Amber waves of grain

[Enzo]

But no purple mountains in Michigan.

The farm fields are all looking healthy this year, even though we are a little short on rain so far. Corn fields looking to meet the "knee high by the fourth of July" criterion. Early wheat fields all golden and drying nicely, harvest soon, I'd imagine. Seen some fields of oats. beans looking good.

I am a student of geomorphology, and while Michigan lacks certain natural formations and is largely glacial, we at least have that. Some areas are ancestral lacustrine plains, other areas are moraines. Local features like eskers, kames, and kettles are fun to spot. And the occasional drumlin fields.

Anyway, those amber waves of golden wheat have a rather smooth uniformity about them, as do fields of oats or other grassy crops, which makes it easy to see the underlying shape of the land. So I can see the lay of the land as I drive by.

On the surface of a glacier, a stream of meltwater can form, a river on top of the ice. Like any river, it transports sand, gravel, and rocks, which will come to line its bed. Eventually the glacier melts away, leaving the stony stream bed as a ridge of debris on the ground, following the course of that stream. That ridge is an esker.

Kettles fascinate me. Imagine the edge of a glacier calves off a big hunk of ice - an iceberg. It sits there. As the glacier retreats, it leaves accumulations of glacial till all around it. Eventually the berg melts away too, leaving a big hole in the till where the ice was. I find it interesting that when I see one of these holes, I know that same hole has been there 10,000 years.

[Lance]

Fascinating.

[Heid the Ba]

Smart and funny, you were quite a catch Enzo.

[Arneb]

I guess you would have an easy time finding your way about Brandenburg, too. It, too, is a beautiful landscape of inland ice moraines.

[Enzo]

I am pretty aware of American glacial influence. I know Europe took its own glaciation, but I have to plead ignorance of the wheres and whens. I will have to look that up.

On a grander scale, I find the whole plate tectonics history of the globe fascinating.

[Heid the Ba]

You would like the extinct volcano in our city centre then.

[Lance]

You would like the extinct volcano in our city centre then.

Nice!

[Enzo]

Oh yeah, that is my kind of stuff.

When we used to drive from Michigan to Washington DC, I would regale the wife with geology lessons along the way.

Actually my Appalachian mountains through the eastern US are part of the same ranges that are in present day norhtern Africa and also a lot in Scotland.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Pangean_Mountains

[Heid the Ba]

I did not know that.

[Enzo]

The wheat has mostly been harvested, so now we have amber waves of stubble. The corn is looking real healthy, it is amaizeing.