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The curator explained that this rare treasure was a boulder of pure native copper
with only one potential source that was on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. With the
help of maps, he showed me the location of the vast native copper deposits near the
shore of Lake Superior and then walked me through the museum’s Ice Age dioramas showing a magnificent series of reconstructions of massive ice sheets that had
moved across Canada, Michigan and northern Wisconsin thousands of years ago.
The flowing ice sheet was like a great bulldozer that sculpted the land surface to
form thousands of lakes and dumped the eroded sediments where I had been exploring. The Green Bay lobe of the Pleistocene glacial ice mass picked up my piece of
copper about 25,000 years ago when the climate was really cold and the ice sheet
was flowing southward. Then, as the climate began to warm and the ice mass melted
and retreated northward, the glacial debris (with my specimen) was deposited about
15,000 years ago in a recessional moraine left behind in the Green Bay area by the
retreating ice. Wow! So much information from just one rock! The curator became
my idol and I would spend many happy hours after school engrossed in his museum
of natural wonders. When I was old enough to expand my world beyond Green Bay,
I discovered vast glacial outwash plains, pothole lakes, tamarack bogs, black-water
streams, and the wild shores of Lake Michigan’s Green Bay. Thus, began my exploration of the water-world left behind by the ice sheets.
Beloit College: On the Coast of an Ancient Ocean
I matriculated at Beloit College, in Beloit, Wisconsin with little idea that the Ice
Ages would become one of the central themes of my life’s work. The luxury of a
country boy studying geology under the tutelage of Dr. Hank Woodard meant there
was no question of what I wanted to spend the rest of my life doing—he was awesome. The geology program was field-oriented with many trips that introduced me
to river bluffs composed of the Ordovician Saint Peter’s Sandstone. These beautiful
quartz sandstones were full of cross-bedded structures resembling features I had
explored years before in dunes and beach deposits along the shores of Green Bay
and Lake Michigan. But these sandstones were deposited 450 million years ago
along the shoreline of an ancient ocean in what is now the northern mid-continent
region. In addition, there were 15,000-year-old ice age meltwater deposits of crossbedded sands and gravels sitting on top of this ancient sequence of cross-bedded,
coastal sandstones. How could this be? So much history and mystery quickly
became my passion. These early experiences in Wisconsin culminated in a summer
job with the Wisconsin Geological Survey mapping glacial deposits.
11 A Scientist’s Personal 70-Year Discourse with Past, Present and Future Coastal…
The curator explained that this rare treasure was a boulder of pure native copper
with only one potential source that was on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. With the
help of maps, he showed me the location of the vast native copper deposits near the
shore of Lake Superior and then walked me through the museum’s Ice Age dioramas showing a magnificent series of reconstructions of massive ice sheets that had
moved across Canada, Michigan and northern Wisconsin thousands of years ago.
The flowing ice sheet was like a great bulldozer that sculpted the land surface to
form thousands of lakes and dumped the eroded sediments where I had been exploring. The Green Bay lobe of the Pleistocene glacial ice mass picked up my piece of
copper about 25,000 years ago when the climate was really cold and the ice sheet
was flowing southward. Then, as the climate began to warm and the ice mass melted
and retreated northward, the glacial debris (with my specimen) was deposited about
15,000 years ago in a recessional moraine left behind in the Green Bay area by the
retreating ice. Wow! So much information from just one rock! The curator became
my idol and I would spend many happy hours after school engrossed in his museum
of natural wonders. When I was old enough to expand my world beyond Green Bay,
I discovered vast glacial outwash plains, pothole lakes, tamarack bogs, black-water
streams, and the wild shores of Lake Michigan’s Green Bay. Thus, began my exploration of the water-world left behind by the ice sheets.
Beloit College: On the Coast of an Ancient Ocean
I matriculated at Beloit College, in Beloit, Wisconsin with little idea that the Ice
Ages would become one of the central themes of my life’s work. The luxury of a
country boy studying geology under the tutelage of Dr. Hank Woodard meant there
was no question of what I wanted to spend the rest of my life doing—he was awesome. The geology program was field-oriented with many trips that introduced me
to river bluffs composed of the Ordovician Saint Peter’s Sandstone. These beautiful
quartz sandstones were full of cross-bedded structures resembling features I had
explored years before in dunes and beach deposits along the shores of Green Bay
and Lake Michigan. But these sandstones were deposited 450 million years ago
along the shoreline of an ancient ocean in what is now the northern mid-continent
region. In addition, there were 15,000-year-old ice age meltwater deposits of crossbedded sands and gravels sitting on top of this ancient sequence of cross-bedded,
coastal sandstones. How could this be? So much history and mystery quickly
became my passion. These early experiences in Wisconsin culminated in a summer
job with the Wisconsin Geological Survey mapping glacial deposits.
11 A Scientist’s Personal 70-Year Discourse with Past, Present and Future Coastal…