by D. J. Green | Jun 9, 2018 | Ground Work
Last week, I wrote about two disciplines I practice on a regular basis, and how they’ve helped me “become what I practice.” Today, I’ll explore two more.
Engine Checks:
Although Kagán is a sailboat, the wind doesn’t always blow, nor am I expert enough to maneuver under sail in tight spaces like into and out of marinas, so the auxiliary engine (a 37-horsepower marine diesel) is essential to our cruising life. At least every 10 hours of running time, we do an engine check – checking the engine oil and coolant levels, feeling the tension on the fan belt to the alternator, and taking a good long look for drips from the myriad hoses snaking through the engine. Though it doesn’t take much time, it’s a bit of a production – moving the companionway ladder, lifting off the forward engine cover, and crouching on hands and knees with a flashlight, reading glasses, and paper towels.
When everything is working well day after day, we begin to wonder if it needs to be done so frequently. But little changes can mean a lot. As our sailing season wound down last year, we noticed some pinkish ooze on one side of the fresh water/coolant pump. We wiped it off and monitored it. On our very last morning at anchor, it was my turn to do the engine check. The pink goo on the pump seemed thicker and there were dribbles on the absorbent pad below it, but there was plenty of coolant in the reservoir. We decided we were good to go back to our home marina just a few hours away, but I made a note in Kagán’s log and called our mechanic as soon as we were snug in our slip.
Turns out the casting of the pump housing was porous, and the pump needed to be replaced. By doing our engine checks almost every day, we caught what could have been a big problem before it was a problem at all. I count that as a little discipline with a big payoff.
Releasing Attachment to Outcomes:
I was introduced to the concept of undertaking something I cared about, then releasing attachment to its outcome eight years ago when I was diagnosed with breast cancer and began the weeks of testing to learn more about what I would be dealing with – what type of cancer, what stage, and if/where it had spread. In a case like cancer, it’s especially hard to release the desire that the outcome be favorable. But it was a worthy effort to make. Getting educated and assembling the best medical team possible was important, and so was striving to be peaceful with whatever was in store for me.
I was lucky. The disease was in an early stage, and the surgery and radiation treatments, though not easy to get through, left me cancer-free and able to resume a lifestyle that restored my health fully. It may seem odd, but looking at it through the prism of years, I think the experience actually enhanced my happiness as I feel deep gratitude for how well and strong I am.
The discipline of releasing attachment to outcomes is one that I continue to practice, though imperfectly. I try to do my best simply for the sake of doing my best, rather than to achieve a specific result – like completing a well-written novel, not knowing if I’ll succeed in publishing it and being diligent in maintaining Kagán’s safety and mechanical systems, despite the inevitability of breakdowns. And then there’s attending to my health, though there are no guarantees that the cancer won’t recur, and there is the guarantee that aging will take its toll – so, walking, biking, doing yoga, and those daily sit-ups and push-ups need to be about feeling good on any given day, without attachment to the days that follow.
This discipline is one I haven’t quite become. All too often I am attached to what I perceive as a good outcome. But I keep practicing.
What are the disciplines you find most challenging, and why?
by D. J. Green | Jun 3, 2018 | Ground Work
One of my many teachers of writing or yoga or life, said to me, “You become what you practice.” I’ve never forgotten the phrase, and I believe it. There are several little disciplines I practice, and today I’ll talk about two of them.
Sit-ups and Push-ups:
I can’t remember when I began doing sit-ups and push-ups every day. It’s been decades. The only time I haven’t done them for any length of time was when I had surgery and radiation treatments for breast cancer eight years ago. Since radiation really saps your energy, it was months before I felt strong enough to consider starting them up again, or not. I recalled a conversation I’d had years before with a friend in her fifties, we were sharing a hotel room and she commented on my daily routine, saying she used to have a similar one, until she’d turned fifty…and then she gave it up. I also remembered thinking that I wouldn’t make the same choice. I’m okay with getting older, but I’m not so okay with getting weaker, to the extent that I have control over it. So, there I was – just turned fifty myself and a newly-minted cancer survivor – making a decision to keep or let go of a small, daily discipline that could help me maintain strength and fitness. I decided to keep it.
I don’t do a lot of them, and I don’t need to suit up to get them done, so on the days when I don’t make time to suit up and seriously sweat, I still move my body and clear my mind. The bonus is a strong core and arms ready to haul lines when I arrive on Kagán, my sailboat, each spring. This discipline provides a base of fitness for me to build on.
Yoga As Muse:
When I first wrote fiction, I had a difficult time writing technically and creatively on the same day – the rhythms of the work were so different. I needed time, lots of it, to wait for inspiration to arrive. Given that reporting on field jobs was a big part of my paying work, writing a novel was going to be really hard (and it isn’t easy, in any case), if I couldn’t create inspiration, rather than wait for it.
Then in 2007, I took the Yoga As Muse–Writing from the Center to the Page workshop with Jeffrey Davis at the UNM Taos Summer Writer’s Conference. The process Jeffrey taught, and I have practiced ever since, uses yoga to focus for writing. It goes something like this – you go to the mat and set intentions, the first intention is what you’re writing for (the big picture), and the second what you’re writing for that day. Depending on the intentions, you select a specific sequence of yoga poses to help you move toward them. That’s a rudimentary description, and if you’re interested in trying it, I highly recommend Jeffrey’s book The Journey from the Center to the Page, Yoga Philosophies and Practices as Muse for Authentic Writing (Revised and Updated), published by Monkfish in 2008. Since learning the process and incorporating it into my writing life, I can switch gears from technical prose to creative work in a matter of minutes on the mat. I’m pretty kinesthetic, and for me, this discipline helps to quiet the mental chatter that often gets in my way. Sometimes I feel ready to write after just closing my eyes and setting my intentions, which can vary from drafting a new scene, to finding my characters’ true voices in dialogue, to simply staying at my desk and writing for an hour. Other days, I need to move for several minutes to find my direction, but I can’t think of a time that Yoga As Muse hasn’t enhanced my writing sessions.
My disciplines help me be who I strive to be – in these cases, someone who can lift her own weight and a writer – indeed, I have become what I practice. Maybe the little things aren’t so little at all.
What are your disciplines, little or big?
Note: You may know of the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), that went into effect May 25, 2018. To help comply with GDPR consent, I’m confirming that you would like to continue receiving my blog. If you would like to remain on the list, you don’t need to do anything. However, if you would like to be removed from the list, please use the Unsubscribe link found at the bottom of any email sent by Geologist Writer. I do hope you’ll stay on as one of my valued readers. Thank you!
by D. J. Green | Apr 4, 2018 | Ground Work
In my novel, No More Empty Spaces, Will Ross, who is an engineering geologist beginning work in east central Turkey on a troubled dam, discovers a travertine deposit on his first day in the field.
Kayakale – kaya meaning rock, kale meaning castle – loomed above as Will shrugged his faded green canvas pack into a comfortable position on his shoulder. Seen from a distance the day before, he thought the stone pillar looked like travertine. The closer he got, the more it looked that way, but travertine wasn’t shown on any of the maps of the dam site.
Will squatted to inspect a boulder on the trail. Gray and rough and not distinctive to the untrained eye, the thin convoluted layers of the rock spoke of the heated waters that had dropped their calcareous mineral loads. The only hydrothermal deposits noted in the literature on the region were associated with the mines several kilometers downstream, near Kayakale village, but there was no doubt, this was travertine.
While cross-country skiing in Yellowstone in January, I also got to see travertines, fine crystalline calcium carbonate rocks formed by chemical precipitation. Common in areas with hot springs, travertines can form large terraces, like those in Mammoth Hot Springs in Yellowstone National Park and the hot springs of Pamukkale in southwest Turkey.
Generally white or tan, travertines can also bloom with color from mineral impurities. Though rough in texture in their natural forms, some travertines are prized for their beauty when cut and polished.
Refik, Will’s assistant, huffed up the trail just as Will reached for the Estwing rock pick that hung on his belt. Its handle was smooth and contoured to his hand, shaped over years of study and work. He swung the hammer. Metal rang on stone. Rock dust drifted up, depositing a thin film of grit on his lips. He blew the dust off the specimen in his hand.
“Travertine,” Will said, holding the rock out to Refik. “See how the fresh surface is pearlescent. Each of these layers,” he pointed to them, “was precipitated when hot, mineralized water daylighted and cooled. Cooler water can’t hold the minerals in solution that hot water can, so when the water flows out at the surface, minerals get deposited layer by layer.” He traced the layers with his finger. “Like this,” he said. “Do you understand?”
“Little,” Refik said. “Daha yavaş, lütfen. Hmmm. More slowly, please.”
“Okay. I mean, tamam.”
Refik smiled. “Çok iyi. Very good.”
Will opened the leather pouch on the other side of his belt from the pick and pulled out a brown glass vial with dilute hydrochloric acid. He squeezed a few drops onto the rock. The acid bubbled in the nooks and crannies.
“See? Definitely carbonate. Not that we didn’t know that. But travertine, so close to the dam site, that wasn’t reported. And it’s a big deal. Hot water can dissolve a lot more carbonaceous rock than water at ambient temps. The implications of travertine so near the dam site are immense with respect to the foundation and abutments. More dissolution means more and bigger cavities. Exactly what shut construction down.”
That’s how Will begins his work at Kayakale Dam. For those of us lucky enough to study geology as a profession, though we may do the same work day to day – mapping or trenching or drilling – each site presents its own landscape to read, its own geologic framework to understand, and its own puzzles to solve.
I hope you enjoy this short excerpt from No More Empty Spaces. The novel will be published on April 9, 2024. Stay tuned for information on pre-ordering it late in 2023. Read more from No More Empty Spaces.
.
by D. J. Green | Mar 14, 2018 | Ground Work
I need it. To feel small, even insignificant, in the face of nature’s works nourishes me. I seek that nourishment daily.
From my home at the base of the Sandia Mountains to the beautiful old Mabel Dodge Luhan House at the base of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in Taos, I drove for miles alongside the Rio Grande as the road climbed from Española into the gorge of the river that flows from a source high in Colorado’s Southern Rockies to its mouth in the Gulf of Mexico. It rippled over basalt boulders that had tumbled into its bed from the steep slopes above. Winter bare cottonwoods revealed their convoluted forms, another of nature’s graceful sculptures. Light glinted off the faces of boulders burnished with desert varnish. I imagined the music of the river, a constant murmur, overshadowed that day by the whoosh of the wind, whose gusts the soaring crows danced upon, riding waves of air. I could drive this stretch of road every day, and still it would inspire my awe.
That awe, the wonder of nature – from the minute gleam of an obsidian ‘Apache tear’ glimpsed on a trail to the mighty basalt cliffs that tower over the narrowest reaches of the Rio Grande Gorge – provides perspective that helps me handle the shock and awe (of a much different sort) that assails on a daily basis, reading the news of humans seemingly endless supply of inhumanity.
Nearly every day (yes, sometimes I forget), I walk in gratitude to live in places were nature is so reachable. I can touch the paper thin wisp of a seed pod. I can hear it rattle in the breeze. I can watch a lizard no bigger than my pinky finger scurry into the protective spines of a prickly pear’s paddles. I hear the coyotes’ howls echoing through arroyos, their pups’ yips and yaps new voices in nature’s song. But even in the city, there is birdsong, the rustle of bare trees’ branches in the wind, and the occasional passing of a coyote. Wherever I am, I can find it – awe – if I remember to look, to listen.
The next morning, I woke to the hush that blankets the landscape with even a dusting of snow. Always a blessing in the desert, this winter any moisture is a particular gift given the parched season we’ve had. I scooped up a handful, and as I lifted it to contemplate the intricacies of the delicate flakes, the sun peeked through a cloud break and shone over my shoulder. Nature’s wonder sparkled there, right in the palm of my hand.
by D. J. Green | Mar 1, 2018 | Ground Work
Hat pulled low, hands cozy in ski mitts, I wiggled my toes to keep them warm in wooly socks. I walked from the lodge to Old Faithful Geyser in the dim light of the winter evening. The snow compressed beneath my boots, squeaking with each step. The sounds of snow – one of the many things I love about winter.
I left the others seated by a crackling fire after one of the finest days of cross-country skiing I’d ever had – the weather, cold enough not to get overheated skiing, but warm enough to stop and enjoy the landscape and wildlife; the snow perfect; and the company, the best of friends. After skiing together to Lone Star Geyser in the morning, we’d all chosen different routes back. That evening, my friend, Nancy, and I still glowed from our afternoon’s accomplishment. We’d taken a beautiful, but tough trail back. We’d fallen plenty and stopped to catch our breath more, but we’d done it! We definitely earned the thousand-calorie Belgian hot chocolate we indulged in upon returning.
I made my way to the boardwalk and benches surrounding Old Faithful that overflows with people from around the globe on summer days. In the crisp cold a crescent moon shone through wispy clouds whisking on the wind, the stars blinked, and I was the only one there. Well, the only human. If others were nearby, bison or coyote, perhaps, they didn’t make their presence known to me. I hoped I wasn’t disturbing their peace, they get gawked at enough (by me too, whenever I have the opportunity).
Old Faithful is faithful, but not exact. Eruptions occur roughly 60 to 100 minutes apart, plus or minus 10 or more minutes. Never silent, the geyser spurt and sputtered, and each time I wondered if the eruption was starting. Natural hot springs that don’t always flow, geysers erupt steam and water, sometimes high into the air, at varying or somewhat regular intervals depending on the configuration of their underground ‘plumbing.’ That isn’t piping, of course, but the natural conduits in the bedrock through which water and steam rise from the subsurface.
I strolled along the boardwalk, built to protect the fragile crust of travertine from the hordes who come to see and hear and feel this wonder of nature. I waited patiently, at first. I turned my back to the wind for a while, then jogged in place, kept moving to stay warm. Three, four, five times, steam and water shot a few feet in the air. I could hear the droplets raining down on the surrounding stone. Then it would settle. I began to think I’d missed the eruption by a few short minutes.
Even if I did, I couldn’t complain. On our first day here, it seemed that every geyser we skied up to, erupted just as we pulled our cameras from our pockets. Bison had posed, the sun glowing on their thick coats. A coyote had lingered along the fence overlooking Punch Bowl Spring, despite five of us skiing to within fifty feet or so. Pawing at the frozen ground, he feasted on some morsel while we watched, his golden eyes peering at us now and then to make sure we kept our distance. He’d run away when the spring began to thump. We could feel the vibration from the ground up through our skis into our legs, the hum of Earth’s geothermal ‘engine’ so near the surface in Yellowstone.
.
When the hiss of steam grew louder, then rose to a rumble, there was no mistaking it, I had not missed the eruption. Hot water gushed forth, a cloud of steam billowed high. I’m sure there are many people who have been a lone witness to this, but I felt (and still feel) immense gratitude for those moments, standing beside Old Faithful, alone.
Our oldest National Park, established on March 1, 1872, Yellowstone is a magical place in every season. But the beauty of this natural gem truly shines in winter – I wish I could capture the way the sun sparkles on fresh snow, the shush of Spring Creek, the hot springs’ sulfurous scent, the way snow cakes in the fur of a bison’s massive head as it grazes, or the glub of boiling mud in the Fountain Paint Pots. But I can’t. You’ll just have to go.
Happy Birthday, Yellowstone National Park!
Many thanks to Eric Hubbard for his wildlife pictures from the trip.
Although Kagán is a sailboat, the wind doesn’t always blow, nor am I expert enough to maneuver under sail in tight spaces like into and out of marinas, so the auxiliary engine (a 37-horsepower marine diesel) is essential to our cruising life. At least every 10 hours of running time, we do an engine check – checking the engine oil and coolant levels, feeling the tension on the fan belt to the alternator, and taking a good long look for drips from the myriad hoses snaking through the engine. Though it doesn’t take much time, it’s a bit of a production – moving the companionway ladder, lifting off the forward engine cover, and crouching on hands and knees with a flashlight, reading glasses, and paper towels.
While cross-country skiing in Yellowstone in January, I also got to see travertines, fine crystalline calcium carbonate rocks formed by chemical precipitation. Common in areas with hot springs, travertines can form large terraces, like those in Mammoth Hot Springs in Yellowstone National Park and the hot springs of Pamukkale in southwest Turkey.
Recent Comments