama administration will be spent trying to deal with the economic tornado that is spinning out of control world wide.  This will delay and distract all involved from some very touchy subjects indeed but there will be casualties of principles that we have lived under since the inception of our country.

The total buy into Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) by the new administration just about guarantees that numerous productive segments of our economy will fail due to government intervention into just about every aspect of energy production.  The coal industry will be a victim along with petroleum production.  The enormity of the production/distribution system for those two industries is highly underappreciated by policy makers who flippantly say “we will bankrupt coal plants before they are built”.  Cap and Trade is the worst idea I have heard in my lifetime.  The ONLY hope we have is that some new energy technology is invented that enables America to provide a new industry on shore that replaces the jobs lost due to the AGW buy in and resultant bad policy decisions.

Ranchers will essentially go out of business due to the cattle fart tax that the EPA is proposing due to the perceived danger to our climate as a result of the cattle’s contribution of methane.  You couldn’t make this stuff up either.  The idea is so ludicrous to be funny if the impact wasn’t so serious and immediate.  The food production decline by taxing cattle is very predictable.  Grass fed cattle supply a huge amount of income to this country and is a huge industry to itself.  The farmers of america feed the huge number of urban folks who would be unable to feed themselves otherwise.

The feel good gun control measures of Clinton 1.0 will be reinstated.  The crime rate will go up as the economy continues to tank so more measures will be instituted and the vicious cycle will continue.  Good people should be able to own firearms, bad people shouldn’t and having a clueless bureaucrat decide which gun is good or bad is fools play.  Obama’s hiring practice of asking if an applicant has firearms or not will ensure that only firearm ignorant individuals will be making policy.

Going from a capitalist supply side economy to from the bottom up socialist economy is the biggest change or direction that we could have possibly made.  To have Bush enact the initial stages of this ongoing process blew me away.  I suspect that he was reacting to the gloom and doom being told to him by his advisors and had little choice.  Obviously there was a lack of accurate data available.  It will be interesting to see what history has to say about that.  Obama is continuing the gloom and doom talk in order to get the ducks lined up for what ever his advisors dream up.  History will also judge him.

So, in effect, the new administration plans to reduce food production, move strategic industries out of the country or drive them out of existence entirely.  Hold on to your wallets! I hereby make a prediction that the throw away society of the 80′s 90′s and last decade, become a society where things start getting repaired instead of replaced.  The age of the TV repairman returns, the Cubans tendency to repair cars over and over again moves to America.  No longer will we have the prosperity to just replace what is broken.  How many people do you the that darn socks anymore.  Heck just go to WalMart and buy new ones.  This may too change.  The periods of prosperity we have enjoyed are about to change to austerity.

What can the driver at the head of this be thinking as he heads us into the ditch.

Our lifestyle living on the Wyoming/Montana border and being over 14 miles from the nearest asphalt road is just a bit different than the average urban dweller.  It is a fact of life up here that the power could go off at any time, we could get snowed in for weeks, roads have been taken out by flash floods and mud season is a problem all unto itself.  Our nearest general store is 15 miles away, the closest pharmacy is 45 miles and the closest WalMart is 65 miles away.  Heck, we usually go into town every couple of weeks just to keep fresh bread and fruits about whether we need to or not. This geographic isolation is certainly problematic at times but is actually an asset as you will see later.

How did I get this way?  As a past vice-chairman of the Wyoming Chapter of the American Red Cross, a past Chairman of the Jackson Hole Chapter of the American Red Cross, an active EMT/First Responder, an ex-COP, a firearms/self-defense instructor, a seasonal grass fire fighter, and a “CERT” (Community Emergency Response Team) Instructor,  you might imagine I have had a few hours of training related to disaster preparedness/response.  You would be correct of course.  This training has led me to integrate a “ready for anything” mentality into our regular daily routine.  Don’t get me wrong, I am not afraid of anything, because I am prepared for anything. (I think).

Naturally a hard core survivalist comes to mind but the reality of having to interact with the rest of the world prevents that.  We actually interact with the surrounding population, have friends out in the community, do business with locals and don’t shun authority figures.  I suppose this precludes our membership as a true survivalist.  Short of buying your survival retreat in the remote wilderness there are some things you can do to make yourself more secure, comfortable and safer.

Of course we keep a garden, have the ability to farm, raise livestock and generally feed ourselves here on our ranch.  You probably don’t.  We actually have some limitations but generally if the national supply chain is disrupted on our end we will do just fine.  I really don’t expect the government to help us out here (Are you kidding!) I consider having to go to town for any small part that I might need an unnecessary/expensive trip.  Therefore I keep a really large selection of spare parts, nuts, bolts, oil, filters, and general repair materials for all of my necessary equipment and machinery that I rely on.  I keep at least two years of spare parts on hand for all mission critical components of my operation.

You must remember that the rules have changed.  It used to be that the Red Cross and the Federal Emergency Management Administration used to tell you to have three days of food, water and supplies on hand to “wait out” any possible disaster.  That has certainly changed.  Since this “rule of thumb” changes weekly, look it up for yourself.  Now my suggested general rule of thumb is to have as many supplies as reasonable on hand to wait out any reasonably expected extended event.  Of course the three day rule never applied up here but is still followed (at best) in urban situations. (The worst thing I can think of happening to this country is a high altitude nuclear detonation by a terrorist state or group.  Look up EMP on google). Why would they just take out a city when they could take out a whole coast by shutting down all the electronic goodies we (as a society) rely on?

I’ll cut to the quick. Lets assume that either locally or nationally, the supply chain is disrupted by either a natural event or terrorist action.  You know, the worst case situation.  The following is a BASIC list of things that need serious attention.

Living in urban surrounding with population around you that is NOT prepared with enough food, water and supplies to support themselves is an ugly situation.  I suggest to you that that is the situation for over 250,000,000 of our fellow countrymen.  When they can’t get food after the local grocery store runs out (most stores have only three days supply on their shelves as they operate under a just in time ordering system), they will stop being good neighbors.  My suggestion to avoid this is to get out of town into a very rural setting if your situation allows.  If it doesn’t, give yourself options and train with firearms till your understand them instinctively to protect yourself, your family and close associates under your care.  Train them too.  Your second amendment rights are vitally important to this and vote accordingly to keep those rights.  Have at least one good shotgun, a .22 rifle, a .22 pistol, a 38 pistol, a .223 rifle and a .308 rifle with plenty of ammo about.  All of which are useful for different purposes and have enough ammo around for their extended use.  Here is where geographic isolation is a plus, no refugees from the city to deal with.

Prescription drugs should be kept in three month minimum backup reserve with stock rotation being the rule.  Other necessary over the counter remedies such as Ex-lax, Immodium, Pepto Bismol, cod liver oil (rotate every two years), an emergency dental kit, Tylenol, aspirin, a complete first aid kit, a poison kit and take first aid training to know how to use all of the above.

More obscure things to gather up:

Potassium iodide which is used in the event of a nuclear plant disaster or a nuclear attack are optional but store nearly forever and are impossible to get if you actually need them. The iodide will flood the thyroid with regular iodine preventing the thyroid for absorbing radioactive iodine and thus prevent thyroid cancer down the road.

Vitamin C from the store only has a shelf life of a few years.  Buy crystalline vitamin C (do a google search) by the kilogram (a years worth for one adult) because scurvy kicks in after 6 weeks.  Vitamin C might be worth far more than gold if there is a major supply chain interruption.

 Oil, sugar and flour:  If you have a lot of these things along with a source of heat, your eating pretty well.  The problem is, only sugar will store for extended periods of time.  The other two will need to be rotated.

Food is easy, water is way more important.  Getting your self an expedition level water filter is a necessity in my humble opinion.  You can always find water but if you drink it, your probably done within 24 hours unless it is properly filtered before your drink it.  There are numerous types of filters out there, get one.  Water storage is another option but takes room, has to be rotated regularly and is not an easy option.

Sanitation:   I have always said, “if you have a years worth of toilet paper and there is a disaster, you will have a lot of other things you need because you can always trade”.  Nuff said.  Paper products should be kept in at least a 3 month supply on hand for all parties that you think might be staying in your abode.  

Clorox is an obvious must and should be rotated every couple of years. Plastic trash bags of all size are never in enough supply.  Have a toilet cover that uses a 5 gallon bucket under it. Put a small sized trash bag or each use and add a teaspoon of clorox to the mix.  Throw away each into a place designated for such use.

Insect products may be quite useful too.  Use your own preferences but have them on hand if you need them.  Ask any hurricane victim how bad mosquitos get after the storm passes.

Pet foods:  You don’t want your pet to be without during any disaster so have a portable kennel so if you have to bug out, you can take them.  Also have enough food in store for them to have the same backup you do.  Rotate the stock religiously.  Same applies to their prescriptions and any treatments.  An unhappy pet doesn’t make a good companion.  Hopefully you have a well trained dog that is protective of you and yours.

Games/entertainment:  With little or no communication, have card games and kids activities handy and have plenty of variety.  Learn to be a ham radio operator.  You don’t have to know Morse code these days and you can take sample test (that have the actual test questions) at www.qrz.com.  The test costs 15 bucks and the local ham club will help you through the process.  If the internet isn’t there, ham radio will be.  At a minimum have a good shortwave radio and learn how to find news and other information.  Have a BIG supply of batteries and rotate them regularly.

Tools:  A pretty good basic tool kit with screwdrivers, wrenches, crescents, pliers, vice grips and hammers with a good supply of duct tape, nails, 1X2 boards and plastic to cover broken windows. A nice supply of various nuts and bolts is also a good idea.  Some sharp utility knives may also come in very handy.  A really nice hunting knife, hatchet and a way to sharpen same may be handy.  In fact, all camping supplies from tents to lanterns are highly suggested in your bug out kit.

To boil all this information down in a nutshell….. Think 1880′s technology!  If it worked then, it will work now with no power or modern conveniences.  I firmly believe in the power of ropes, horses, a few log chains, axes, firearms, canvas and some fire making supplies.  With such things along with a wood stove, there are very few places you can’t survive in if you take the time to learn how to do it.   With the world teetering on the brink of this or that problem from day to day, don’t you think it might be worth your time to look into the subject a little bit?

FB

Living down wind of one of the largest volcanos on the planet has it’s advantages and it’s disadvantages. Certainly the Yellowstone ecosystem is one of the last bastions of what North America used to be like.  Even though the park service messed with the ecology back around 1900 in a mostly disasterous fashion, life finds a balance and has mostly recovered.  The surrounding country in the three state area (Montana, Idaho and Wyoming) is some of the most pristine wilderness left in the lower 48 states.  This is the big advantage.

The very features that make the Yellowstone ecosystems environment so protectable and worth preserving also makes it quite a dangerous place for own existence.  Having a super-volcano that erupts roughly every 600,000 years around is somewhat unnerving.  Particularly since it has been around 600,000 years since it last erupted therefore any day now…… An eruption would absolutely destroy the very ecosystem that thrives because of the volcano.  Ironic and a big disadvantage.

The unique fauna and flora there are a direct result of the geologic phenomena that are so abundant. It was recognized early on that there was a huge benefit from preserving this area. Because of this rare geology, forward looking government figures fought to save those features from exploitation which in turn, mostly saved the ecosystem from “modern” development.  The geographic isolation also played a part in this preservation but I directly attribute the preservation to the absolutely rare hydrothermal features of this huge volcanic caldera.  

Dangerous?  You bet.  As I write this, a swarm of hundreds of small quakes center under Yellowstone Lake in the caldera have occurred over the last few weeks and continue today.  Though by no means do I have information the following is actually happening, it could. The heat from magna interacting with water several miles down causes steam pockets which can lead to huge steam explosions.  Far short of the near extinction level event that a caldera explosion would be, these steam explosions can be quite large.  The last one over 150,000 years ago blew out the West Thumb part of Yellowstone lake.  This was a really big poof but no one was hear to see it.  I wouldn’t want to be within several hundred miles of this if it happened but the aftermath would probably be just a great tourist attraction.  Having to rebuild all the historic lodges would really be a bad thing though.

Of course this is a highly unlikely event somewhere near the probability of you dying on a commercial airliner. This is still an issue though.  Just ask the old guy that hung out at Spirit Lake on Mt. St. Helens. Living upwind might be a better choice.

FB

Ground Water Geology 101
The saying goes we are what we eat.  I wish to stretch that bit of wisdom a tad further by saying we are also what we drink.  Here is another case where Geology affects our daily lives.

The water that we drink comes out of the ground most typically unless you handle bottled water in bulk, collect rain water or spend lots of money on small bottles of water.  I for one have always taken water for granted.  When I lived in Ohio, we had municipal water association that always supplied us with palatable “safe” drinking water from shallow wells in recent river sediments.  While in Jackson Hole, our subdivision had a public well in which the fractured Madison Limestone (Mississippian in age) supplied us with wonderful tasting cool water.

Here in southern Powder River County, I get my water out of the Fox Hill Sandstone (upper Cretaceous, 69 million year old marine origin sandstone).  While this water is wonderfully clear, not sulfurous and tasty, I have just recently discovered that it has not been very good for me. The sodium content in my water has kept my blood pressure up even though I have been religiously taking medication to lower it.  As an experiment a few weeks ago, I started drinking low sodium bottled water and immediately noticed a difference.  As a result of my experiment, I since have installed a fairly expensive Reverse Osmosis Filter fromwww.henrywaterfilters.com and instantly have very low sodium water. My blood pressure is now normal and I suppose that I will eventually be able to reduce my dependence on blood pressure medicine. The expense was worth it!

Of course each well is a different, unique source of water and the quality of water will vary tremendously from well to well even from the same formation in the same area.  Contrary to popular thought, water does not flow in underground streams in this country but exists between the grains of sand in the massive sandstone formations that occur in this region.  Some of these sandstone beds occur over a huge area where as others may be very limited in their extent so the quantities of water available with any particular well vary greatly.  Artesian water is just water that rises above the surface because it is under pressure.  It may not be safe to drink however.  Additionally the mineral content of any particular well will also vary tremendously depending on the rock which the water has been in contact with for many hundreds of centuries.

Water is a universal solvent capable of dissolving almost any mineral that it comes in contact with over time.  Hot or acid waters may increase the ability of water to absorb minerals as well. Other contaminants can cause problems too.  Sulfurous water is typically the result of a well that has Sulfur Reducing bacteria contaminating your system.  It is not unusual for a drill rig to spread these bacteria from well to well.  These cause the rotten egg smell which is obnoxious and corrosive to various degrees.  Sulfur Oxidizing bacteria result in a dark slime that can clog pluming similar to what iron bacteria does. Iron bacteria causes the water to have a yellow, red or orange color.  Sometimes the odor will only be apparent after extended periods of non-use.  To treat these problems you should contact a local well contractor or the Division of Environmental Health for information on shock chlorinating this type of contaminated well.

How do we know how safe our water is for us.  The first step is to have it tested. The website http://waterquality.montana.edu/docs/homeowners/qanda.shtml  will have a comprehensive discussion and list of labs in Montana certified to test private well water samples. One of the most important and easiest test is for Total Dissolved Solids (TDS). It is a direct measure of dissolved salt in the water and is measured by the ability of water to carry electricity.  (This should be of immediate concern to people with elevated blood pressure that drink water from private wells in my opinion.)  Health Departments often check for bacterial contamination but chances are if you have been drinking your well water for years, you won’t get sick from drinking it more.  Only visitors to your ranch will pay the price for cattle hanging around your well head.  There are also tests for various heavy metals such as lead, chemicals such as nitrates and important substances such as fluoride which in the proper amount is good for your teeth. If you don’t know the quality of your water, I suggest you find out sooner than later.  I actually did not find out that our water was affecting my health by talking to a doctor or having it tested, I simply did an experiment that may have given me many more years to enjoy my health.

There is power in knowledge.

FB

A little rock appetizer with that salad?

On a “global warming”  60 degree day this January, I was out working on a fence line less that 200 yards from my house.  I habitually scan grass less areas of ground looking for indian artifacts or traces of dinosaur fossil material.  (Though I need glasses for every other distance, I see perfectly at 6 feet to the ground.) I spied a nicely rounded black cherty pebble about 3/4 of an inch long with a slight polish.  I immediately dropped what I was doing and got on my knees to closely examine the area.  Deftly avoiding all but the aroma of the freshly derived bovine land mine nearby, I started picking up more of these pebbles right off the surface of an area about 2 yards on a side.  When I was done, I had a pretty full handful of small slightly polished pebbles made of various material and all nicely rounded.  I was excited.

If you remember nothing from the Geologic Column, remember this.  ”Always look for things that are out of place when looking for collectable things in nature”. Consistantly, up in this sandstone country, cherty/quartitic pebbles are not common at all and are infact rare.  In stream valleys such as the Powder River Valley, they are very common but not on my highland ranch.  Since they do not outcrop naturally here then any occurrence of them must be treated as a discovery so some kind.  Additionally, they were out on cattle land away from driveway or path, they were all of similar size, variously rounded, smooth and semi polished. I concluded they were not county crushed gravel falling off a muddy ranch truck.  Indians did not bring them in because they were too small to make into any effective tool. Where did they come from?

I have given you several clues.

Answer:  Vegetarian dinosaurs ate lots of roughage and needed help to break down the woody pulp in the bellies.  To facilitate this, they often ate gravel which tumbled around in their gut along with the roughage and aided their digestion.  (Chickens do the same thing today to fill their gizzard with pebbles.) These dinosaur gizzard stones are called gastroliths.  They are very collectable by themselves and are fairly common in areas where the Cretaceous Hell Creek formation outcrops. Their source however may have been from hundreds of miles away where such stones naturally occur and they were all carried here by the critter that swallowed them  They are not actually fossils but are considered trace fossils (ichnofossils) by paleontologists. An ichnofossil is just an indication that an animal was there, not an actual fossilized part of biological material.  This type of structure might also be tracks, trails, tail drag marks, and fossil poop (to be covered in a later Geologic Column).

Gastroliths come in all sizes (as do dinosaurs).  I have even found 10 pound stones half the size of a volley ball in direct association with dinosaur bones on the surface.  Just imagine the size of a creature that would swallow a 10 pound rock to help digest food.  I also have found pea sized stones obviously used by smaller creatures for a digestive aid.  They come in a variety of material but are almost all quartzitic, silicic, or chalcedonic in composition.  In other words they are made of hard stuff.  The softer ones got ground down very quickly or dissolved by the stomach acid.  Gastroliths may have a calcium carbonate coating from ground water flowing over them or they may be iron stained brown by the same process.  They are almost all semi-polished as if from the rock tumbler sitting on a dusty shelf in your garage.  And they usually are not single isolated stones often occurring in numbers that would have partially filled a stomach some 65 million years ago.  If you find one, keep on looking.

Before there was Tums for your tummy, there were stones for your stomach.

FB

I became aware of an email from the group at care2.com concerning a petition to prevent opening federal land in Utah to oil and gas exploration.

Here’s a quote from a page (http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/192320016) on their site:

“Without consulting the National Park Service, the BLM has opened thousands of acres for lease to oil and gas development near or directly adjacent to Arches, Canyonlands National Parks and Dinosaur National Monument.”

ARRRRRRRRGH,  the greens strike again.

Sorry if I sound a little preachy here but this hit several nerves……….

My working cattle ranch in Northern Wyoming was drilled/explored in the 1960′s for oil and had 4 producing wells on it over it’s 3000 acres.  Of course it is completely underlain by Hell Creek porous sandstone.  I would dare anyone that hasn’t lived here for 10 years to show me where the drilling occurred back in the 60′s.  There is NO obvious impact on the land and the old wells are plugged with concrete to prevent seepage into ground water from the oil bearing formations.

I hope they come back here for the 50 percent of the oil remaining after 1960′s style extraction as I own 1/4 mineral rights!   I am even actively participating in re-routing a planned 36 inch natural gas pipeline being put through my little strip of Hell Creek formation.  I had them move the planned pipeline trace a few miles from paleontological sensitive areas to a better route without paleontologic impact.  Trans-Canada was happy to work with me.  The “not in my backyard” policy in this country has to stop.  I will have a total of 4 major pipelines running through my ranch with NO environmental impact and any of you back country lovers out there would be hard pressed to show me any significant visual impact just 5 years after the last pipeline was put in.  In fact, the grasses they replanted are superior for grazing than the natural mix and the road system for me (the rancher) has been improved.  Go figure, put in pipeline, get easier access to fossils.

Work with them, not against them in having them do it properly instead of putting up a road block to getting the energy that is a national security issue.  If they are going to put wells in the DNM, find where they can and save the dinosaurs.  It is time for you to start looking like I do. BTW,  I find the Hell Creek is just fine and still full of fossils after the oil industry came and gone.  Why would the BLM land adjacent to Arches be any different.  Both locations have a similar western climate, cattle/wildlife graze similarly and there are fossils in the ground.

You would not believe the environmental study impact requirements regarding putting a 36 inch pipeline in the ground.  Archaeologists, Botanists, and GPS survey crews have made a dozen trips up here this year already.  So many eyes (mine included) have looked at the locations, that they are more likely to help find paleontological resources than hurt them.  They guys just don’t send in the dozers as some would have you believe.  I have a great bone site within 500 feet of a pipeline trace.  Because I worked with the team, those bones will always be next to and not dozed under as backfill in a trench.  Actually, I give myself too much credit, the cultural teams would have easily found those bones on the surface, avoided the area and got specialists involved in the discoveries.

Since surface bones are the ONLY ones your going to find, digging a hole might actually find more.  All the better.    How are you going to drive to the fossil sites without petroleum to fill your SUV with?  But to the religiously green, no location is good for exploration.  For instance, maybe I should sign the petition that keeps the B1 bombers from South Dakota from flying over my ranch (they do) because it gives cows the jitters.  Of course, that is, before the federal government slaps an 87 dollar tax per cow for methane production (seriously).  So many petitions so little time….. Just absurd!  But I digress………… Don’t blindly sign petitions.  

You can’t even trust your compass anymore.  (You actually never could!) Most people incorrectly believe that a compass needle points directly to the north magnetic pole.  There are many complicating factors involving the molten iron/nickel core of the earth and multiple magnetic poles that average each other out as well as local effects.  The net effect is that if you followed your compass straight north until you hit the magnetic pole, you would not even be at the geographic north pole.  They are not one and the same spot.  In fact, they are 590 miles apart. Therefore each position on the earth has a particular error unique to its location called the magnetic declination. Long distance travelers such as airplane pilots have to compensate as they travel which is a complex task.  Navigators need to regularly update their value of declination in their calculations to stay on course.

Even worse, some locations around the globe and even around the US have anomalies that may significantly effect a simple compass. For instance, an area 45 miles west of Boulder Colorado has an anomalous declination amounting to almost 46 degrees west of geographic north. Even more interesting the magnetic pole moves around pretty quickly.   The north magnetic pole has wandered over 1000 kilometers (600 miles) since Sir John Ross first reached it in 1831.  We actually have an 11 degree easterly declination where Moline Illinois currently sits on the 0 declination line. When I started mapping in Wyoming, the declination was 14 degrees so it changes pretty fast.

The whole concept set you up for failure to begin with.  The end of the compass needle that points to the north pole is actually the south pole of the magnetic needle.  How confusing! It is actually the north seeking end of the compass needle.  The north and south pole were defined long ago before some curious fellow placed a lode stone on mercury or placed one on wood floating freely on water and observed the lodestone consistently aligned to the same direction. Backwards thinking I suppose.

So what does this mean to you here in Wyoming?  Simple compasses are simply not accurate.  If you are navigating by compass, try to buy one that has the ability to adjust for declination.  The Brunton company make many compasses that do this in many price ranges.  Remember that maps are drawn to true north not magnetic north so do your best to compensate if you are out in the wilds.  Or the alternative is to do what I do and buy yourself a really good GPS and not worry a bit about it since the GPS uses geographic location and is not influenced by magnetic declinations anywhere on the planet. Just keep some spare batteries about just in case!

FB