A GEOLOGIST

by Louis J. Maher

What is a geologist? A geologist is very likely to be a wizened little person with steel-rimmed spectacles who seems most animated when examining a bit of rock or bone just hammered from a quarry face. That geologist is probably the happiest of folk, an individual who has combined avocation with profession, one who is at home either on a mountainside or in a laboratory, and for whom the word "retirement" has no meaning.

The earth has followed its master sun for four billion years and more. At first a planet devoid of life, it evolved to become the most efficient incubator known. During its existence the earth has changed. Mountains have been built to crumble and to rise again. The earth's materials have been cycled and recycled to form minerals of sufficient purity to be utilized by all mankind.

The present is a product of earth history. The history is contained within the rocks that lie like tattered remnants of an ancient scroll. The geologist is an historian who must know the present to restore these fragments, laboring at the surface using any technique of science that will pierce the gloom of depth and time.

Geologists are people whose experience is not limited to those few years between birth and death. Their minds are trained to function through time. Few others can stand on the Midwest farmland in July and feel the sting of a glacier's chill winds, gone now 10,000 years. Or hear the sea that rolled and roared here 500 million years ago. Or see a landscape, changeless for a lifetime, and know that change is everywhere and that the rocks are thundering down and toward the sea. A geologist is a traveler who never leaves home, a person who solves one problem to find two new ones in its place, and who would not have it otherwise.