Walking in a Rocky Wonderland

In last week’s post, I discussed how a few places we have visited have created programs designed to teach certain audiences about their subject, be that the history of jute or the development of bridges. This week my focus is still on education, but in a more general sense: how can learning spaces outside the classroom affect what and how we learn?

Consider my expedition to Siccar Point, arguably the most significant geological outcrop in the world. It was here, in 1788, where James Hutton found proof of his theories of the geologic unconformity (a gap in the geologic record) and his ideas about deep time. In the classroom, thousands of miles away in West Lafayette, I learned the facts about Siccar Point in the context of the history of geology, with a few interesting pictures to illustrate the point. I can remember thinking “that’s a nifty outcrop,” my professor (perhaps jokingly, perhaps not- it was sometimes hard to tell) say that geologists have a religious experience when they visit this site, and not much else. When the opportunity arose to actually visit this mecca of geology, I knew that it was important, but had almost no idea what I would actually learn from the experience.

Gaining access to the point was both more and less difficult than I expected. More, because I had misinterpreted the online directions I had obtained and ended up walking eight miles instead of one and a half, and less because there was a significant number of path markers and “you are here” type maps along the way. The Coastal Path walk itself was incredibly beautiful, with views from the cliff tops over the North Sea for most of the journey.

The map at the head of the Coastal Path. Photo by author.

The cliffs on part of the Coastal Path. Photo by author.

t the trailhead marking the location of Siccar Point, there was an interpretive sign explaining just why in the world this location is important, and why you should visit. It summarized Hutton’s findings, and described how those findings went on to affect the development of geology and of science in general. While this information wasn’t new to me, I felt that just by reading it in this setting, less than a kilometer from the point itself, made it more significant.

The first interpretive sign. Photo by author.

After a tense ten minute walk through a pasture in which I was forced to dodge innumerable piles of cow leavings, I found a second sign, this one specifically discussing the geology of Siccar Point. It described the order in which the geologic events occurred and how we know those events occurred. Again, I had already been exposed to this information in class, but now that I was just a few hundred feet from this historic site, it suddenly had more weight. What I was about to see was history, and it was personal. This was one of the reasons I applied for this study abroad in the first place, and the fact that I was actually there, at that moment, made the information I already knew become personal as well.

The second interpretive sign. Photo by author.

And then, finally, I climbed down the last hill and got my first view of Siccar Point. There is nothing quite like being somewhere you have seen in pictures, read about in textbooks, known that, although you might want to get there sometime during your life, it is probably out of your reach, and then suddenly you actually do get there, and realize that the pictures don’t do the place any justice and the textbook descriptions suddenly seem so clinical and meaningless. One of Hutton’s traveling companions remarked that “the mind seemed to grow giddy by looking so far back into the abyss of time” as he described the scene at the point. When I first heard this, I thought that while it probably did feel significant, to say that it caused giddiness was probably an exaggeration. I was wrong. I spun around, trying to take it all in at once. I hopped from rock to rock, knowing that this was exactly where Hutton had been and what he had seen, and even though that was 226 years in the past, it was less than a moment compared to the true age of this place. I touched the unconformity, just because I wanted to see what 55 million years felt like. And I took my one (and only) selfie for this six week trip with Siccar Point in the background. I did, in fact, become giddy.

Siccar Point from above. Photo by author.

Panorama of the area. Photo by author.

Some of the folding is visible here, as well as the more horizontal sandstone layers. Photo by author.

Hutton's Unconformity (55My). Photo by author.

Beds folded nearly vertical. Photo by author.

The view looking back towards land. photo by author.

The all-important selfie! Photo by devilishly hansom author.

Actually being there, seeing this with my own eyes and reading the signs along the way, allowed me to understand the idea of deep time in a way that I never had before. It was an idea, an abstract concept that I understood but didn’t really get. I get it now. Thinking about deep time still makes me dizzy, but now I understand it not as a sense of confusion, but one of vertigo as I stand at the top of a cliff with no base, looking down into a past so distant as to be unknowable except for the evidence that survived hundreds of millions of years so that I could stand there on the shore of the North Sea in Scotland with my mouth open, speechless.

Scotland Rocks!

My first glimpse of Scotland was from several thousand feet up, out the window of a Boing 757. After seventeen hours of traveling, I was in a fugue state, barely registering what was happening around me, and was staring more or less blindly out the window at a hypnotic cloudscape that extended out to the horizon. Then, suddenly, a dark and jagged shape rolled out from below the wing and into my field of view. My mind automatically jumped into assessment mode: “Mountains. Sharp ridges and U-shaped valleys. Formed by glaciers.”

My first view of Scotland, a mountain peak protruding above the low clouds. The sharp peaks are indicative of glacial activity, as is the U-shaped valley just visible through the clouds. Photo by author

And then my brain actually kicked in. This wasn't just a mountain. This was a mountain in Scotland, my first real view of the land I would be living in for six weeks. This mountain was not particularly impressive in a purely physical sense—it was short, mostly buried in clouds, and covered in trees—but from a personal standpoint, I was instantly enamored by what I could see. This wasn't just some mountain, of interest only to geologists and climbers. This was an historical artifact in its own right. People were traipsing over that mountain literally thousands of years before I was born. I was awed, inspired, and more than a little intimidated by the enormity of that fact.

In Edinburgh, I continued to think about the geology I observed in a more historical context. The Edinburgh Castle, for instance, is situated atop an intimidating basalt stock that looms above the rest of the city. The jagged, lichen-covered faces of this outcrop are shear black cliffs more than a hundred feet high, a virtually unassailable position to any pre-industrial army. This incredibly defensible position played a significant role in the capitol moving from Perth to Edinburgh, as it offered increased security. So, while some might pass through Edinburgh and only see a castle on a rock, I now see an unassailable fortress with a foundation of basalt formed by an igneous intrusion millions of years ago. Geology and history have become one in Edinburgh. 

The top of Edinburgh Castle, situated atop an outcrop of basalt, which in turn is a part of the larger butte that looms over the city. Photo by author

The view from Edinburgh Castle is truly impressive. It is easy to imagine a king taking a morning stroll on the castle grounds to survey his domain. Photo by author

Quite possibly one of the most significant rocks in history, the Stone of Scone resides in the Edinburgh Castle, alongside the Scottish crown jewels. From a purely scientific standpoint, it is not an impressive specimen. It is a block of coarse-grained quartz sandstone about two feet on a side, with an iron loop hammered into the ends for ease of transport. Aside from some interesting but ordinary cross-bedding, there is nothing, geologically speaking, that sets it apart from any other lump of sandstone from the area. But this is the Stone of Destiny. Monarchs have been coronated over this simple rock for centuries. The magnitude of cultural significance tied to the Stone of Scone far outweighs its physical weight of 336 pounds.

I left home thinking about the geology I might see as just that: geology. Now, just six days into this adventure, I realize that there is much more to just the physical nature of a mountain, an igneous stock, a block of sandstone. These are historical objects, cultural symbols that extend into the distant past, making it less distant by their permanence.