This block, I think I am saving my parents a lot of money. Instead of heading over to Rastalls, our dining hall, for breakfast, I walk across the quad straight to my classroom. Why, you might ask, well because in the reception area of the Southwest Studies house is a table with an almost unlimited …
Category Archives: Field Study
Aztecs, Pueblos, Cliff Dwellings, Oh My!
The Southwest studies house is located a few feet away from the Tutt Library, tucked away in the northern corner of campus. Surrounded by a full garden of what I can only assume are plants native to the southwest, the small white stucco building is where I will be spending the next six weeks in my …
Our Last Week of Geology of the Pikes Peak Region
On Saturday, July 28th, five days into our 12-day field trip, with a only a week left of class, we were awoken by dance music blaring from the vans and the request of our professor to dress in an “intergalactic beach party” theme. Luckily most of us had remembered to bring what is …
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Backpacking Trip to Mt. Arkansas
Wednesday, July 25th, we hiked into a little valley at the base of Mt. Arkansas and set up camp next to a family of pikas, by a trickling brook. On one side were dramatic, soaring peaks and on the other, only a little ways away, lay Climax Mine. It was a stark contrast …
Land of Art and Glaciers
Our field trip started Monday, July 23rd. We left CC around 10:00 AM and drove to Devil’s Head Lookout where we could observe topographical evidence of the Laramide Orogeny (the mountain-building event that helped shape the front range 40-70 million years ago). Devil’s Head Lookout (besides being a beautiful hike) has an amazing view of …
Local Learning
We had the morning after our 5-day field trip off to sleep in for the first time since class started, but we were right back at it in afternoon, with a little day trip to the Manitou are to practice our new knowledge of sedimentary rock formations. We learned how different formations give …
Volcanoes, Mapping, and Gold-Mining
Monday morning we were still very full from the game of yum-yum I described in the last post. We packed up camp and had a class on extrusive igneous rock (a.k.a. VOLCANOES). We then stopped by an outcrop that had tons of different rock types: I only wrote down observations for seven but there were …
So It Begins
Class started Thursday and in the afternoon we had our first day trip – to Monument Creek, which runs next to CC, where we learned how to apply the scientific process in geology by observing and sketching a rock outcrop running across the riverbed. Discussing and analyzing as a group we found it to …
Life of Colin
There was one day in class when someone mentioned an episode of the TV show Portlandia (a parody of Portland, Oregon) where a couple in a restaurant is so concerned about where the chicken on the menu came from that they drive to a farm 30 miles south of the city to see exactly where the chicken, …
Ignorance, Knowledge, Dejection, Power, and Contextualization of Self in Outer Space. A Cycle.
We’ve just come to the end of third week, which means that we are approaching the dreaded FOURTH WEEK. This is when students survive on pizza, candy, and coffee. Lots of coffee. The end for my class in particular involves a systematic organizing of the concepts we’ve learned. Part of this is asking questions: Have …
