Life happens, there’s no doubt about it. WATCH FOR ROCKS has taken a quiet back seat for the past week due to circumstances beyond its control. Life, though, has a way of working through those happenings. It’s a new day!
I had no idea that my molar nerve had been deteriorating beyond hope. It was just supposed to be a filling, or at most a crown to repair a cracked tooth… In the meanwhile, work progresses on a paper I am co-authoring on the geology of my study area in the Beaver Dam Mountains of southwestern Utah. I spent the better part of three undergraduate years traipsing across these schists, gneisses, amphibolites, and granitic intrusions, and even though I am no longer a student I am still deeply and foreverly involved in these metamorphic rocks.
We are deliriously ready to complete the last section of the paper this weekend. After some editing and tweaking, the plan is to submit it this summer to a professional geologic journal. Meanwhile, the roadside wildflowers of southern Utah are bursting in their springtime splendor.
What with working on the paper and preparing to leave next week for my summer at Yellowstone, I’ve not had much opportunity to venture into the backcountry these past few weeks. Even so, the southern Utah roadsides offer their own loveliness.
