This red-tailed hawk rests on a metal post in a vineyard near the Carrizo Plain National Monument, 100 miles northwest of Los Angeles. Todd McCormick, a high school friend of mine, introduced me to a wide variety of predatory birds and a few pronghorn antelope in California's largest remaining single native grassland. The San Andreas Fault cuts through it -- on one one side of the road is something that looks like a miniature Grand Canyon -- and on the other side of the road, there's no evidence of it at all. That's because all of the land west of the fault on the Pacific Plate moved to the northwest as all the land east of the fault moved southwest, and the miniature Grand Canyon was cut off from its across-the-road twin. Bizarre, yet VERY cool. This is all explained by plate tectonics, something I casually studied in one of my favorite college classes -- the fascinating science of geology.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
A Hawk and a Post and California's Fault
This red-tailed hawk rests on a metal post in a vineyard near the Carrizo Plain National Monument, 100 miles northwest of Los Angeles. Todd McCormick, a high school friend of mine, introduced me to a wide variety of predatory birds and a few pronghorn antelope in California's largest remaining single native grassland. The San Andreas Fault cuts through it -- on one one side of the road is something that looks like a miniature Grand Canyon -- and on the other side of the road, there's no evidence of it at all. That's because all of the land west of the fault on the Pacific Plate moved to the northwest as all the land east of the fault moved southwest, and the miniature Grand Canyon was cut off from its across-the-road twin. Bizarre, yet VERY cool. This is all explained by plate tectonics, something I casually studied in one of my favorite college classes -- the fascinating science of geology.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
