Half expecting a pheonix

Yes, because there are so many ashes here that you could have a lot of those mythical birds just pop up unexpectedly at anytime. And actually, they've found three species of bird represented at Ashfall. But I am finally drawing near the bottom of the layer of ash in my square. You may notice a dark, sandy color in this picture. That is because it is, well... the sand layer. The bottom of the watering hole. Also known, by the way, as the end of digging in this particular spot. And here at the bottom, the ash is slightly coarser (coarser ash gets deposited first because it can't be held up in the air or water for as long of a time. It is less likely for there to be fossils here because coarser ash is less likely to get into an animals lungs.) I haven't completely given up hope for there being fossils in this bit... after all, the birds are basically at the very bottom of the ash, and we have yet to find one in the Rhino Barn that isn't covered by other animals. It just isn't as likely that I'll find something as it was when I was near the top.

Mike took the opportunity to teach me how to tell ash from another shiny mineral, mica. Mica, when held up to the sun, is uniformly shiny at only one angle because the shards are flat. However, ash is rounded pieces of glass, meaning that at most angles you hold it, it will shine in the sun. 

After work today, we went on a little geology field trip, where I got the chance to use my new trick. There is a park nearby called Grove Lake, which has a deposit of ash from the same hot spot (but a different caldera) that is 6.6 million years old. It is a thicker layer and coarser ash, as the hot spot at this point was closer. There are no fossils here, despite the ash bed being thicker than ours at Ashfall, supposedly because the ash was too coarse to get into any animals lungs. Nebraska also has a deposit of ash from an even more recent and even closer one of the volcanoes that is 1.2 million years old and used to be mined for Old Dutch Cleanser. 

Ash became an interest commercially when it was first described by Barbour, a student of O.C. Marsh's who was a geologist in Nebraska and, proud of his state and in charge of finding some mineral that would be useful economically, claimed that the ash he found here was just as pure if not better than that anywhere else and that it could be used in animal feed among other things. He wanted to see the price of the ash go higher to compete with the prices of foreign companies that sold theirs as "better." He really wanted this deposit at Grove lake to be mined for the dish cleaner, but the train company opted to build closer to the other potential quarry rather than extend their rail line three miles. Barbour's lobbying for this fell through, and thus a different town was built up around a natural resource. Probably a good thing; the park is a favorite destination for youngsters to come and climb around in the ash pile, and frankly its so compact and fine that it doesn't really make that big of a mess. Their parents love it.

And then we decided that you can't talk geology without dinner. Which called for hot dogs. Which called for a fire back at Mike's place. Which, of course, called for s'mores.