Garret Romaine - The Practical Geologist: How to Apply Primitive Skills for Everyday Use

To my nieces Sydney and Taylora pair of practical super Moms

An imprint of Globe Pequot, the trade division of

The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

4501 Forbes Blvd., Ste. 200

Lanham, MD 20706

www.rowman.com

Falcon and FalconGuides are registered trademarks and Make Adventure Your Story is a trademark of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

Distributed by NATIONAL BOOK NETWORK

Copyright 2022 Garret Romaine

All photos by Garret Romaine unless otherwise noted

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available

ISBN 978-1-4930-6213-3 (paper: alk. paper)

ISBN 978-1-4930-6214-0 (electronic)

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

The author and The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc., assume no liability for accidents happening to, or injuries sustained by, readers who engage in the activities described in this book.

This guide is aimed at everyone who is interested in learning enough about geology, topography, soil science, and rocks and minerals to put that knowledge to use. Well explore the many ways to turn common materials into resources in order to make improvements, survive the elements, or otherwise gain an edge. Well study the ancients and learn how they adapted and overcame the world around them to not just survive but thrive.

A trip outdoors is like exploring natures hardware store; the better you understand enough geology to be dangerous, the faster you can put that knowledge to work. For survivalists, campers, hikers, or primitive skills aficionados, geology can mean the difference between life and death. So well start with the ways geology can augment survival skills in the search for water, shelter, and food. Then well move on to the concept of homesteading and show how geology skills can make all the difference.

In this book, well assume that youre an interested newcomer to the language of geology and try to explain things as we go along. It may seem a bit bewildering at first, because geology borrows from chemistry, physics, math, chemistry, biology, and more to create its own language. Fortunately, many of the best metaphors come from cooking. In a sense, the Earth is like a big kitchen, constantly mixing and remixing ingredients, skimming some off, concentrating others, and recycling everything in a constant churn. Well end up using a lot of cooking metaphors and examples, trying to make the science as practical as possible.

Our ancestors faced enormous hurdles in getting enough to eat and overcoming the challenges of storing, preparing, hunting, and gathering food. Still, they had several advantages over their competitors: opposable thumbs to fashion tools; a powerful, curious brain to puzzle out complex situations; and a sense of community with powerful bonds forging strong personal relationships. In many ways, survivalists retrace those steps when they hone their skills. If you can learn to tap into the connection our ancestors had with the land around them, youll be comfortable searching out the best rocks for fashioning into tools and weapons. Youll learn the best materials for building shelters, and youll draw on their knowledge for insights into what rocks will come in handy as you make improvements. If you can appreciate the skills required to survive advancing glaciers, continual drought cycles, daunting floods, and other geo-catastrophes, you can understand how early humans were the first practical geologists, and well worth studying.

There are many procedures and recipes sprinkled throughout this book, but there is no substitute for your own trial and error. Your mileage may vary on just about anything related to geologyyour limestone may not be pure enough to convert to slaked lime, or your soil may have too much sand to turn into cob for housing. Your sand may be too round, or your water too full of calcium. The science is sound, but the ingredients you have at hand may require adjustments to the standard procedures, ratios, and recipes. Fortunately, there are even more resources available if you want to dive deep into a certain activity. There are countless YouTube videos, how-to books, detailed guides, academic studies, and more to use for additional research. This guide is meant to give you ideas, show you whats possible, and inform you about how the ancients solved similar problems. Have fun, be patient, and keep at ityou never know when these skills may be absolutely vital once again.

Many thanks to the staff at the Rice Museum of Rocks and Minerals in Hillsboro, Oregon, with special shout-outs to executive director Aurore Giguet, curator Angela Piller, office manager Lena Toney, and store manager Dylan Roost. They opened up the collection for photographs, shared insights on basic geology, and made life easier during the inevitable deadline crunch.

Let me also express additional gratitude to mineralogist Julian Gray, who provided assistance with explanations and patience with the manuscript. Field workers Nick Hensen and Frank Higgins helped with several trips into the wilds to track down survival tips, and spent a couple nights inside a pair of Nevada mine adits to test out assumptions. Survivalist Jake Riley provided a few tips and hacks, as did Dirk Williams, on multiple camping expeditions.

And finally, thanks to my wife, Cindy, for her patience through yet another project schedule, and her willingness to ignore a workbench full of specimens, long-running experiments, multiple open books on the floor, and one more trip to the store. Especially, thanks for her grudging acceptance of the need to upgrade the trusty old Jeep to the Rubicon class for the ultimate bug-out vehicle.

Good field test for agateshine a flashlight under it. Jasper, chalcedony, quartzite, and plain quartz dont blaze like this pleasing chunk.

Our ancient ancestors were rockhounds. They read the rocks around them and created tools, art supplies, weapons, fireplaces and hearths, housing, and homesteads. While practical geology was only one facet of their encyclopedic knowledge of the world around them, it was an important ingredient. They combined geology, chemistry, biology, botany, physics, and more to first survive, and then thrive.

Thats the model this book follows, starting with survival tips based on geology, then focusing on how civilizations rose from the Stone Age to where we are today. Theres a basic primer on geology to give you enough information to get started, but some of you may just skim that section, and thats fine.