We hike into cold
sandblaster wind that pits
the hides of car finishes.
Miles up a rough
sloping fan into foothills,
we pause, chunk
rocks into sample
piles, record mineral content.
From this we draw implications
about the Rockies’
stony heart.
Clouds part as we leave.
Suddenly
we are blinded
by countless suns,
each reflected from one-sided
rock mirrors polished like shields
by eastwardly
migrating grit.
Thoughts of data and warm
roadhouse vanish,
and
we skip dazzled
through
a field
of stars.
Rocky Flats, Colorado, 1963
Scratch any scientist (or anyone else, for that matter) and most will reveal a longing for bedazzlement, or re-bedazzlement. This was one of those moments you live for.
Rocky Flats is not too far from Boulder, where I was a student of physical geography. It was often in the news in subsequent years as the (frequently protested)site of a Dow Chemical plant and atomic bomb construction activities. For years since the place has been the contentious topic of hazardous waste cleanup. Weep for the Earth.
On that long ago day when the sun came out, it was near biblical. Shields blazed and blinded. Turn around and face west, up toward the crest, and it looked like a normal, vast rocky field. The stones had been polished to perfection on their west sides (from which the wind is incessant). But their east sides were normal rough surfaces–no reflection, even during a morning sunrise.
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