The Chronicles of the Angry Geologist

Well, I'm back from Indiana! It was kind of a whirlwind trip- I left Monday, worked my not inconsiderable ass off Tuesday and Wednesday, and flew back Wednesday night. We've got about a year left on the project if nothing goes wrong, so I'll probably be going back out there again. Not the least because of the waders.

To make a long and convoluted story short, we had to do stream gauging out there, and they didn't have a pair of waders that would fit me. Therefore, I had to run out and buy a pair before I left, something I never, ever saw myself doing in my entire life, kind of right up there with inventing my own language. Since I cost them $119.45 on top of everything else, I will probably be heading out there to do the gauging for the duration- not a bad thing.

The site is part of the former Jefferson Proving Ground, a giant swath of land in Southern Indiana that the military bought or eminent-domained, and bombed the shit out of from 1940 to 1995. This is a lot of firepower, and not everything went boom the first time. It's rumored to contain the greatest concentration of unexploded ordinance in the Northern 48 States. We're looking at ways that certain elements from certain weapons could migrate off site (I won't say too much here, but if you go to the JPG website, you could probably figure it out).

Now, the good news is that they couldn't have picked a much better spot in terms of groundwater protection- the limestone contains dissolution fractures to a certain depth, then becomes as crystalline as it gets. The upshot of this is that we don't have to worry about contaminants getting into the deep groundwater system and heading off to Parts Unknown. Pretty much the only way it can get offsite is through the surface water, and that's what we're working on now.

The Army gave/sold the land to the Fish and Wildlife Service, and all but a little bit up North that's still in use by the Indiana National Guard and the bit South of the firing line that's a park, housing, and industrial complex, is now the Big Oaks National Wildlife Refuge. BONWR is about 50,000 acres, so this is nothing to sneeze at. And it is absolutely gorgeous. They do controlled burns to keep the grasslands open, so when I was there the wildflowers were just (ha) exploding. The deer, racoons, and turkeys are isolated enough that they don't yet think that humans= guns or food. They'll run, but not without staring at you for quite a bit wondering what the heck you are. Box turtles, salamanders, snakes and toads run the gravel roads without any fear. The bugs are just as unbelievable*, and I've never seen so many Things in streams, running from freshwater molluscs the size of quahogs, to flatworms, to things with entirely too many legs.

It's pretty much as close to heaven as I can imagine... and then you see the bombs. In the area we were in, which wasn't cleared for public use, they were everywhere. They ranged in size from small ones that would fit in a pint glass to giants longer than your arm and thicker than your leg. That's why they made it a refuge- it would cost billions upon billions of dollars to dispose of the UXO on site, so they just leave it go. There's something to be said about how quickly nature heals itself, but I think the more depressing thought is more true: the only way we can let something be like this, without plastic bottles in the streams, without garbage bags in the trees, without McMansions or McDonalds, is to bomb the shit out of it so that no one can use it for anything else. Perhaps we can look forward to some new Middle East wildlife refuges in the future.

Still, if you're ever stuck in Southern Indiana, this place is worth a trip. Stop in at the Fish and Wildlife office, and go birding, hunting, fishing, amateur archeology-ing, take lots of pictures, and be safe. If I get the chance to revisit, you know I'm going to.

*If you go hiking there, I recommend having a trusted partner check you for ticks afterward. I pulled two lone star ticks off of my person after I got home, and at least one was embedded. Incidentally, I have memorized the symptoms of Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever.