All in all, my 1979 summer job south of Farmington, NM was an enjoyable respite from the personal storms of the Spring and the unforeseen personal storms to come. Basically, I was dealing with the chronologically drawn-out wreckage of my first serious love, that would continue after I returned to El Paso for the Fall Semester. ["That's all I have to say about that."]
To reiterate, the purpose of the Fossil Recovery Project in the Bisti Badlands was to clear a designated area of all Cretaceous vertebrate fossils (dinosaurs, turtles, crocodiles) and obtain samples of all occurrences of "petrified" (Permineralized) wood and invertebrate fossils (freshwater clams). The target formation was the Fruitland Formation. Western Coal Co. furnished us with great topographic maps (1" = 100', 5-foot contour interval). It made locating sites pretty easy. Each site had to be located as accurately as possible and for the vertebrate sites, we had to pick up each and every fragment and place the fragments in cloth collecting bags. Sometimes that meant 2 hours on your hands and knees in the sun. But then I was a bit younger than I am now. We covered 2 and 1/2 square miles in 6 weeks. We might have done more, but it rained almost every day for the first two weeks.
These photos have been labeled (some need to be relabeled for better readability on projection screens) for educational purposes.
Figure 1.
Figure 2.
Figure 3. Bony "Scutes" from the back of a crocodile.
Figure 4.
Figure 5.
Figure 6.
Figure 7.
Figure 8.
On the way into and out of our daily "base camp", Ron had pointed out a red "clinker zone", in which the clay had been baked by a long-ago coal-seam underground fire. I stopped one day and picked up a couple of pieces with plant fossils (later gave one away). [See comments in "Regrets".]
What I did on my days off.
Both my field partner Ron and I had a pickup truck with a camper. His a late-1960's Ford F-100 and my 1976 Jeep J-10 4x4.
Both my field partner Ron and I had a pickup truck with a camper. His a late-1960's Ford F-100 and my 1976 Jeep J-10 4x4.
Figure 9.
As my field partner and I had different outlooks on life, while he chose to veg out in his motel room in Farmington, drink beer, and watch TV, I chose to camp out (in my truck) at a local campsite and shower there (to save money), then leave out the next morning, usually for photography, mineral collecting, and looking for old beer cans in the Durango and Silverton, CO areas. And visiting some of the watering holes in Silverton and chatting with the locals. We were there for 6 weeks, mid-May through June. I did return to Moab, UT and Arches National Park (see results below). I also did a return trip to the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, after visiting it in 1977 (no camera problems there, either time).
Noteworthy Glitches
Camera
My personal 35 mm camera at that time was a Miranda Senorex II. It seemed pretty good for its time (the middle and late 1970s). To save money, I usually shot Kodak Kodachrome 64 slides. Or Ektachrome 100 when I was around more greenery.
In El Paso, I was usually satisfied with K-Mart processing services. there was usually about a 5-day turnaround. Farmington being more remote, the K-Mart there had a 10-day turnaround, but there weren't other choices that I could find easily.
Not sure when the shutter jammed. It had done the same during my 1977 Field Camp field trip. Then it somehow unjammed itself. It always sounded as if it was functioning. I would only find out when my slide film was returned "all black", i.e., unexposed. In 1977, it caused me to not get any photos at Arches National Park, yet I got photos before and after at Mesa Verde and Canyonlands National Parks.
After I got my first un-exposed rolls back, I had no other choices but to keep shooting, just in case. But it didn't come back (unjam). So a 2nd trip to Arches yielded no photos.
Paychecks
As Western Coal Co. was funding the project (by Federal Law, prior to opening a strip mine), I assumed I would get paid in Farmington. Instead, the money was funneled through UTEP and UNM to pay the student workers. Driving back 440+ miles to El Paso to pick up a check just didn't work. One of our professors would visit once a week and I called the folks in El Paso and begged them to let my professor pick it up. No dice.
So, for 6 weeks, I had to borrow money from my professor and my family and live off ham sandwiches and potato chips. I did have a credit card for emergencies. When I finally got paid when I went back to El Paso, the $2200 I got for 6 weeks was pretty good in 1979, even after paying back the loans. That paycheck glitch also prevented me from searching Farmington pawnshops for a backup camera.
Weather
According to the Silverton "old-timers", the 1978/1979 Winter was the worst since 1950/1951. I had wanted to try gold panning in the Silverton area, but the creeks and rivers were running too high. And too many backcountry and mountain roads were snowed in until the 3rd week in June.
Truck Tire Issues
I somehow suffered a sidewall cut on one of my Jeep's tires. The tire dealer (same one as El Paso) didn't have the same tread pattern, they didn't seem to want to order only 2, did I worry too much over different tread patterns? Having been told "bad things" about mixing tread patterns, I wound up getting "street tires" for the front. They lasted for 100 miles, before the rocks on the backcountry roads did them in. I had to buy whatever I could get two of in Silverton and just deal with the results.
Regrets
Not visiting Chaco Canyon. Enough said.
Not having a back-up camera, even a "disposable" 35 mm camera.
Not synching my days-off with the normal Saturday/Sunday weekend. I think Ron and I arrived on a Thursday and went to work the next day. So our days off were Wednesday and Thursday. Not really a problem, until I discovered the University of New Mexico Archeology base camp between Farmington and Aztec.
After my days off in Silverton, I stopped by to chat and was invited to hang out for dinner and a beer, then go meet Ron the next morning and return to the field. And I was invited back to their camp on weekends, just park my truck and blend in (I think there were perhaps two or three dozen students and grad students there).
After my painful springtime breakup, I was lonely and at that time, there were more female students in that Archeology base camp than I was used to seeing in Geology settings. Ron seemed unwilling to mix with the UNM folks. I should have put my foot down to nudge our days-off to a normal weekend schedule. I regret not being more assertive. So it goes.
Not filling a bucket with the "Clinker Zone" samples.
As the site was off the highway and we had permission to be there, I should have picked up more samples. (As was planned, the area is now an open-pit coal mine. So "saving some for other people" would have done no good. I would probably have given away most of the specimens if I had gotten more.)
After my days off in Silverton, I stopped by to chat and was invited to hang out for dinner and a beer, then go meet Ron the next morning and return to the field. And I was invited back to their camp on weekends, just park my truck and blend in (I think there were perhaps two or three dozen students and grad students there).
After my painful springtime breakup, I was lonely and at that time, there were more female students in that Archeology base camp than I was used to seeing in Geology settings. Ron seemed unwilling to mix with the UNM folks. I should have put my foot down to nudge our days-off to a normal weekend schedule. I regret not being more assertive. So it goes.
Not filling a bucket with the "Clinker Zone" samples.
As the site was off the highway and we had permission to be there, I should have picked up more samples. (As was planned, the area is now an open-pit coal mine. So "saving some for other people" would have done no good. I would probably have given away most of the specimens if I had gotten more.)
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