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In the Path of Destruction

Posted on May 28, 2015 by Bill One comment

Mt. St. Helens Before Eruption

I started a post last week about volcanos, then I got sick, so here it is now. I was inspired to write this because I follow the United States Geological Survey (USGS)and the American Geological Society on Facebook. The 18th of May was the 25th anniversary of the Mount St. Helens eruption. Both organizations ran daily posts about the most violent volcanic eruption in the continental United States in recorded history.

The USGS quoted extensively from In the Path of Destruction, a book about the events around the eruption. That eruption in1980 was the most violent volcanic eruption the United States has experienced in recorded history.

Start of Eruption. Landslide

Close to some big cities but relatively isolated, only about 56 people were killed. The low death toll was also a result of the Forest Service, the local county sheriffs, and Weyerhauser Timber restricting access to the area around the mountain, a popular recreational area.

In the Path of Destruction has two sections, narratives of events before and during the eruption, and many eyewitness reports collected by author Richard Waitt, a USGS geologist present at Mt. St. Helens starting in March 1980, when the volcano started coming alive and throughout the eruption and aftermath. Three weeks after the eruption he was in a bar talking to a man who had lived through the eruption and realized the stories of witnesses could add to scientific knowledge of the event.

This book is one you lose sleep over. Do you remember May 18, 1980? Those people do, their memories are as vivid now as my memory of the day Kennedy was shot. Waitt interviewed a wide range of people from USGS geologists, pilots in the air nearby when it blew, campers, loggers, and local residents who survived. Their stories are why the book kept me awake. The author’s narratives are well researched and written. He puts the science, events, and the human story into a book that will hold even those who are not geology geeks.

The Big Boom

In fact as a geology geek, I found myself wanting more science. That is probably good for most readers. A big part of the story is the unusual behavior of the volcano before it blew. There were hundreds of earthquakes in the two months before the big eruption, accompanied by venting, minor ash falls, and the formation of a small crater. The strangest phenomenon was the formation of a huge bulge on the north side of the mountain.

The bulge grew about five feet every day, accompanies by swarms of small earthquakes some of the USGS people thought were from magma intruding into the bulge. The bulge grew, with vertical cracks forming on its face. Some thought a major eruption was imminent, others thought it would be a relatively minor event. Politics kept moving the roadblocks back and forth, with logging being allowed outside the immediate danger zone. It’s tough enforcing a roadblock with logging trucks coming out of the closed area.

In 1980, eruptions could not be forecast. In 2015, earthquakes can’t be forecast. People wanted in the closed area to go to their cabins, to hike, camp, and fish. We think of volcanic eruptions going up from a crater at the summit. On May 18th, a magnitude five earthquake caused the bulge to slide. That caused the mountain above the bulge to slide.

View of Mt. St. Helens from Mt. Margaret, July 27 1980
Devastation

The accounts of the survivors and witnesses of the eruption are what make the book so gripping. For me events thirty five years ago came alive. I won’t go into any of the stories. Read for yourself. The photographs and maps provide a useful context and show the eruption as it happened. I continue to be astounded that one plate smashing into another at the rate your fingernails grow can produce events like volcanic eruptions and earthquakes like the one in Nepal. There is lots of really hot stuff down there in our Earth, and if the crust gets weakened, here it comes.

A few weeks ago I was headed east from Gunnison up the Tomichi Creek valley. The rocks looked sort of like sandstone, so common here in Colorado, but they just didn’t look right. It dawned on me. Volcanic tuff, just like the ash that blew out of Mt. St. Helens. It happened here and in geologic terms, not that long ago. Maybe 65 million years ago, give or take.

Posted in In the Path of Destruction, Mt. St. Helens, Stories, Volcanos

Rock and Roll in the Sticks

Posted on May 2, 2015 by Bill Leave a comment

1958 Chevy

Western Colorado in the late 1950s and 1960s was a cultural backwater of the first magnitude. I-70 did not exist, making travel to Denver at least two hours longer than now. In Grand Junction, there was one television station and two radio stations. The Junction had the Daily Sentinel newspaper, and Fruita had the Fruita Times, a weekly with stories about the bridge club.

Things were on the move in the land. Rock and Roll had appeared, but not in our neck of the desert. The only contact we had was the Ed Sullivan Show, which introduced Elvis to the world. The local radio stations weren’t interested. They were making money playing Patti Page, the Andrews Sisters, and Doris Day. The raciest they got was letting Johnny Ray cry.

At first, we found Lucky Lager Dance Time on KNBC in San Francisco, but you needed a good radio, and there better not be any lightning between the Junction and California. Then, salvation! KOMA! As soon as the sun was down, KOMA boomed in from Oklahoma City. Rock and Roll ruled the sticks. And the sticks were extensive. KOMA dominated Oklahoma, New Mexico, Rural Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, Wyoming, and neighboring boondocks.

That radio station was our lifeline to the rock and roll youth culture developing in the country. This was not the Beatles and the Stones. It was Buddy Holly, Elvis, the Everly Brothers, all those Phil Spector bands, and some R&B, like Chuck Berry and Little Richard. KOMA was top 40, no obscure bands, just the big stuff. Yes, there was country and western, and Grand Junction even got a station later, but country was mostly confined to the pool halls and beer joints around 1960.

There was the KOMA band circuit. There were several rock and roll bands that traveled the region, playing in small town Grange Halls, Legion Halls; anywhere the band could rent a hall. Sterling, Roswell, Scott’s Bluff, Colby, Torrington, Hot Springs, Alliance, Garden City, Trinidad, all those little towns starved for anything from the outside world. The only band on the circuit I remember was Spider and the Crabs. They advertised their gigs on KOMA and kids came to the dances from all over. KOMA made money from the ads, and bad rock and roll ruled the boondocks.

Several of us would buy a case of Coors bottles, go to Grand Junction, listen to KOMA, cruise all evening drinking beer, and throw the empty bottles at highway signs on the way back to Fruita.

Was that youth misspent? No, not at all. I am writing about it now, aren’t I? Rock and Roll survived, and all was well until the mid-1960s. Here’s to KOMA in Oklahoma! The station is still in business, still playing rock and roll.

Posted in Colorado History, Early Rock and Roll, History, KOMA, Memoirs, My Story, Stories, Western Colorado

Aggression and Fear

Posted on April 13, 2015 by Bill Leave a comment

Fear is part of life. We are wired to react to threats in a number of ways. Fight, flight, freeze, hide, cry for help. In our society, there is little to fear. In most of the country there is little violence. Sometimes we experience a flash of fear in traffic, or when we slip on the ice. For the most part, however, we are safe.

Why, then, to we have a culture of fear? Gun and ammunition sales are booming, security system companies are busy, people are taking self-defense classes, and living with fear and anxiety on a daily basis.

Within our generally safe country there are acts of violence. School shootings, workplace violence, robberies, gang shootings, random killings, on and on. These acts, if horrific, are but a small part of life in a country of 314 million people. They just do not affect most people. The only time I have been truly terrified was when I was caught in a lightning storm when hiking above timberline. I have never run so fast as that day.

The most important fear creator is television. It is hard to get good video of a drop in the unemployment rate, but easy to show police cars, fire engines, ambulances, yellow crime scene tape, and bodies on gurneys. The longest running TV shows are cop shows and doctor shows, with lives hanging in the balance every week. “If it bleeds, it leads”, the mantra of local TV news.

Yes, they are showing real violence, but I have personally never been a victim of violence. As a volunteer firefighter, I did see the aftermath of terrible accidents, but we were there to respond to those events. In my daily life in the same area, I never saw an accident.

Life has always been marked by violence. We are wired to deal with it. Adrenalin, anger, the need to assemble in groups for mutual protection, all are part of our DNA. In watching elementary school children in a park, I was always struck by the boy’s tendency to pick up a stick at the first opportunity. The girls would respond to aggression from boys, but tended not to initiate aggressive behavior.

Agression

Are the boys hunters or warriors, or are those behaviors modifiers of the same thing? I am currently reading about Ancient Greece. The tales are of war or the challenges of dealing with a dangerous world. Very few cultures have not been violent to some degree. There is always peril, whether from the neighboring tribe or the saber-toothed tiger.

Fear has always been a part of life. Today, despite all the turmoil in the world, in this country we enjoy one of the safest countries and times ever. The prevailing mindset, however, is fear. Growing up in the 1950s I ran all over town and always walked the seven blocks to school. Today children are accompanied by an adult when on the street. It is more and more unusual to see unaccompanied young teenagers out on the street.

Because of some events in my early childhood, I have never felt safe. I always have a strategy for dealing with a threat (back against the wall). I have never in my threescore and ten years had to deal with a threat. Because of my impulsivity and deep-seated anger I have sometimes initiated aggression, but usually calm down before getting myself in big trouble. I do seem to be getting better at letting go of the anger.

Is that the answer? Aggression breeds aggression? Especially with childhood abuse? The old Johnny Cash song, A Boy Named Sue, is an example. Father knew he would abandon his son, so he named the boy Sue in order for him to be abused and have to fight back to survive. Abandonment and the target of aggression became that boy’s life. He grew up to be angry and aggressive. The song implies that is a good thing. It is not.

When children grow up in a loving, fairly safe home with the knowledge they are loved and respected, they are able to deal with threats in a healthier way, knowing they will always have a refuge. We need to provide love, compassion, support, and respect for all children. A lot of that exists here, but how about the Sudan? It is a sad world. Work to end injustice and violence everywhere. Foster compassion.

Posted in Agression, Fear, History, My Story, Stories

The Middle Ages

Posted on April 10, 2015 by Bill Leave a comment

Reims Cathedral

Currently I am reading about the Middle Ages in Europe. They were a long, long time ago. The languages were different, nation-states did not exist, the Black Plague struck, warfare was almost constant (what’s new?), and the One Church was the only way to save your soul.

Things were beginning to change. Cities were growing, trade increasing, and the crusades, for all the harm they did, expanded Europe’s horizons. The opulence of the church and the nobility was on the increase and the great cathedrals were built.

All this was created on the backs of the mass of people on the bottom. For them, life was a constant struggle for survival. Crop failures, disease, exorbitant taxes to support the Church and the adventures of the nobles; and the depredations of invaders were a constant threat.

For the nobility, the demands of the church and the ideals of chivalry ruled behavior. Both systems had ideals too high for anyone to meet. As a consequence the standards were honored in the breach, with the threat of eternal damnation or revenge from a cuckolded fellow noble.

It seems that every institution was corrupt. As always, the people at the bottom supported the grandeur of the nobles and the church. The nobles were required by the chivalric codes to go to war for glory, loot, and to honor his chaste love for a maiden. A knights role was to prove his valor and greatness in battle. He was also to marry in order to produce male heirs and cement alliances with other noble houses. There were also social obligations, and the competition to display more grandeur in hunts, holiday celebrations, wars, and tournaments was the center of their lives.

The church was also a participant in medieval opulence. The gothic cathedrals, the riches members of the hierarchy displayed, the children sired by priests and bishops, the power alliances made by clerics from the nobility, and always, the display of riches meant to show the Kingdom of God to the masses, were terribly expensive. The source of the wealth for all this in an agrarian society again came those at the bottom of the social hierarchy. No tournaments, no hunts, just ceaseless toil with the tax collectors taking most of their produce.

The fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries saw accelerating change. The universities were growing, with knowledge increasing due to contact with the Moslem world, where much classical learning was preserved that were lost to the west during the invasions of the dark ages. This was important, as Aristotle’s world view was more rational and practical than the Platonic cave. Most of Aristotle came to the west in translation from Arabic.

Trade increased, cities grew, government began to be more centralized; and the influence of a growing mercantile and manufacturing middle class began challenging the power of the landed aristocracy. The increase in commerce also meant the spread of ideas.

Knight

Warfare, previously the domain of the nobility also changed as archers and pikemen, all commoners, began to mark the end of the armored knight on his war horse. An arrow or the sharp end of a pike held by a man on foot could bring an armored warrior down. Another innovation, gunpowder, meant the end of castles and city walls. A lead ball is effective in penetrating armor. This change in technology made the chivalric code of the stalwart knight engaging in singular combat obsolete.

The technical innovation most important in ending the Middle Ages was the printing press. Books were scarce and expensive when they were laboriously copied by hand. Literacy was most common in the church and with some of the nobility. A library of 100 volumes was a rare thing. Most books were in Latin, the language of the educated. The bulk of the population was illiterate.

When printed books became available at an affordable cost, often in the vernacular rather than Latin, literacy blossomed. With literacy, people began thinking for themselves, with two consequences, the Protestant Reformation and an explosion of creativity in art, learning, science (Then known as Natural Philosophy), and politics. The Renaissance had arrived. Change, which was gradual for centuries, accelerated. Conflict, a given in any historical period, continued, made more lethal by the changes in technology. The western world changed.

Posted in History, Knighthood, Middle Ages, Plague, Stories

Barbarians

Posted on April 2, 2015 by Bill Leave a comment

Barbarians

For all my life I have wanted to know why. I want the answer, to understand the big picture. That led me to history. I am not sure, but maybe understanding the past can give us a glimpse of the future. At the least, history has helped me understand what is going on now.

As to history, there are a lot of mysteries. History is told by the victors, and we know much less about the losers, but their lives were every bit as important as the winners. Here is an example.

I have been interested in Central Eurasia for decades. What we call western civilization has interacted with the people of the steppes for many thousands of years. The standard view is that the barbarians of the steppes raised horses, sheep, and cattle and fought among themselves until a great leader, Chingiss Khan for example, unified them and they then invaded civilized cities on the periphery. Scythians, Vandals, Visigoths, Goths, Mongols, Huns, Ughyurs or Turks, they all had only conquest, loot, rape and slaughter as goals. Those invasions affected China, Persia, Mesopotamia, Anatolia, and Europe.

Well, yes, some of that did happen. Much of the conflict, however, came from the peripheral societies invaded the steppes. All the standard reasons for invasions: conquest, riches, land, slaves, and something for the army to do. Alexander, for example, invaded everywhere he could, including the steppe. The Great Wall was built to protect territory taken from the nomads and was used to keep people in as much as protection from invasion from the nomads.

The people of the steppe had cities, vast grasslands, cattle, sheep, horses, furs, and trade goods from west and east of the steppe. They needed trade with the periphery, and the periphery needed their livestock and trade goods.

The Silk Road was a lifeline for the nomads. The nomadic cultures were warrior cultures, yes, but they were foremost herders and traders. Just about every culture of any size is a warrior culture. The United States is a warrior culture. Just ask Native Americans, Cubans, Filipinos, and Mexicans.

The difference with regard to the Eurasian steppe cultures is that the people of the west call them barbarians. What is a barbarian? They have different clothes, religions, languages, and values. They are Others, so they are barbaric. Who were the barbarians, the Moslem tribes in the Philippines trying to defend their homeland from invaders or the U. S. Army doing the invading? Maybe Custer was the barbarian. The Lakota surely thought so.

Romans, Greeks, Celts, Persians, and Hittites saw the invading horsemen as barbaric, but they surely did their own invading. It is prejudice, viewing others as barbaric. One of our most enduring prejudices is calling people barbarians because they fight and kill, for whatever reason. All cultures fight and kill, and commit atrocities. It is only when the other guy is doing it that it is barbaric.

So, let’s not get too self righteous when various factions act out their age-old animosities in the Middle East. Don’t call their acts barbaric unless we have never done the same. You can check with the Modocs or the Seminoles to make sure.

Posted in Barbarians, Central Eurasia, History, Rome, Stories

Book Review: Battles and Massacres on the Southwestern Frontier

Posted on February 21, 2015 by Bill One comment

Here is a book review I wrote for the Overland Journal, the quarterly magazine of the Oregon California Trails Association. I am Vice President of the Colorado Cherokee Trail chapter of the organization. The review is the reason for a delay in getting a post up. I had trouble with one section of the book which has poor graphics and some errors, although it is important research. It took weeks of ranting at people about it until I was able to calm down and include a short paragraph pointing out the problems. Maybe next time I won’t get so personally involved in someone else’s work.

BATTLES AND MASSACRES ON THE SOUTHWESTERN FRONTIER: HISTORICAL AND ARCHAEOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES

Edited by Ronald K. Weatherington and Frances Levine

Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2014

248 pp., photos, maps, illustrations, extensive references, index

Paper, 5” x 8”

Battles and Massacres is a book that looks at several battles or massacres in the mid-nineteenth century from the perspectives of historians and archaeologists. This is important because the historical record is usually written by one side of the conflict. The archaeological record does not engage in cover ups, obfuscation, or have a political agenda.

The book examines four nineteenth century events in the American southwest involving Native Americans and Euro-Americans and the conflicts rising from westward expansion. The encounters are the Battle of Cieneguilla in New Mexico, Adobe Walls in Texas, the Sand Creek Massacre in Colorado, and the Mountain Meadows Massacre in Utah.

The first three were direct conflicts involving Indians and soldiers or buffalo hunters. Mountain Meadows was between Mormons of Southern Utah and a train of emigrants headed to California. Some Paiutes acted with the Mormon militia.

This book is important in illustrating how modern archaeological methods can apply objective information to a historical record that can be essentially accurate, as at Adobe Walls, or what amounted to a cover-up at Cieneguilla.

Adobe Walls was a trading post in the Texas Panhandle occupied by a number of hide hunters engaging in killing as many Bison as possible for profit, while destroying the Native Americans livelihood. A large group of Cheyenne warriors, believing that their medicine would protect them from the hide hunter’s bullets, attacked twenty-eight men and one woman. The medicine did not work. The big buffalo rifles were able to outrange the attacker’s weapons and many Indians were killed. Three of the defenders were wounded.

The archaeological data showed that the majority of the Indian weapons were relatively short range rifles like the Henry and Spencer carbines, easily outranged by the big Sharps rifles of the hide hunters. There were bullets from muzzleloaders and steel arrow points as well.

The recent archaeological investigations at Sand Creek have established the actual location of the massacre and validated the conclusion that there was a slaughter of people who were not able to effectively defend themselves, believing that they were under the protection of the U.S. Government. Almost all of the recovered artifacts were from Army weapons. The massacre was the result of John Chivington deciding that the Indians should all be killed.

Mountain Meadows is different, mostly Euro-Americans killing other Euro-Americans. The essay in this book is unusual in that it comes from a Mormon Church historian and places culpability on the Southern Utah Mormon leadership for the massacre. Given the tensions prevailing between the Utah Mormons and the U. S. Government, it was understandable there would be some conflict between the Mormons and a wagon train from Arkansas, but how it escalated into the slaughter of all the migrants over seven years old remains obscure.

Archaeological investigation at Mountain Meadows is difficult because of repeated disturbances over 150 years and the resistance of the Utah political leadership. A study that was halted by the then Utah Governor, a descendant of one of the attackers, did provide forensic information that reinforced the conclusion that the emigrants were disarmed and slaughtered.

The studies of the battle of Cieneguilla in 1854 illustrate how an archaeological survey can refute the historical accounts dating from the time of the battle. Of sixty troopers of the First Dragoons led into battle by Lt. John Davidson, twenty four were killed and twenty three wounded by about 100 Jicarilla Apaches.

The official report by Lt. Davidson is a story of a gallant attack by Dragoons against a superior force. In fact, the troopers, after leaving their horses in a canyon bottom, attacked uphill and were outflanked and hunted down by the Apaches as they tried to retreat. A Lt. Bell attempted to correct the report, but never received a hearing and was subsequently killed in action.

While the Cieneguilla study is important, there are some flaws. The archeology is well done, the maps are not, making it difficult to visualize the entire battlefield and the movements of the combatants. In addition, both essays explore the Battle of Cieneguilla, but fail to mention that what was Cieneguilla in 1854 is now Pilar, not far south of Taos.

The real tragedy of Cieneguilla is that the Apaches were then hunted down, starved, and sent to a reservation.

Overall, the book does an effective job of showing how history and archaeology can come together to provide a more accurate picture of events that occurred more than 150 years ago.

Posted in Battle of Adobe Walls, Battle of Cieneguilla, Mountain Meadows Massacre, Sand Creek Massacre, Southwestern Archaeology, Southwestern History, Stories, Writing

The Meaning of Life

Posted on January 30, 2015 by Bill 2 comments

Sitting in the coffee shop I see that the meaning of life for the two year old running around the room is love, connection, and the joy of moving. That little boy, expressing sheer joy, has managed to communicate that feeling to everyone in the room. That is as it should be, and is probably as far as we really need to go.

As we get older, it gets more complicated. Pain, loss, death, and suffering come into our lives. Finding Meaning in the midst of suffering is difficult for many of us. Many people find their meaning in following. They follow gods, rulers, gurus, preachers, the girl next door, teachers, or their family and tribe.

Some of us, however, refuse to follow. One of my mottoes is “Don’t trust anyone who says he knows the will of God.” I prefer to think for myself. I search for answers and have for as long as I can remember. I am 72 years old and I am still searching. I have had a number of peak experiences. These experiences have come in several contexts, Christian, Buddhist, chemical, and in nature.

Every experience was life changing, giving me a new way of seeing and being. Sometimes they are brief, fleeting. Other times I have dwelled in the grasp of divine love for as long as a year. I have prayed without ceasing, done mindfulness meditation, spoken in tongues, laughed in ecstasy, cried with joy, and had years of no spiritual connection at all.

I know that a spiritual connection does not have to come in any specific religious context. I do not, however, know how to maintain that connection all the time. It is just not “After enlightenment, the laundry.” It is not being able to sustain a practice for a sustained period.

Do I lack discipline? No. I have maintained a discipline for an extended time and had an event that broke the connection. Am I a spiritual dilettante? It seems so. Most of the time,however, I am a spiritual nobody.

It’s a mystery. I know without any doubt that there is more to life and being than this round rock we ride through space. I have seen the eternal web of universal connection and oneness. I have been wrapped, enveloped in God’s love. I have received spiritual gifts. I have shared those gifts.

Now it seems that my task is to live in the world as a householder and writer. I do a ten minute meditation every morning and that’s it. Most of the time the meditation is clutter. Sometimes I get an experience of complete peace. That, for now, is enough.

I am not called to lead, to take action in the world. I learn, reflect, write a little, try my best to be a good husband and friend. I have family, which is saying a lot, as I come from a family with weak ties. Today the ties are strong and growing. Love.

Another task before me is to smooth out the bumps in my brain. I get angry, irritable. I obsess about meaningless things. I get depressed. I forget and procrastinate. I eat too much and don’t exercise. Lots to do. It is time to be in the world and find meaning here, not out there.

Posted in Current Activities, Memoirs, My Story, Stories

Terror

Posted on January 10, 2015 by Bill Leave a comment

Paris Terror

The events in Paris this week bring back memories of all the terrorist incidents we have lived through for many years. Why? Why kill innocent people for some cause they have nothing to do with, or they are only making fun of political situations?

Terrorism works. The goal of terror is to put a spotlight on a cause, to get people emotionally involved in an issue they would not usually care about. They become passionate and affiliate themselves with the side of the conflict they agree with. The middle ground, where truth usually resides, becomes obscured as fear and rage take over.

Most people are reasonable and just want to live and let live, whether Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Protestant, Catholic, black, brown, white, wealthy, middle, or working class. Terrorism divides people into opposite camps, where people view others as suspicious and dangerous. The others must be controlled, removed, or eliminated. There is no longer any room for dialog.

This depiction is somewhat extreme. We have seen decades of terror and hate end in Ireland as the two sides finally stopped the killing mostly out of sheer exhaustion and the work of excellent negotiators. An example of where terror achieved its end was in 1950s Algeria, when years of bombings, repression, and hate in Algeria and France ended with Algerian independence.

The Battle of Algiers, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Battle_of_Algiers a movie about that struggle, illustrates how terror works. It has become either a textbook of terrorism or a lesson for those who wish to end the process of fear and hate. Algeria was a French colony with a large population of relatively wealthy French amid a large population of mostly poor Muslim Arabs who resented French rule.

An Arab liberation movement began a campaign of terror, bombing public places where French people gathered. The French army responded with a policy of repression. People were arrested and tortured, curfews imposed, matters escalated and the bombings began in France, especially Paris. The polarization, radicalization, and repression escalated as well, finally ending when the French government under DeGaulle granted independence to Algeria.

The parallels with Israel and Palestine are obvious. The situation there is so divided that many view any peaceable resolution as unlikely, at least in the short run. In Europe, the parallel is with Muslims living in a secular culture that are marginalized and discriminated against, just as the Catholic minority was in Northern Ireland.

The reasons for terror are not only religion. Religion often becomes the justification for acts of terror, but race, class, ethnicity, and alienation are often the underlying reasons. What is needed is tolerance, dialog, and human connection.

Keep calm and carry on.

Posted in Current Activities, Fear, Polarization, Stories, Terrorism

Nuking Western Colorado

Posted on December 19, 2014 by Bill Leave a comment

In the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, Project Plowshare, a U.S. government program was created to develop peaceful uses for nuclear detonations. The program led to three trials in rural Western Colorado designed to release natural gas from tight geologic formations that contained large amounts of natural gas. The gas was there, but was difficult to recover because it would not readily flow to wells. Nuclear fracking, in other words.

The idea was to fracture large amounts of rock releasing the gas for use. Fracking was in use in that era, but the area fractured around a well hole was fairly small, limiting the amount of gas freed. This would remain the case until horizontal well drilling was developed, resulting in a boom in natural gas production.

The use of atomic explosions somewhat larger than the one that destroyed Hiroshima would fracture a large amount of rock, liberating huge amounts of gas. There were three experiments. All three were somewhat successful, yielding gas in recoverable amounts. Big surprise, the gas was radioactive and remains so. A study indicated that the level of radioactivity released in a California home, when blended with gas from other sources, would be well below the dose we receive from background radiation. People would have none of it. No one wanted radioactive natural gas coming into their home at any level.

Western Colorado, source of much of the uranium used in nuclear bombs, had three detonations in a doomed experiment. The most casual of examinations of the proposal to liberate gas from tight strata would raise the radioactivity question. It took millions of dollars to prove the obvious: radioactive natural gas.

Some shots were done at the Nevada test site to explore using bombs to excavate. Huge amounts of radionuclides were released, affecting generations of downwinders, especially in St. George, Utah. Our nuclear tragedy started in New Mexico with the first Trinity detonation that led to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It continues today, with all the radioactive spots around the planet and the people sickened and killed by fallout.

Most historians assert that President Truman’s decision to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki ultimately saved lives. What they did do was trigger the nuclear arms race with its terrible consequences. Chernobyl and Three Mile Island have shown that nuclear power is risky as well.

My first literary effort was a story I wrote while a student at Mesa College in Grand Junction, Colorado in 1966. Project Rulison was in the works, and my story depicted an even greater failure. The blast sent radioactive oil into a previously unknown aquifer that opened into the irrigation canals that provide water to Grand Valley farms. Radioactive oil in Palisade, Grand Junction, Fruita, and the rest of the valley, rendering it uninhabitable. Pure fiction, but a fun story.

Come up to today, and fracking is still controversial. I think the legacy of Project Rulison is stalking the oil and gas industry to this day. Somehow the industry did not get it that bad practices will catch up with them, despite the API’s slick commercials.

Posted in Colorado History, Energy Policy, Environment, Geology, Memoirs, My Story, Oil and Gas Policy, Stories

Pearl Pass Part One

Posted on September 8, 2014 by Bill Leave a comment

Road to Ashcroft

On Wednesday, September 3, I drove over Pearl Pass. Pearl is one of those four wheeling trips that have been on my list for a long time. My grandmother, Pearl Willits Shanks, drove a team and wagon over the pass when the Willits family moved from north Texas to Colorado in 1887. Pearl was 12 when she drove over the pass. She may have been a Texas girl before Pearl Pass, but she was a mountain girl after that.

The road was built as a toll road in the early 1880’s from the railhead in Crested Butte to the newly discovered silver mining area in Aspen. It was in use until the railroads came to Aspen in the late 1880’s. The main use was hauling coal from mines at Crested Butte to Aspen.

Today the road is much like it was in the nineteenth century. From the start of the four wheel drive portion until it drops into the valley on the Crested Butte side it has no dirt, just rock.

The Bad Ledge

Fist sized rocks, baby head sized rocks, rock ledges, big rocks in narrow places, and big rocks in the middle of the road. One can grow tired of rock.

It is also narrow, made for wagons a long time ago. There is no room for error. In reading about the pass, most of the reports involving trouble were where a vehicle got too far to the side. When that happens, there better be good help available, because it is a long way to the bottom if the vehicle rolls over.

I was able to drive over all those rocks with no real damage to my Toyota Tacoma other than losing a mudflap. The forest ranger had suggested a Jeep Rubicon. I find my Toyota does just fine, although I may add a limited slip differential someday.

The Road and a View

At the Summit

This is probably the most difficult road I have driven. Steep, narrow, and did I mention rocky? I will do it again. The history is important to me, the story of my family. I spent the afternoon on that road marveling that a 12 year old girl from flat Texas could marshal the courage to drive a wagon over that hill.

I don’t know how long the entire trip from Crested Butte to Ashcroft, 10 miles from Aspen, took the Willits family. I do know that they misjudged the time it would take to get over the highest part and did not get off the hill into Ashcroft until 11:00 PM.

That road is scary enough in daylight. At night? It is good that horses are better at seeing at night than we are. Once I got down into the timber on the Crested Butte side, the alternating sunlight and shadow made it hard to see any serious obstacles. I can just imagine what Pearl was feeling.

I have given you some history and road condition information about Pearl Pass. My next piece will be about the other big attractions. The Elk Mountains that the pass traverses are some of the most spectacular and geologically unique mountains in Colorado. Next time.

Posted in Colorado History, Colorado Mountains, Family History, Four Wheeling, Memoirs, My Story

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