Imbolc and the Valentine Moon
Friday gratefuls: Kristie. Kep. Sunseen. On the Lodgepoles. Through the Lodgepoles. Fresh Snow. Cold temps. A search for emet. Cancer. Diane. Her political astuteness. Our long connection. Family. Biden. Ukraine. The Democratic compromise. State of the Union, steadier. Luke. Rabbi Jamie. Tara. Our Land, this Land. The Rockies. Mind blown. The Deep. Love everlasting.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: Science
The Laramide orogeny. Mountain building seventy-five million years ago. A tectonic plate crashing into another right at a line followed by Hwy. 470 here in the Denver metro. The Plains crunched up at the Front Range. What I’ve read and believed since moving to Colorado. Those Hogbacks the remains of an ancient Mountain Range, the Laramides.
Turns out. No. Not the case. The Colorado Rockies are around ten million years old! 
Wait. There’s more! The whole Colorado Plateau rotates clockwise! The Colorado Rockies still being pushed up higher! That’s right. The Rockies are a young Mountain Range created by a dynamic I’ve not fully grasped.
I understand this much. The orogeny (Mountain building) pressure comes not from the east as in the old Laramide theory, but from the west. And that pressure, exerted by the same Faults that create Earthquakes in California, are dynamic, still at work. There may be some Vulcanology implicated too.
As you can tell by the exclamation marks, I’m excited about this! Taking a new class on Colorado Glaciations. Glaciation is why the Rockies look so rugged. Also, according to Vince Matthews, another former director of the Colorado Geological Survey who’s teaching this course, none of the current Glaciers in Colorado are over 400 years old. Stopping with the exclamation marks. That’ed get silly.
Not sure how to reconcile Vince Matthew’s comments about the Rockies being ten million years old and what you’ll see below, but it’s evident that this is work no one understands very well. Even geologists.
Supposed to get a link to a video that shows how this works. I’ll post it when it arrives. The whole Colorado Plateau. Rotating. Wow. Here’s a bullet point list about what one author believes:
| ▪ | The Colorado Plateau’s iconic landscapes were shaped during its 70-million-year, still-enigmatic, tectonic evolution characterized by uplift and erosion. | ||||
| ▪ | Uplift of the Colorado Plateau from sea level took place in three episodes, the youngest of which has been ongoing for the past 20 million years. | ||||
| ▪ | Tectonism across the Colorado Plateau’s nearest plate margin (the base of the plate!) is driving uplift and volcanism and enhancing its rugged landscapes. | ||||
| ▪ | The bowl-shaped Colorado Plateau province is defined by ongoing uplift and an inboard sweep of magmatism around its margins. | ||||
| ▪ | The keel of the Colorado Plateau is being thinned as the North American plate moves southwest through the underlying asthenosphere. | ||||
