I spent a week of June out in Washington State/Idaho with the rest of the Lunar and Planetary Science Academy interns. It was great to be out West again. I’d only recently had my first taste of the wild west, and I’m addicted. As a southern girl from Raleigh, I initially couldn’t understand how my more western-bred comrades referred to the east coast as “claustrophobic.” I missed the trees, and the longsungof wide open spaces just seemed to give me vertigo. But again, this summer, in the Scablands (a region with interesting geological features...the megaflood features are similar to those on Mars!), I saw land diversity unlike anything I’ve ever experienced, and got to explore it all. I felt like a small child constantly deposited onto giant playgrounds and told to GO. And we did: there were LPSAers climbing over rocks and hills and cliffs, standing at the top of waterfalls, rolling down sand dunes, tapemeasuring those basalt columns. We’ve been back on the east coast for a couple weeks, but I’m already ready to go back. Becoming intimate with the land itself in a hands-on way gave me a fresh perspective on a new field of science—geology—and a further appreciation for the way the human body interacts and responds and adjusts itself to different types of landforms and their provided space. Now, I just have to take a field trip to Mars and see what 0.4g does to my vertigo!
Here is the Scablands travelogue video put together by the LPSA staff assistant, Andy Ryan. This is a great overview of our week out West. (I'm the voice at the end of the second video!) This is also a perfect peek at the CREATURES I get to hang out with every day.
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