Monthly Archives: February 2021

Happy Birthday, Mr. Washington

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Born on February 22, 1732. The View remembers, if nobody else does; and with gratitude for his inestimable service to the human project. Because of software changes and lost computers and Google not talking to Apple, I have only one photo of those days exploring the historic countryside of Virginia with Dad and Chris. It’s the Falls of the Rappahannock, at Fredericksburg. Washington surveyed all the country here around and knew every inch. The President’s boyhood haunts, his young manhood as a surveyor learning to gavotte elegantly, and his dashing young officer phase in the British Army…all around Fredericksburg and the Virginia Piedmont which his generation settled and fought hard for, against French encroachments (mais, oui!)
He was good at everything he ever did even in his many failures. Very few of his many admirers and almost none of his few detractors ever suspected the sincerity of his self-whittled character, his honest, wooden commitment, and his planed touch with all classes, even those he despised and could see right through. (Those he despised were not the sweating slaves; nor the unfortunately impoverished Scots or even French refugee families on the Fredericksburg landings; nor did he turn his ire on the uneducated grunts in his command.) My favorite Washington story is from the Battle of Monmouth. Gen. Charles Henry Lee — the flash-boy, the upper-class yobbo, the comme-ils-faut British Army veteran who put on airs and boasted of his command in the field — was given the command to charge the British and stop their advance. Lee flubbed it — and retreated, instead of advancing; and when he galloped from the field, he was ten furlongs ahead of his desperate men, still struggling to hold the position. Too late, Washington heard about the cowardice and the loss of the field position. He rode out and intercepted Lee on the Freehold-Englishtown Road and, by the reports of all who could hear, “turned the air blue” with oaths, calling disgrace and loss of manhood and perfidy on the haughty prig of a high-class general. (Lee was court-martialed.)

The General was very partial to the river and the whole Piedmont, and invested heavily in Fredericksburg’s prosperity. So did Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, and John Paul Jones, and Gen. Hugh Mercer. The west was their aim, Britain was the bar, and this was the crossing to their heart’s desire. More than a century earlier John Smith had penetrated the woods as far north-west of Jamestown as this spot, guided by Powhatan’s scouts to the edge of their territory. The bland 1950s highway bridge replaces the old ferry to the West, and the railway crossing that followed the ferry. The bridge, and the ice-shrugging terns seem ignorant of the ocean of American blood that was spilled into the river at this very spot in Dec. 1862. We mustn’t be. That was bad. We must never go there again, as a country. Mr. McNair rings the bell for Pres. Washington: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TW_uOyl4FQbqq82M9BeZR9svGFh22KsF/view?usp=sharing

The Romans called the waning intercalary time of February, Lupercalia. It was the time between calendars, new sowing and new campaigning to start March 1. Now was the time to honor the ancient ancestors and founders, and visit and dress the abodes of the dead. America’s founder wasn’t nursed by the wolf, Lupa, who nursed Romulus and Remus. But the pink-coated British did call Washington “the Fox.” And ’twasn’t it the Fox who blooded them, Patient Reader? Happy Birthday, Mr. President. Rest in peace. Whatever you had, we need it now.

Lupercalia in Rome: https://drive.google.com/file/d/13VMmqb_hKgkY5W3vni6zy3GDEtMVJRUv/view?usp=sharing





Limerock Geology; George Gershwin; Waterfall Video!

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YOUR OROGENOUS ZONES DEPT./
CANYON REJUVENATION DIV./
TIN PAN ALLEY BEAT

In February — April 2019, I stumbled (literally, look at the place) into Limerock Canyon in the very act of its being rejuvenated (a word and concept I did not then comprehend, beyond face cream ads). I took some movies I thought were pretty, but random. Now I’m beginning to glean how its formations relate directly to to those at Lopez and the adjacent canyons. But it’s still just really pretty. Here is Limerock Canyon at her most ravishing:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1b3m98j-nfvl1Jj8kgFBMK4zmWMPRheFC/view?usp=sharing

Novellete in Fourths (1919) is one of Gershwin’s earliest compositions, composed when he was but a Pan Alley song plugger. “How the then little-known composer convinced the Welte company to issue a [player-piano] roll of this unpublished original is a mystery.” — Artis Wodehouse. (It’s not a mystery if you hear it! Zheesh!) These are young Gershwin’s fingers, playing young Gershwin’s melody, preserved on a paper piano roll. Geology isn’t the only wonder.

Over (And Under) The Silent Sands of Time

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YOUR OROGENOUS ZONES DEPT./
CANYON REJUVENATION DIV.

Princes come, princes go.
An hour of pomp and show, they know!
Princes come; and over the sands,
And over the sands of time, they go.
Wise men come,
Ever promising the riddle of life to know.
Wise men come; ah! but over the sands,
The silent sands of time, they go!
Lovers come, lovers go,
And all that there is to know,
Lovers know; only lovers know.
— Robert Wright and George Forrest, Kismet, 1955, commissioned and debuted by the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera.

Fifty years ago today, February 9, 1971, occurred the deadly and devastating San Fernando Earthquake, aka the Sylmar Quake. https://ktla.com/news/local-news/l-a-marks-50-years-since-deadly-6-6-magnitude-san-fernando-sylmar-quake/

It was felt most in Sylmar, where it caused huge damage to the old Olive View Hospital. It put an end to the long era in which Los Angeles geologists wrote studies about finding oil wells; now they would all be about how to “predict the Big One.” (Lately, happy to report, they’re all about block rotation!)

I’ve read reports that new fault scarps arose in Lopez Canyon, many meters high, on February 9, 1971.

The Sylmar shaker ushered in the modern idea of building according to seismic safety codes, CalTrans started to re-invent freeways, and the DWP and Army Corps. had to figure out what to do with all the eggshell-brittle dams and reservoirs up there, Hansen Dam and the Chatsworth Reservoir, and Lopez and Pacoima dams (the first three were drained, the last retro-fitted). The epicenter was just over the Pass, in Placerita Canyon, or rather, deep under the alluvial surface deposits of Placerita Canyon. Maybe some, or all of these landscapes were left as they are, for me to photograph, during the Sylmar Quake.

Golden Placerita Canyon, muy bonita; but deadly, 50 years ago today.
  • Oil, that is. White gold — pre-refined petroleum.
The canyons marked in blue are all in the edge of the North American Plate, the Pangean Riviera, and they are all cross-hatched with faults. These include the once-coastal, once crucial San Gabriel Fault on the south side of the San Gabriels, and on the north side, the San Andreas.

The Los Angeles Basin of California derives its name, and the San Gabriel River and Mountains theirs, from the names first incanted upon them by Fr. Juan Crespi, Franciscan missionary and diarist of the Portola expedition. On July 28, 1769, when the Spanish explorers came up the coastal plain from San Diego, they camped on the mesa above the banks of the Santa Ana RIver. This was right at the edge of the Los Angeles (named later) Basin. There was an earthquake lasting ‘half a Hail Mary.’ At every encampment the expedition made that week, at each of the principal drainage rivers of the Eastern and Central Transverse Range Blocks — Santa Ana, San Gabriel de Los Temblores, and the Rio de Porciuncula de la Reina de Los Angeles, there were massive earthquakes. Then on the days after, while marching north, there were ominous aftershocks. On August 3, Lady Day, when the party reached Yangna, the Tongva village where LA was founded downtown, and while delicate negotiations were going on, there was such a big one that the tremendous noise and shaking equally terrified the Tongva, the Spaniards and their pack animals. These were not events the Indians or the Franciscans took lightly. As soon as the Spanish left the Valley, leaving the Basin, the earthquakes stopped.

The Portola earthquakes were all within the old Farallon Plate subduction zone, the corner of an active spreading center which hit like the point of an arrowhead at Los Angeles, slipped under the continent, where its sides, still spreading, were driven under the plate as far as Santa Ana, and here, at the top of the Valley. This may have given birth to the San Andreas Fault. Maybe these landscapes were left there, as they are, for me to photograph during that incredible historic week in LA history.

I went behind Sugarloaf, 2,074 feet, to see what lies atop and behind and beneath, and why it looks like an old extinct undersea volcano pushed up to mountain height. Hint…

From a 1931 geology thesis survey of the Lopez Canyon area. Note the clay cover is more nearly intact, capping the structure of the heart of the dome. It’s tough to tell, but it doesn’t look like chaparral or scrub up there, like in the arms; it’s more like a potrero of residual Spanish Pasture Mix. Today the sides are are noticeably still invasive-grassy, but the vault is noticeably CFP-dominant. Much mass has been wasted this year, and we can see the fascinating ribs of the hill.
  • The sandy sea floor, intruded by a breccia pipe.
  • neck of a breccia pipe that came up in hydrothermal currents, coolly, through wet sand.
  • fossil fig?
  • Re-metamorphosed rock, constrained on its rise through wet sand, expanded when it hit air.

The Pangean Riviera was a very old, very flat place, first formed 1.7 billion years ago. It had already, likely many times, grown up great crystalline mountains, that had then eroded down to flat plains of boulders with fabulous rocks tumbling lazily over a wide white sandy beach, drizzled with run-off from the creeks. But sea level fell; and the beach got cliffs which got full of oak terraces, which drained copious mud and soil and rocks onto the white sand. When sea level rose, the white sand would swirl under the surf in huge undersea dunes. Sea level fell again, and more oak terraces would form in the drainages, even higher than before. This was the Embayment of the San Fernando Valley. Then came the Eocene intrusions, and uplift.

Limerock Canyon — tiny, but mighty in geology!

3 million years ago when a big chunk of Orange County broke off and was captured by the Pacific Plate, and was pushed obliquely up the coast, so that the “prow” of the broken-off fault block (the beach town of Valley Village) SLOWLY slammed straight into the Pointe of North America’s ancient coast (Sylmar). Patient reader, Sylmar shattered.

  • Limerock Cyn has had at least two gold mines and a graphite mine over the years…
  • some miner forgot where he parked.

At that point, the Riviera’s long flat plain of white sandy beach was littered by every size of boulder. Under faulting half of the crust got sucked and crunched down into a new subduction zone, deep enough to melt the sand and boulders and cause magma chambers to boil. Meanwhile, under the prow of the WTR block more layers of the beach sand and rocks were pushed up, up, up — and then each time let crash. They rose and slumped down, three or more cycles. Sea levels rising and falling too, in their own cycles. At some point the magma chambers underneath couldn’t take it anymore, and ruptured to the surface in great tubes, underwater, over the sandy lagoon floor, melting the new sand and rock into the old sand and rock, making new kinds of sandy rock.

Deep Time

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YOUR OROGENOUS ZONES DEPT./
JUNIOR YEAR ABROAD DEPT.

“Here’s to the Prof of Geology,
Master of all Natural History.
Rare boy he, and rare boys we,
to know such a great curiosity.” — Pat Boone toasting James Mason in song

Consider Old College, the place where the science of geology was founded, and where the concept of Deep Time — a bit older than the Bible’s 6,000 years — was promulgated, often against very stiff opposition indeed. Consider that Old College architect William Playfair was the nephew of the eminent geologist John Playfair, one of Edinburgh’s deepest Deep Time geology thinkers. Consider that, tasked with finishing the college according to eminent but defunct Robert Adam’s design, the eminent younger Playfair chose a facing of luscious mellow Leith sandstone, with columns cut in one piece from single beds. Consider my View of the Quadrangle in 1984; blackened with sulfur and soot, intruded by the parked fossil fuel burners that helped cause the corrosion. Then consider how many more cars we’ve added to the world since then [though, thankfully banished from the Quad.] Then read the HARROWING article below:

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/03/extreme-climate-change-history/617793/

  • Salisbury Craigs and Arthur’s Seat. Hiking where James Hutton hiked, learning to see it through his eyes, had a greater effect on me than I was able to understand back in that Deep Time. “Deep Time Geology” is built into the lore of the Edinburgh experience. Half the reason for the city’s intellectual eminence is due to the eminence of the craigs — the fact that these rocks sit a mere mile away from the crowded city, on public park land (actually Royal; thanks your Majesty). Queens, citizens, bums, rogues, foreign students and tourists alike can just clamber all over them whenever they like. And when they do, inevitably, they learn about Hutton’s and Playfair’s Deep Time.
James Hutton, 1776; by Henry Raeburn.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/father-modern-geology-youve-never-heard-180960203/

“Hutton observed that basaltic rocks exposed in the Salisbury Craigs, just on the outskirts of Edinburgh, seemed to have baked adjacent enclosing sediments lying both below and above the basalt. This simple observation indicated that the basalt was emplaced within the sedimentary succession while it was still sufficiently hot to have altered the sedimentary material. Clearly, basalt could not form in this way as a precipitate from the primordial ocean as Werner had claimed. Furthermore, the observations at Edinburgh indicated that the basalt intruded the sediments from below—in short, it came from the Earth’s interior, a process in clear conflict with Neptunist theory.” — Britannica.
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/12861/12861-h/12861-h.htm

Hutton’s colleague and student, successor and champion John Playfair was no Pat Boone, but he did utter the most famous quote in geology in his 1803 eulogy of James Hutton, given before the Edinburgh Royal Society. Salisbury Craigs were impressive; but skeptics and students needed simple, unambiguous evidence of Deep Time. Playfair described his feelings on the bright day when Hutton took him and Sir James Hall in a boat around the rocky coast of Siccar Point, to point out two distinct layers of rock — only two — to see if they, too, could see them as Hutton saw them, in Deep Time:

John Playfair.  Professor of natural philosophy at the University of Edinburgh, He wrote Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth (1802), and Outlines of Natural Philosophy (1812–16).

“We felt ourselves necessarily carried back to the time when the schistus on which we stood was yet at the bottom of the sea, and when the sandstone before us was only beginning to be deposited, in the shape of sand or mud, from the waters of a superincumbent ocean. An epocha still more remote presented itself, when even the most ancient of these rocks, instead of standing upright in vertical beds, lay in horizontal planes at the bottom of the sea, and was not yet disturbed by that immeasurable force which has burst asunder the solid pavement of the globe….The mind seemed to grow giddy by looking so far into the abyss of time.”

— (Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, vol. V, pt. III, 1805)

It is worth pointing out, as an mnemonic device, and since nobody else ever has: the the name of Siccar Point, the smoking gun of Deep Time, comes from the Scots word siccar, which is cognate with Dutch zeker and German sicher, meaning “sure; certain; well-founded; bedrock.”

The Royal Park from the south, looking towards Sunshine on Leith.
The artist Clerk of Eldin was a friend of Hutton’s, and joined him to sketch his outcroppings as illustrations for the Theory of The Earth.

Hutton was the father of the rock cycle — the idea that, over aeons, mountains turn to jagged boulders which turn to rounded rocks which turns to smooth pebbles which turns either to sand (marine) or silt (riparian) which, in turn, turn back into rock, which gets compressed and sheared and intruded and metamorphosed and uplifted; and then eroded back down again. Playfair was the father of (what we would today call) the fractal geometry of watercourses and river systems and their role in that rock cycle.

Limerock Canyon, center; where its delta pays tribute to Little Tujunga Creek, which pays tribute to Big Tujunga, which pays tribute to the Mighty Los Angeles. The black dot and open circle mark the current channel, which has to be sluiced underneath the county road, which is at the lowest point in the whole syncline. The other channels to the north are now too high to carry the water. More later.

“Every river appears to consist of a main trunk, fed from a variety of branches, each running in a valley proportioned to its size, and all of them together forming a system of vallies, communicating with one another, and having such a nice adjustment of their declivities that none of them join the principal valley on too high or too low a level,—a circumstance which would he infinitely improbable if each of these vallies were not the work of the stream that flows in it.” — Playfair’s Law of Accordant Junctions; from Illustrations Of Huttontonian Theory

The reason I mention all this, is that I just found about a 15-foot section of washed-out wall in Limerock Canyon, where Deep Time, and the rock cycle, and the role of flow in the structure of the land, have been so astonishingly laid bare, that my “mind seemed to grow giddy by looking so far into the abyss of time.” In the next blog, I will try to explain and interpret why I think this muddy cutaway I found is so eminently fascinating.