Newspapers / The Guilfordian (Greensboro, N.C.) / Feb. 25, 1975, edition 1 / Page 7
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February 25, 1975 mßm jlfft*'' W-- % ■ rT.> rflf> %JH Sg& .. t ' =£. J| ; , Students on Seminar West 1974, hike over volcanic rock on Mt. Everts in Yellowstone Park. photo by Ryan Seminars West 1975 by Susie Rice Don Gibbon, of the Geology Department, and Richard Morton, of the English Department, are cooking up something pretty exciting in the way of extra curricular learning-Seminar West 75. Monday the seventeenth they gave an informal talk which started with a slide show of former seminars led by Charles Almy and Cyril Harvey. After the slides, showing the gorgeous and unique terrain the former seminars had the privilege of viewing, we got down to business concerning this years trip through New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado. The trip is going to be much more than a geological expedition, although that's going to be a definite part of it. Richard Morton's interest will be literary as he and those involved will examine man's continuing relationship to his environment through use of the "landscape as a meta phor." Any other subject a student wishes to concentrate on can be worked out; the only two requirements are a day to day journal and a final paper to be turned in next fall. This sojurn into the American West is planned to be about four weeks long, from around May 15 to June 21, and is more or less divided into three main parts. On the way out Indian cultures will be observed with a trip to the Anthropological Museum in Santa Fe. A five day backpacking trip into the Grand Canyon is in the making; one day to make it down, one up, and three days just to enjoy the beauty inside. On the way back there will be a visit to the Spanish Peaks, Great Sand Dunes National Monument and "the.'diverse delights of the San Juan Valley". This all will be done in as casual and simple a manner as possible, and hopefully there will be five days in which nothing is planned and everyone can go off to explore their own interests. The only equipment is a good pair of sturdy hiking books, a sleeping bag, and a backpack. The cost for this once in a lifetime expedition is only S4OO, which includes everything from food to travel expenses. Not only that, but for four weeks of learning, growing and enjoying you get four college credits. A few days after the meeting I had the opportunity to speak with Don Gibbon as he expanded on his hopes for the trip. He is especially interested in the Indian cultures that will be studied and the trip to the Santa Fe museum. He feels that the extent of civilization in America before white man is hardly recognized or appre ciated and that especially with young people today, reality is based on the happenings of the past ten years. He hopes that by looking into such things as the decline of the Pueblo because of the poor land use, will help us to a greater understanding of the continuing relationship to his environment. The way things are headed, there can be few more important things to learn. If you are interested, see Don Gibbon to obtain a reading list and more information. They'd like a minimum of 18 people, so if you are serious, you have a good chance of going. From the sounds of it, I would say this could turn out to be the most valuable learning expe rience of your'life. ■' The Gutlfordi; Seminars West 1974 by Crystal Palmer July 16, 1974: Second summer term had begun and students on all the campuses in Greensboro were indoors hitting the books. But at Guilford twenty students and one professor were getting ready to spend the next four weeks out-doors earning four hours lab-science credit, having the time of our lives. We were all signed up for Geology 450, known also as Seminar West or Yo-yo 11. Yo-yo I (summer '73) had gone to the Grand Canyon, but this year's group was headed farther north. Our route would take us through the northwest Nebraska badlands, the Black Hills of South Dakota, Yellowstone Park, the Grant Tetons, Craters of the Moon (in Idaho), Bingham Copper Mine near Salt Lake City, and finally, going east again, the Colorado Rockies and Long's Peak. Half of the crew were geology majors; most of us had had some courses in the subject. By the time we reached the Rocky Mountains, everyone at least knew igneous rocks from sediments, an off-lap sequence from an on-lap, and an anticline from a syncline. Dr. Almy brought this about by an effective and painless method, described by one geology major as "Instant Geology: Just add Dirt and Mix!" We would stop our vans by a roadcut, and Dr. Almy would give a ten-minute lecture interpreting the rocks we were standing beside. The early part of the trip also started to toughen us up for our later adventures in the Rockies. We camped every night, cooked all our own meals, and still managed to cover as much as 500 miles in a day's travel. Somewhere between Ne braska and South Dakota, we began to see the geological wonders which had drawn us so far from home. The western United States is an excellent geology classroom for two reasons. The first is that so many and various things have happened here in the past hundred million years. The area provides clear illustra tions of almost every force that can alter the face of the earth-wind, water, glaciers, mass-wasting (the action of gravity on already loose material), extremes of tem perature, seismic disturbance (results: volcanoes, earth quakes, landslides, geysers, etc.) and plate tectonics (the movement in the earth's whole top crust, which causes continental drift arid mountain building.) The second reason is that a relatively recent event the upthrust of the Rocky Mountains about 50 million years ago- has, by tilting and breaking open all the layers of rock, put the region's whole geologic history on display. In the river gorges one can follow the beds all the way down to the granite which forms the base of the continent. On the bare faces of the mountains peaks one can see how the hardest of rocks have been folded and molded like wet clay. Events since the formation of the Rockies, such as the glaciation during the Ice-Ages and the recent (35 million years ago)' volcanic eruptions in the Yellowstone area, also show up plainly. The steep slopes and fast streams have not let them be buried under thick layers of new sediment. Thus we received further "instant" geology lessons, given as we walked among the stumps of a petrified forest, played tourist at Yellow stone's geyser basin, back packed through the Grand Tetons, slid down glaciers on the seats of our pants, toured mines and museums, and made friends with the crew of an oil-rig. We even had a quick lesson in the middle of a snowstorn about halfway up Long-Hi peak! When we had time, we J* Jy' -H Student explorers near the east entrance to Yellowstone Park. photo by Ryan Page 7 played; there were evening songfests, games of frisbee at our lunch stops, and pun-wars to enliven the long hours in the vans. But usually we had plenty to do. Everybody belonged to one of four crews; tent-pitchers, van-packers, cooks and dish-washers. And there was academic work too. Everybody kept a journal for the course, to be written in every day (well, perhaps). Besides that, we all had individual projects to work on, related either to geology or to some other aspect of the trip; biology, the .Plains Indians, the history of the American West, our own group's group-dynamics, or anything that aroused our interest. The huge box of books served as our resource-library. So, late evening would find most of us seated around our campsite's picnic tables, reading or writing by the light of a kersene lantern. We came back sun-drench ed, happy, slightly zany, and more full of energy than ever. Yo-yo II had been a learning experience - or rather a multitude of interconnected learning experiences - not only about our surroundings but about our own possibilities and limitations. It was fun, occasionally aggravating, al ways demanding and always, somehow satisfying.
The Guilfordian (Greensboro, N.C.)
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Feb. 25, 1975, edition 1
7
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