Um, yeah, man, got the merch, got the merch on. You can get your own planetgeocast. com. There's a merch page there. Um, you got a text from your mom. Did you get another word of the day from Joyce?

Chris Bolhuis: I did. I did. And I sent it right to you.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: what was the word?

Chris Bolhuis: Well, hold on now. You're putting me on the spot. I can't, I can't remember. [00:01:00] She has a lot of things that she says, but, oh, I don't understand this. trucker. Why is that the word of the

Dr. Jesse Reimink: You know what? That's a great question. Why the heck is trucker the word? We, Chris, you and I, we say a lot of interesting words. Every podcast.

Chris Bolhuis: Yes. And she picks out trucker

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Was it because we use trucker

Chris Bolhuis: I said it's a trucker hat, right? I think that's, yeah.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: That's

not an interesting word, Joyce. that we must have said something better than that.

And in that episode,

Chris Bolhuis: Hey, somewhere in her [00:01:30] subconscious, she's hearing us say Joyce and she's going to

Dr. Jesse Reimink: just get away,

Chris Bolhuis: Okay.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: just woke her from her slumber of listening to this episode.

Chris Bolhuis: She's we're, gradually nudging

her to, to, to, uh, be an

Dr. Jesse Reimink: think about, find a better word out of this episode. Uh, we have some pretty good words in this episode, Chris. Don't you agree? this is a fun word

episode.

Chris Bolhuis: I think so. Uh, yeah, I absolutely do. In fact, I called you one, just, uh, one of the

Dr. Jesse Reimink: One of the words. Yeah. Well, yeah, some of them you might be able to call your friends, uh, in a joking [00:02:00] manner. there's an origin story to this episode. the origin story here is I got a text from my, uh, an individual I call my uncle. He's not really my uncle, but you, you know, close family, friend, uncle, who texted me and said, I don't really get texts from my uncle. But I got a text from him and he said, question, I know from growing up in farming that boulders move up in the fields. Do they move up in lake bottoms? I thought, wow, that's a really [00:02:30] interesting question. And that would probably do a pretty good job as a podcast episode.

But then we kind of went in, we went into a deep dive on this one, Chris. And it's like, at first we're like, okay, that's a pretty short episode. That's really easy to cover. Frost thieving, pretty simple. It's actually more complicated I mean, I learned something putting together this episode for sure.

Chris Bolhuis: I agree. I have a thought though. I was wondering, since I'm an old family friend, can you maybe call me your uncle?

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Absolutely

not.

Chris Bolhuis: uncle [00:03:00] Chris?

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Absolutely

not. Uncle Chris.

Chris Bolhuis: Why not? I feel like I've

Dr. Jesse Reimink: No, you haven't already gotten uncle Chris. Thanks.

I don't need another.

I do have an uncle Chris. Yeah. My mother's side.

no, I, I'm not going to call you uncle Chris.

Chris Bolhuis: once, just

one time.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: not ever. Probably. I'll call you other names, but not uncle Chris.

Okay, So this was a fun episode. People might've heard the term frost heaving. Chris, you must cover frost heaving in GCI 1, in earth [00:03:30] science, even ninth grader science.

Chris Bolhuis: Oh, sure. Absolutely. It's such an important thing. I don't like the term frost even though, or frost wedging. I don't like that. so I don't use it actually. I use the term ice

wedging or ice

heaving. Yeah, I

just don't you know, I think that's a more appropriate term, ice wedging versus frost wedging,

Dr. Jesse Reimink: and it actually fits better with the, the sort of model, but if we frame this, and I think, people listening to this have probably heard this or seen this, if you're driving around, you drive past farms, [00:04:00] you'll usually see, at least in the northern latitudes where I live in Pennsylvania, up in Michigan, for sure, you see boulders near the fields, like a big pile of boulders somewhere, right?

And this is very common. This happens. in farmers fields, especially in farmers fields. It happens naturally, but it happens much faster in farmed fields because of the tilling process. We'll talk about that, but this is obviously a big problem. a bunch of boulders or even little stones, damage equipment, decreases like the soil surface area over a big plot.

Like this is a big problem. A big, big problem. They make [00:04:30] devices that you can use to pick up all the boulders and, then you pile them somewhere. as geologists, Chris, have you ever just rocked up to a farmer's field and been like, Hey, I see a pile of stones. Can I take some?

Chris Bolhuis: Absolutely. I have, but here's the thing. The point I want to make is that now they're selling them and for a lot of money, Jesse, it's amazing. I was, just walking past, I was taking a dog for a walk and they had this farmer had on a flatbed semi truck, all these boulders that he had taken from his farm field and placed [00:05:00] on there.

And he had price tags on

each of them. Yes, yes. And they were priced according to how pretty he thought they were. And there were rocks that were, maybe the size of two beach balls, if you will, that were like 750

a piece, these were not

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah. Well, this is the same. I mean, it's amazing to me. we were up in New Hampshire too. And it's the same thing. I mean, rocks are everywhere in New Hampshire, the rocks in Michigan, because it's just glacial kitty litter, as you describe it, you get really beautiful rocks. I mean, there are [00:05:30] some of those rocks that I've seen in farmer's fields that I would pay a lot for because they are spectacular.

Rocks and they're big and beautiful and people put them in their landscaping or all sorts of things. So, you can't just take them because there is value there. And I've noticed the same thing, you know, like maybe, maybe a while back people would just be like, yeah, sure. Get them out of my way. But now it's like, Oh no, you know, that's worth something to people.

And actually people pay a lot to do, to kind of put it in their landscaping typically.

Chris Bolhuis: Yeah. So I was talking to the farmer and, and he sells them also to

[00:06:00] landscapers.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah, absolutely. Cause who doesn't want a big, beautiful rock in your yard, in your

landscaping? Everybody

Chris Bolhuis: I know. And they, they are really pretty. I mean, he had some just stunning rocks

out there, you know, nice as you and I are a fan of

nice, but

Dr. Jesse Reimink: None of them struck your fancy.

Chris Bolhuis: don't buy rocks. I don't buy rocks.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: There we go.

Chris Bolhuis: I go

get my own. So,

Dr. Jesse Reimink: exactly. Okay. So that's the stage. we're talking about why this happens and specifically in farmer's fields. Like, why is this happening? Why do rocks continually come up?

Why do you have to keep removing the rocks year after year after [00:06:30] year? It's a good question. we're going to like tease a couple different threads here, as to why this happened. But yes, it kind of happens around frost heaving is

Chris Bolhuis: Well, you, you did a pretty good job here, Jesse. You came up with a couple of analogies. I think that, they make sense. Uh, I guess maybe, I don't know. I have a question, but why don't you go ahead? Cause it's yours. Why don't you throw your analogies out? And then I have a question about that. I'm not like, I'm not

Dr. Jesse Reimink: You

mean say the analogies, [00:07:00] not like get rid of them. Cause they're terrible, like

lose the

Chris Bolhuis: No, no. I like them actually. They they're good. But I have a question though, about

Dr. Jesse Reimink: sure. Okay. So the first, the first way we're going to talk about this, we're generally, we're going to talk about how does big stuff move to the top? Like that's, that's. A bit counterintuitive in many ways, but also we've seen this in our daily lives. There's a couple main mechanisms, three main mechanisms by which you can get big particles move up to the top.

And that's, what's happening in a farmer's field. [00:07:30] The first one isn't really applicable to the farmer's field, but it's applicable elsewhere in geology is by shaking. And so Chris, I want you to sit there, Chris Bolhuis, and imagine your big giant vat of Skittles that you have. I mean,

Chris's dream.

Chris Bolhuis: got to be a bag of Doritos,

don't you

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Okay.

Yeah, you're right. Okay. Doritos is better. All right. A big bag of

Doritos. Perfect. All right. Good. Fair, fair point. A big bag of Doritos that you bought at the grocery store, big family size, party size one bought at the grocery store. You chucked it in the [00:08:00] back of your vehicle. You brought it home. you smashed it in the cupboard and now you pull it out and Now you're about to eat it. What's at the top. And the same thing goes for cereal boxes. Like what's at the top. The first half of it is big, beautiful Doritos chips. Right.

Chris Bolhuis: yes, absolutely. the big full

chips are at the top,

Dr. Jesse Reimink: you

get a lot of salsa on that one,

Chris Bolhuis: unbroken, yes, absolutely. The ones you pick out of the bag and you look them over and you, which side do you want to like have on your tongue? The one with all the like stuff

on it,

right? [00:08:30]

Dr. Jesse Reimink: amazing insight into Chris Boles Dorito habits. I mean, my goodness, inspecting

which,

which one's the best.

Chris Bolhuis: You don't do

that?

Dr. Jesse Reimink: I haven't had a Dorito.

Chris Bolhuis: Oh my gosh.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: So yeah.

Chris Bolhuis: either. I haven't had a Dorito in hours. Yeah, I'm into chili cheese now.

The, the,

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Chili cheese. My goodness. Okay. Yeah. right. So big bag of family's party size chili cheese. Now, Chris, what happens when you get to the middle, the [00:09:00] bottom third of that

bag, even

Chris Bolhuis: then you get some broken ones, right? And then they just get smaller and smaller and smaller, which I like. Cause when you get down there, you know, then that stuff gets all in your

fingers, right? yeah.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Okay. Yeah. I

Chris Bolhuis: You know, but they get, the chips get like smaller and smaller. You get crumbs down at the very, very bottom of it.

Absolutely. Okay. And there's a reason for that. That's what you're

getting

to.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: exactly right. There's a reason for this. and the, the classic, many classic examples of this, but it's like, okay, you could do this with jar of [00:09:30] mixed nuts. You know, you get the big ones rise to the top as you shake them side to side and up and down. The big ones always kind of rise to the top when you shake it.

So during shaking, what's going on? Well, what's going on is when you shake stuff, the whole kind of package, you can imagine all the particles are kind of lifted up in the air during the shaking, which means that small gaps form between all the particles. Now, as they fall back down, the small particles more easily fill in the small gaps, and there are very few big [00:10:00] gaps that get formed.

They are there, but they're very few. So there's actually very few places for the big particles to go when the whole package of particles falls back down. So if you do this enough, up and down, up and down, up and down, up and down, the little ones, they find a nice home down lower. They settle down in because there's a lot of small holes for them, but the big ones don't find any home and kind of get filtered up to the top.

They're kind of the weird ones that get left behind, basically. So that's the process. It's a really simple process, but that's what's happening, why big stuff moves [00:10:30] up when you shake it.

Chris Bolhuis: You get the same thing with cereal boxes. Like Raisin Bran does this, you know, the raisins kind of sink to the bottom. So you got to shake it up. Cause everybody wants the

raisins with, you know, you

want to even distribution. You're

Dr. Jesse Reimink: exactly. And we think that the raisins are heavy, but the raisins are small is the reason they sink

Chris Bolhuis: yeah, that's right. That's right. That's why this is counterintuitive because the big rocks are

heavy. Right. And so you have the same thing going on but here's my question, Jesse, where does this kind of thing happen then from a tectonic or geologic[00:11:00]

setting?

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Ooh, where does shaking happen?

Chris Bolhuis: Yes. Yes.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: you know, earthquakes can do a lot of shaking. So you can have these things kind of pushed up. It does happen a little bit in like a field, in a farmer's field, for instance. And we've talked about this before. It's very similar to the sort of frost wedging.

It's the freeze thaw cycle. Yeah. Yeah. The freeze thaw can do a little bit of lifting up and then it comes back down and lifts up and come back down, lift up, come back down. So that's, it's like very slow shaking that is a force that can get big stuff to the [00:11:30] top. But that's not fast

Chris Bolhuis: freeze thaw, right? In every freeze thaw, the little stuff is going to settle, preferentially down to the bottom,

thereby leaving the big stuff on

higher

Dr. Jesse Reimink: It's exactly Chris, we talked about this with soil creep before where you know freezes and it gets pushed out away from the hill like kind of angled out from the hill and then when thaws, it falls straight down. So it goes out and down, out and down, out and down here.

We're kind of shaking that it's kind of a little bit like a shaking pattern, but that's not really the process that's happening [00:12:00] for, uh, Farmers fields because you know the freeze thaw cycles, there's a bunch of them in a typical Michigan winter But not enough to move a big boulder all the way up to the top of the soil like it's not going to move it That much during this process, so there's got to be something More important that's happening in Michigan.

Chris Bolhuis: And that leads us to ice wedging or ice heaving. Okay. This is what everybody would, come to. This is such an important mechanical weathering process, right? In the mountains and really anywhere where you get a [00:12:30] cycle of freeze thaw, freeze, thaw, freeze, thaw. Because when water freezes, it expands by 9%.

That's the heaving part. And then it melts and that water then seeps deeper down and so on and so on. And that can happen in a farmer's field, right? think about this a second. Uh, you know, so you have water that's sitting in the pore space in this glacial kitty litter till, or in the soil that's got these boulders in it.

And you get these [00:13:00] freeze thaw cycles. So the freezing is going to heave everything a little bit up. And then when it thaws, the water's going to melt and it's going to also add that melting. Not only is the water going to seep down further, but so are the small particles. They're going to

just go with it. Right.

And so

you kind of get the, the net effect is this like very slow, but monotonous kind of heaving up toward closer

toward the

surface.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: right. And that's very similar to the shaking. It's slow shaking. what we kind of talked about [00:13:30] before the question is, can this drive big boulders very high? Or if you've seen this, I mean, I had this in, the road right outside of our old house had a massive frosty it wasn't huge.

It was very high. It was very pronounced. It was, maybe a foot high, but it was like, you know, Three feet wide. So it was actually like, this was a big thing that pushed up through the asphalt and it was just a frost heave, you know, it would come up and then it would,

Chris Bolhuis: asphalt right there. You just said, Asphalt.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: asphalt, okay.

Asphalt. So, so it come, it's the [00:14:00] Michigander in me. I can't,

you

Chris Bolhuis: know,

It's the

Dr. Jesse Reimink: parts, sometimes it comes out, even though I have to fight it, try and suppress it. No, I'm kidding. Um, So, you know, one of these things, a frosty, can we produce these big pronounced, like little hills or hummocks, or get a boulder several feet up, in the course of a single winter?

The answer really is No, not that fast. And we can kind of think about this. You said, 9%, ice expands broadly 9%. So if we have soil that's 50 percent water, which is a lot, that's a. lot of water in a soil. if it [00:14:30] freezes, it expands four and a half percent. So we can't really push stuff up dramatically with this process.

And here's where it gets more complicated. And here's how, what we learned putting this together, Chris. I think this is A new process, or a more detailed process,

Chris Bolhuis: it's a, absolutely. It's a more detailed

version

Dr. Jesse Reimink: yeah, of frost heaving, which is something I will bring to to class now. Y'know this is a thing that I'm gonna bring to class, I'm gonna talk about, cause we've seen it in Pennsylvania, we see it all over the place.

is what's called [00:15:00] ice lensing. And it's a similar process, but different. And the way to think about this is you have to think about what gets cold. Where does the cold come from, right? It's coming from the air. So the surface gets cold, the surface freezes, and then that frozen soil freezes downward as it cools down.

So that deep down it's hotter, it's warmer. And so there's liquid water down below. This freezing front as the freezing front moves down and what you can get is you can actually get [00:15:30] a capillary action where the freezing front attracts more water up. And if that water can percolate through the soil fast enough upwards, it's, warm.

It'll hit the freezing face and it can actually form a layer of ice. And then these things grow outwards much like kind of columnar jointing things, right? They kind of grow perpendicular to the thermal gradient. And so can grow these kind of ice wedges in a layer and that has a lot of power.

If that continues to grow, [00:16:00] that can just push a big wedge underneath of the material. And this is actually how we get boulders moving up because this happens more under larger particles. It's more likely to happen under large particles than under small particles. So if you have a boulder with a bunch of sand around it, you can get a nice lens that forms under that boulder as that ice lens grows, it pushes the boulder.

it doesn't have anywhere else to go, but up.

Chris Bolhuis: It's like a nuanced version of ice wedging. It's just more, a little more complicated. and again, I want to just [00:16:30] make sure, because maybe a lot of people are familiar with this, but maybe. Some aren't. Capillary action is the way that water, because water's a polar molecule, it's, water's attracted to water.

It behaves like it has this electrical nature to it where opposites attract. So it's kind of like if you take The edge of a Kleenex and you dip the corner of a Kleenex into a glass of water, just a corner of it, water will rise up through the Kleenex

and, and that it's

[00:17:00] rising up through those.

Yeah. It's rising up through those. Little hollow fibers of the Kleenex. They're little tiny hollow fibers, right? And they rise up through there. What we call capillary

action,

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Exactly. That's a, I really liked that analogy. That's a very good one. And so, you know, what we're going to picture here is that we have a stack of Kleenexes layered on top of each other, and we put a little water on the bottom one and it can go all the way up through these layers of Kleenexes. if the top is frozen, The water will go hit that [00:17:30] freezing front, and it'll freeze, and we could actually produce an ice wedge in between layers of the Kleenex, between the stacks of the Kleenex,

Chris Bolhuis: Which

gives you a much more efficient

lifting

Dr. Jesse Reimink: And this can be kind of a runaway effect. If you start one, start in Iceland somewhere, it's going to start attracting water, not just from right below it, but from the sides, and as it kind of grows into this, this wedge shape, it kind of grows and pulls in from the side, so it gets kind of more localized.

And that's a good way to do this. And so here's [00:18:00] one of the fun terms, Chris, that is applied to these is called frost jacking. and this is where you, you are pushing something, a single object up dramatically mean, these things can be, we've engineered ways around this, but sort of like concrete pilings in a soil layer that is very permeable, could get pushed up two feet per year or

something like that.

Chris Bolhuis: Yeah. And

Dr. Jesse Reimink: amount of, of frost jacking.

Chris Bolhuis: I think the, you know, the main way you get the, you can get the same thing with a deck. your corner posts and things like this, the main way to avoid it [00:18:30] is to get below the

frost line. get deeper than the deepest place where these ice wedges or ice lenses

can form.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: I mean, then, then you can't, the, the frost jacking

can't get underneath of

your concrete piling basically. Right. Yeah.

Chris Bolhuis: Yeah, so if you dig shallow posts for a deck and you live in an area like I do, like, let's say you only go down a foot. the, so the bottom of your posts, it's a below the surface. Well, if the frost line goes down below that, then you [00:19:00] can absolutely, you probably will actually get this mechanism.

That's going to then throw your deck out

of kilter.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: man. Yeah. you're just doing a deck addition. Hopefully you went deep and hopefully you got your

Chris Bolhuis: No idea.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: and dug deep enough.

Chris Bolhuis: I know what I'm doing.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Chris's deck building services,

also give them a

Chris Bolhuis: I'm, I am a handy guy.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Um, so, you know, you can imagine where in cold, very cold climates, places where there's permafrost in places like Michigan or Pennsylvania, where you do get, you know, relatively hard [00:19:30] winters.

this could be a big problem, especially out in the Dakotas, for instance, where it can freeze down five, six feet. Deep in the wintertime, sometimes, you got to go deep. There's a, there's an additional layer of engineering that you need to do to kind of drive this. So, or to

prevent

this.

Chris Bolhuis: That's right. So keep that in mind, these ice lenses that can form like stacking the Kleenexes up on top and you, then you get wedges in between that really is more efficient lifting of that expansion, but combine that with tilling, you're constantly tilling up [00:20:00] this upper surface, which allows water to percolate and drain and leach through much easier.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: great point, Chris. Like, we have to think about why farmer's fields why are there so many boulders coming up in farmer's fields, but not in, you know, the grassland right next door or not on the, in the forest right next door, right? And think about what we've talked

about.

First, There's a couple things, right? And you talked about one of them. You're constantly tilling up the soil. Okay, what does that do? It makes more room for water. Fundamentally, [00:20:30] we're getting

more water down deeper,

porous.

So there's more water. So therefore, this frost wedging or this, frost jacking process, these lenses can get bigger because there's just a larger supply of water readily available.

Now, the other thing is that we have to

Chris Bolhuis: Can I hold on? Can I just, I want just to like double click on that a second, because the reason is because when you turn that soil up by tilling it, you get mostly percolation, whereas on a grassland or in my backyard and your [00:21:00] backyard, you get a lot of runoff. the water's going somewhere else instead of down to feed these kinds of ice lenses in the

wintertime.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah. Totally. So the other point that's relevant here is, we have to consider what types of soil are good for really percolating water or, uh, this capillary action that you talked about. And so. think about soils that might be very good at driving this capillary action. They're going to be porous, they're going to be permeable, so there's going to be a lot of [00:21:30] holes and they're going to be all interconnected.

Okay, good. But conglomerate is a very porous, permeable soil, but it's not great at this, at this capillary action because the holes are big. So we want fine particles, that have a lot of holes in the soil and also those holes are interconnected. So loamy soil, really fine sandy soil.

These are the ones that are really good for farming and they get tilled a lot and they're very good at having this capillary action happen. So the same [00:22:00] soils that are good for farming like loamy, silty, fine sand. Those are also excellent at transmitting water between them and driving this frost jacking process.

Chris Bolhuis: That's right. so there's one final thing before we begin wrapping this up, Jesse, which is this. Tilled up soil, I don't want to mean to contradict myself by saying that most of the water percolates down in, but you still are getting some runoff. And because of the looseness of the soil, now you, you churned it up.

you're helping along [00:22:30] the erosion process. You're removing some of that loose, easily removed stuff at the surface, which is, kind of like by default, bringing those big rocks

closer to the

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah, yeah, exactly. So you could expose by erosion, you can just expose the big rocks because they're not going to get carried away in the rainwater. And this would happen, you gotta, you gotta think like, okay. This frost wedging process, it's going to happen in the temperate climates, that you live in in Michigan and where I live in a very active process in Pennsylvania, Michigan, [00:23:00] Great Plains, the Northern Great Plains, especially, but it's not going to happen much unless you have cold climates, cold weather.

So how do you get boulders exposed in, uh, fields in southern climates. this sort of soil expansion is one way, but especially on a slope, if you rinse away the soil around the boulder, you can get these things exposed too. So, you know, if you're, if you're tilling it up frequently, you're always bringing new soil to the surface and it can get washed away.

Chris Bolhuis: But there was a tag on question, which is, does this happen beneath [00:23:30] water or at the, in bottoms of lakes or

oceans? Right. That

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yep. That was

the follow on.

question. And, we can kind of work through this towards an answer, right? Like at the bottom of a very, very deep lake that doesn't freeze all the way through. It's not going to happen, Because we're not doing this frost, cycling. We don't have a lot of ice.

There's no ice down there. It's all water all the time. And also those lakes, they're depositing stuff. There's deposition happening. And so, Even in these beautiful clear lakes in Michigan, you're going to get biological material deposited, et cetera. [00:24:00] It can happen, however, in shallower areas that freeze. If you have a big flat area that's shallow and it freezes all the way down to the bottom, you could potentially drive this process depending upon how deep the frost layer goes in the soil underneath of the lake bottom.

so yes, it could happen in shallow water. If you're freezing all the way to the bottom, but I mean, in Michigan, shallows like a couple feet, you know, we're not

Chris Bolhuis: And it, it's a lot less likely because you, you have to get below [00:24:30] the frozen layer of the water and then continue down in, so you're, you're not going to get as deep

into the soil.

Therefore you're not going to, as likely to heave up these, these massive rocks

that are

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Exactly. Right. So how would you get, rocks exposed in areas like that? Well, wave action is a great one. Running water, if it's in a river, obviously is going to Sweep away the sand size stuff and expose the boulders, but wave action can do this too. And we noticed this in Michigan, Chris, [00:25:00] when we go looking for rocks on the shores of Lake Michigan, any big storm, and especially over the winter, you get a lot of turnover.

So big storms will do a lot of turnover and ice, ice coming, especially, uh, on the, that, that West coast of Michigan, we have the wind blowing across and ice piling up and doing a lot of erosion maybe not erosion is not the right word, but moving the soil around the beach sand around exposing rocks, moving them around.

So there's a lot of stuff that happens on the [00:25:30] beaches, in ways to expose rocks every season, basically.

Chris Bolhuis: Different process.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Totally different process.

Yeah. Then what we've, we've been talking about, but I mean, uh, Chris, as geologists, aren't we just always interested in getting rocks to the surface? Like this seems like a good problem, you know, but I'm not a farmer who's dinging up my equipment on boulders, but, personally, I'm happy that the boulders come to the surface because we get to go look at them and they're very cool.

Chris Bolhuis: I am too. I'm just disappointed that they discovered that they're actually worthy of being

sold. You know. like I want the [00:26:00] days 15 years ago, 20 years ago, where they, they didn't care. They're just like, ah,

take my

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah. get

them

out

here. Get them out of

my way. Yeah, I know. it's true. I haven't asked anybody to do that in a while. Maybe I should, attempt it a little bit. the problem is, is, you know, there's a lot of these areas that, especially around here in Eastern Pennsylvania, there's some very cool outcrops that are very localized.

I mean, we were looking out in, um, Where were we? right in Maryland, across the Pennsylvania border, there's this beautiful outcrop of a basalt that has been chock [00:26:30] full of epidotes. So it's this bright pistachio green with quartz veins running through it. It's a spectacular rock, but exposed in a road cut, like a highway road cut that's really busy and right next to the road.

So it's like pretty sketchy to You know, get up on the cliff and collect anything because there's cars whizzing past and, and, but you go right over the hill and there's a bunch of people who have this stuff laying around in their yard because they're sitting on this outcrop, but it's a really like localized outcrop.

And we were over, I was over there with a buddy. Uh, this [00:27:00] was maybe six months ago we were going to go knocking on doors, but it was getting dark. And we're like, don't want to be the people knocking on doors right when it's getting dark. that's a way to turn people off.

Um, you want to go there on like a Saturday morning, you know,

and, and knock on some doors. But

that's the last time I

considered it.

Chris Bolhuis: you know, I think you need to do a midnight run to the outcrop when it's

not as busy

Dr. Jesse Reimink: true. Bring some headlamps and yeah, that's a

good point.

Chris Bolhuis: just need to figure this

situation out,

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah, I know. I'm just being, I'm just being a rookie over here. Like what's going

on. Well, when you come to Pennsylvania, we'll do it. We'll maybe we'll check it [00:27:30] out.

Chris Bolhuis: Deal. Is it a vesicular basalt? Is that where the

epidote

Dr. Jesse Reimink: No, no, it's like pervasive. It's it's like, it's kind of overprinted the entire, almost entire basalt. It's really spectacular.

And some of its veins,

Chris Bolhuis: or is it

just,

Dr. Jesse Reimink: no, it's just, it's like a big, smearing and some of it's like big veins too, but it's not crystals of epidode. It's just like that pistachio green.

The whole rock is that, and there's just quartz veins running through it that are smoky or white quartz running through

it. It's very pretty, but no crystals to

speak of. So, All [00:28:00] right. Well, Chris, a wrap, right?

Yeah,

Chris Bolhuis: wrap.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: if Joyce doesn't pick frost jacking as the word of the day, I'm gonna be a little upset.

I'll be honest with you.

Chris Bolhuis: I don't know. There were a couple other ones.

yeah, there there are options for her. I mean, she'll, you know, hopefully she picks something other than till or, you know, something like that,

trucker.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: It's gonna be Doritos. That's gonna be the word of

Chris Bolhuis: Ah, she knows I love

Doritos.

I like, she knows that. But when I was a kid, she bought me the knockoff brand

and there's no knockoff [00:28:30] of Doritos, you know? That is. It's the

real

thing.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: why she's going to think, Oh, Doritos. Oh, Chris. Oh, I love my son. Oh, I wish I'd given him real

Doritos when he was growing up. And then that's going to be the word of the day.

Chris Bolhuis: So if any of our listeners are Dorito executives, I will be glad to be the face of

Doritos

for

you,

Dr. Jesse Reimink: accept unlimited supply of Doritos at his house for mentioning Doritos on

the podcast. Yeah.

Chris is just in Skittles too. If anybody out there works for the Skittles company or whoever makes the

Skittles, let them

[00:29:00] know. Chris is accepting donations at his house of Skittles and Doritos.

Chris Bolhuis: I

Dr. Jesse Reimink: I

can just see you munching away on Doritos in your tractor. You probably got like a little homemade, chip bag that you made on your tractor just for the

Doritos, don't you?

Chris Bolhuis: That and a beer

Dr. Jesse Reimink: do. So I'm good to go.

a chapstick, holder somewhere on that

thing too, probably. Gotta get on that. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. All right. Hey, that's a wrap. Thanks for listening. There's a couple of ways to support us. First of all, we got merch, go to our website, plantgeocast. com and there's a merch button there. You [00:29:30] can buy right now, we've got hats and shirts and some other stuff coming online pretty soon here.

You can also go to our Camp Geo mobile app, where we have visual podcast series that are available for purchase there. And there's a lot of free content as well with all the images. Geology is such a visual science, you gotta use the images. they really add to the value.

So if you wanna learn, go there. Camp Geo App first. Link your show notes. Send us an email, planet Geo cast@gmail.com and follow us on all the social medias at Planet Geo Cast

Chris Bolhuis: Cheers.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: patient. [00:30:00]

Jesse Reimink

Moving Boulders - The Geology of Fieldstones

Who Gets Credit?

Inspirational Geology - The Yale Peabody Museum

PlanetGeo Podcast