This is Throwback Thursday #108.  In these, we look back into the past at ESCONI specifically and Earth Science in general.  If you have any contributions, (science, pictures, stories, etc …), please send them to esconi.info@gmail.com.  Thanks!

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We are currently deep into field trip season, so to celebrate, for our throwback this week, we have a poem that appeared twice in the ESCONI newsletter. Gene Falada, a long time ESCONI member, was looking through some old newsletters back around 2004, when he came across his poem titled “Field Trips” in the October 1965 edition.  Back then, he lived in Berwyn, IL.  He decided to resubmit the poem.   It was accepted for publication and was published for the second time in the October 2004 edition.  This time the newsletter included a photo of his house in Colorado.  Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be much more about Gene… hopefully, he will see this post as his poem has now been “published” by ESCONI for a third time.

FIELD TRIPS by Gene Falada

We’ve all climbed over mine dumps
And searched the coal strip heaps.
Snaked through mountain passes
With station wagons and jeeps.

We’ve stared at endless quarry walls
And sifted through the dust,
And peeked in nooks and crannys
From ledges we shouldn’t trust.

We’ve chopped out many fossils
With chisels and with pick,
And fingered through gravel piles
To give each agate a lick.

We’ve started out on mornings
When there was rain in every cloud,
When the wind was bending trees
And the sky was like a shroud.

And yet on other days.
When the wind was fresh with Spring,
We’d venture up the back roads
With all the gear that we could bring.

We’ve been up to Bancroft
And stopped off at the iron range.
Went to the New England pegmatites
And gathered everything strange.

Down to Florida for black coral
And to Carolina’s ruby fields,
Stopped off at Llano County
To see what Texas has to yield.

Headed west into the Black Hills
For a Fairburn or two,
And concretions filled with barite
Of brilliant golden hue.

From here out to the Rockies
Are the richest treasures of all,
There’s wood and agate and crystals
We’d better heed their call.

We’ve circled through Wyoming
Arizona and New Mexico,
And broughtback loads of minerals,
Some with fluorescent glow.

We’ve searched for gold in the Sierras
And other precious stones.
Scratch through dried up lake beds
For ancient petrified bones.

Then back again toward Canada
But stop this side of the line,
And ‘midst the Oregon ponderosa
Are thundereggs and plumes so fine.

You can cross our country over
And use toll roads all the way,
But you’11 pass up all the good spots
‘Til on the dirt roads you do stray.

Load your trunk up to capacity
‘Til your springs are way down low,
But leave some for those behind you
Better yet!! Show them where to go.

We’ve met rockhounds at the campsites
And in the mountain peaks so cold,
And they all have shared a story
These friends with hearts of gold.