The accretionary Wedge #45 is about geological pilgrimage – the sacred geological place that you must visit at least once in your lifetime.
I know I am a bit late and I am going to violate the rules of the game because I do not wish to pick a single location. Instead I am thinking about a huge and geologically extremely versatile landmass – the western part of the USA.
Many among my readers would now say: wait a minute, shouldn’t it be a remote and relatively inaccessible place? But for me it is both remote and inaccessible. It is remote because I live far away and it is inaccessible because I should go for a very long trip to see a tiny fraction of the places I’d like to visit there. I have never set my foot on US soil. Not because I can’t do it for some reason but I just see no point in going to New York for example for some days. I am not interested in it. If I am going to make a trip to US, then it should last some time to justify the money spent on airplane tickets, etc. It is very hard to do because of other commitments in life. It is much easier for me to take a week and visit some geologically interesting place in the Mediteranean area, for example. The Med, by the way, is very interesting as well.
There is one aspect of US geology what makes me jealous. No, I don’t mean Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, or other places with spectacular geology. Its the fact that USA is a country where people share a common language and taxpayers money adds up to initiate something big. There are projects like “Roadside Geology” series of books for every state and digital geological maps available free of charge. There is nothing like that for Europe. Europe is composed of small nations, everyone speaking their own language and dealing with their own small and globally absolutely unimportant projects. GPS was not accidentally created in the USA, it is easy to understand why it didn’t happen in Europe.
Yes, I know, Europe may be culturally richer because of versatility but I do not see much value in it. It really disturbs me that for every country geological guides that are in existence are written in strange languages understandable to few millions only and they are mostly printed, very little is available in the web. Every geological survey has their own mapping rules. Even if you can access some of their maps, the coordinate system used is often local and usable with great difficulties, if at all.
My geological pilgrimage would ideally take a year at least, possibly even more and involve many stops in California, Arizona, Utah, Oregon, etc. I doubt I will ever make it because it means I have to take a year free of other commitments but who knows. It costs nothing to dream and things you would like to do very much sometimes happen.
Siim, after working and traveling in the US for two years, I would like to defend our good old Europe. The US are a wonderful country with advantages and disadvantages, with good points and bad points, and ups and downs. The same with Europe. So in my eyes, the US is not the holy land it’s just a country like many others. The US is a big place and therefore, has some more possibilities as smaller countries. But smaller entities are very often more competitive and more creative. The US is not a place where everything is perfect. I’ve seen many things, I still wonder about. I’ve also seen things I do admire.
If you drive 24 hours on the american interstate you are still not seeing something different. If you travel 4 hours in Central Europe, you are going to be in 4 different areas with 8 different points of view.
So it would be a good thing to go overseas to see what’s going on, but do not expect to see wonders.
Felix, I think you misunderstood me. I do not think that America is perfect, I am not that naive. There are many things I do not like about America but I didn’t focus on that in this article. I was only describing one aspect of America which in relation to Europe is much better. And I briefly mentioned what is the reason behind it. Good old Europe as every other region has its advantages and disadvantages. I am not sure I’d like to live in America instead but I definitely would like to go for a long visit.
Your comment also perfectly illustrates what I want to say: “If you travel 4 hours in Central Europe, you are going to be in 4 different areas with 8 different points of view”. That’s exactly what I want to say – what a cultural richness! Unfortunately, it comes with a bitter price.
I also want to stress that I do not think that Europe is geologically boring. No, it is variable and interesting. Maybe for that reason I find it frustrating that there are so little good information (geological guidebooks, maps, etc.) available. Europeans should wake up and do something about it but as always this machine moves very slowly because everything needs to be translated into 20+ languages and every little decision demands a compromise between all of us. This is a paradise for all kinds of bureaucrats but miserable in many ways for Europe as a whole.
Do we have a language problem in Europe? We definetely had one in past times. But nowadays the young generation is fluent in English. It might be, that I see things in Europe in brighter colors, as I do live in the center. Maybe in your area, which is more on the outside of the EU, the perspective is different??
We gained a lot in the last tens of years. There were times Europeans were shooting at each other, nowadays we enjoy common interests.
Small structures should not be underestimated. I think one problem in the US is, that everything is big, but uniform. You do have not much choices over there. You are going to find the same shops, the same labels and maybe the same opinions in Boston and 3 days of driving away in San Diego. Out of my difficult german history, I learned, that many different choices and point of views are better, than one big one.
First, I want to say that I understand your point although I indeed have a somewhat different point of view.
This is wonderful that Europeans are not shooting at each other anymore but wasn’t all the violence mostly because of cultural differences? Can you imagine California attacking Nevada or Florida attacking Georgia? I can’t, it doesn’t make any sense. But I can easily imagine Russia attacking Estonia or Germany attacking Poland. Probably not today but who knows what the future might hold. Lots of people that remember these things are still alive. It wasn’t so long time ago. Nowadays our world is thanks to globalization more uniform, people travel much more and discover that their neighbors are humans just like any other, not monsters that need to be killed en masse. We do have very good communication channels and social media which means that the world gets smaller and more uniform (ideas spread very quickly) which leads to more homogenized world. In your interpretation it should be bad? I think it is good because no one can organize mass murders anymore without the world knowing about it instantly. Globalization and homogenization reduce the cultural differences but I am willing to pay the price to live in a safer world.
I do not think that our opinions seem to be somewhat different because we live in different parts of Europe. I know many people in Estonia who share your point of view. People are generally very protective about the cultural differences and it is especially fashionable to despise certain things that come from America. McDonalds, Hollywood movies, etc. I don’t like these things either 🙂 Europe should learn carefully from American successes and mistakes. We want to scale up big projects like space exploration, geological mapping, etc. but we do not want fast food chains everywhere and same supermarkets in every town.
So in the end we somehow came to a compromise. I’m looking forward to read what our american friends have to comment to our discussion 🙂 .
Maybe this is the wrong place for cultural-political discussions ?? It all started with “The accretionary Wedge #45” and maybe we should rather talk about younger and older stones…
Should we conclude that geology isn’t as interesting as cultural-political issues because geology rarely sparks discussions? That would be painful to admit indeed 🙂
Siim and Felix, thanks for the interesting discussion. It is so thought-provoking to read others’ comments about our country (USA). I have to agree with Siim on the value of globalization, I am all for it … and I am not a young person. I grew up during the cold war, next to a missile base, with bomb drills in school. Now globalization of markets has achieved something that war, negotiation, sanctions, etc. never could — peace. We are now trading partners with our old enemies, wow! I never would have believed it possible 40+ years ago.
Now on to geology. Not being an especially “cultural” person, I can’t speak to our relative diversity there. But here in the western US we have great geological diversity and lots of wild country and public lands where you can wander as long as you have time and energy. I just spent 11 days geo-tripping en route to the West Coast. I will do the same on the way home.
Siim, I hope you can take your dream trip one of these days!!
Hollis