A Wilder Time Read online

  The longer I stood there, the more intense was the conflict between the experience of the place and what I had remembered of Greenland. As before, a deep sense of serenity permeated everything that was present—there was a unity of actions and substances, an uninterrupted unfolding that shaped and colored everything. And yet, something felt askew.

  Then a lone bumblebee buzzed past my ear, soared off into the valley, and disappeared, and it became clear what that disjointed experience meant. Despite the dynamism of that world, it was utterly and deeply still. I suddenly realized that it was the silence of the place that I had forgotten.

  The gentlest breeze brushed my face, but there was nothing to hear. The distant rivers flowed, their shimmering surfaces vaguely vibrating with motion, but no sound emanated from them. I turned in every direction, listening for anything, but there was nothing.

  What could be heard was the nature of the primordial world. Four billion years ago, on the barren surface of Earth’s first land, with the exception of a rare roaring gale or exploding volcano, there would have been no sound. Similarly, in the ocean or the air, silence would have persisted, except where seas lapped onto continental margins and waves washed over eroding sands. In fact, for most of Earth’s history, silence ruled.

  With the emergence of animals more than 600 million years ago, that silent condition was slowly modified. Fishes clicked, bees hummed, dinosaurs roared and bellowed, birds chirped, horses whinnied, and, eventually, humans spoke and sang. The buzz on the surface that life brought to the world grew in complexity and volume, culminating in the constant roar of our cities.

  A shout or a scream where I stood would have been swallowed in the expanse of wildness. That world was ancient beyond measure, holding on to the nearly vanished character of what once was, existing as a remnant enclave, speaking in its silence the song of our origins. What was present in that vast, unimaginable panorama was an invitation to embrace anything and everything.

  I stayed at the promontory for as long as I could, struggling to find a way to silence my mind. But my hands and feet were aching from the cold, and the exhaustion of the past day was beginning to take hold. Wrapped in the cloak of wilderness, I walked back to camp, trying to do nothing but listen.

  THE NEXT MORNING, BEFORE I WALKED to the cook tent, I went down to the fjord to hear the sound of water lapping on the shore, seeking a connection to the world we had left behind. There was no wind; the surface of the water glistened like glass. The slight swell that slowly undulated that finger of sea did not stir a single grain of sand. What sound existed came from me.

  I walked to the kitchen tent and joined Kai and John for coffee and our first breakfast for that field season. We explored the food crates, looking for appealing items, each grabbing his own unique mix of canned and smoked fishes, muesli, oats, powdered milk, bread, sugar, and jam. As we ate and planned the day, I kept to myself the walk I had taken. It wasn’t the time to let them know I liked to wander off alone.

  Mirage

  WE WERE THERE TO OBSERVE, and to collect samples of anything that would provide evidence of the terrain’s history—stretched crystals, folded and distorted rock layers, and any other indicators of tectonic movements. Noting on a map the places where each observation was made and where the samples were collected would allow us to piece together a tentative story while in the field. The samples we collected would be shipped back to our laboratories, where we could later assemble other facets of the history—how hot the rocks had been and how deeply buried they were when the deformation had occurred. The field observations combined with the results from the laboratory would provide the factual framework for the history we would write of what had happened thousands of millions of years ago.

  The vanished mountains we envisioned were simple possibilities, tentative interpretations of passages written subtly in the obtuse patterns and features of Greenland’s rocks. The patterns match those seen in the Alps and the Himalayas—zones that seemed to be huge thrust faults, folds of immense proportion, metamorphism at extreme conditions. Through the inspired power of analogy, Kai, John, their coworkers, and those who had come before them had surmised that the Greenland landscape was an old ancestor, a forerunner of the young mountain systems that today so dramatically exalt Earth’s skin. But the Greenland ancestors are long gone, erased by the incessant hunger of flowing water, blowing wind, and grinding ice to achieve a form of topographic equality between sea and land. Erosion always wins.

  The first clear hint of those lost mountains had come years earlier. Just after World War II, the Geological Survey of Greenland (GGU) was founded in Denmark. Through its offices, a small group of geologists, including Arne Noe-Nygaard and Hans Ramberg, began the first systematic study of the west coast of Greenland, sailing along the complex coastline in motorized sailing vessels strengthened to resist collisions with ice. They found a two-hundred-mile-wide belt of rock that seemed to preserve evidence of multiple complex episodes of protracted and intense deformation. The belt was called the Nagssugtoqidian mobile belt, named for the region it cut through—Nagssugtoq—and the fact that the rocks seemed to have been twisted into structures that implied extreme plasticity and flow. The mobile belt ran east-west all the way across Greenland. Although the mobile belt seemed to represent a major orogenic, or “mountain-building,” event, how or why it formed remained enigmatic. Cutting through this region were several distinct zones, each zone a few miles to tens of miles wide, in which the rocks were steeply inclined and consistently aligned in the same direction. For some years, the significance of the zones of aligned rocks remained obscure, their tectonic significance unknown. But by the late 1960s and early 1970s it had been suggested by Arthur Escher and Juan Watterson, among others, that these zones contained rocks that had been severely sheared into steeply inclined parallel sheets and layers. The individual zones were eventually called shear zones and were named after the regions they ran through—Isortoq, Ikertoq, Itivdleq, and Nordre Strømfjord. The latter, the Nordre Strømfjord shear zone (NSSZ), became the center of attention because it marked the northern edge of the entire Nagssugtoqidian mobile belt. It was the only one for which observations were made near the ice—the others were only mapped while sailing along the coast, and their inland extent was unknown.

  Geology is not generally considered an enterprise rich with drama. Rocks stolidly await inspection, slowly providing, through insightful consideration, a glacially paced story of incremental change. But there are occasions when perspectives are radically altered, new story lines emerge, and the field is caught by surprise.

  In 1987, such a change shook the world of Greenland geology. Although it played out subtly, the consequences for all involved were profound. Feiko Kalsbeek, Bob Pidgeon, and Paul Taylor reported finding along the northern limits of the mobile belt, near the inland ice, remnants of the same type of rocks as those found today in the Andes and the Sierra Nevada range in California.* Although nearly 2,000 million years older, those rocks were evidence that what is happening in the Andes today had happened in Greenland. In the case of the Andes, the continent of South America moves west, riding over the floor of the Pacific Ocean and pushing it hundreds of miles below the surface. Plunging into the incandescent heat of Earth’s interior, generating massively destructive earthquakes, the ocean floor partially melts, giving rise to bodies of molten rock that slowly make their way back to the surface. The volcanoes of the Andes and the mountainous spine they decorate are the result of that process. If the analogy was accurate, somewhere hidden within the Nagssugtoqidian mobile belt there should be evidence of a vanished Pacific, but no evidence of such a thing had yet been found.

  The shear zones of Escher and Watterson. The arrows show the inferred direction of movement on either side of the zones. The vertical line shows the location of the cross section in the figure on page 60. Modified from a drawing by Kai Sørensen.

  A cross section, ca. 1976, showing how the shear zones disrupt the otherwise gently deforme
d layering in the rocks in the figure on page 59.

  Kalsbeek and his coworkers acknowledged the enigma, and suggested the ocean may have been swallowed in the collision of two small continents. Such a concept had the power to explain the significance of the mobile belt and the major fault zones in it—the structures reflected the massive deformation expected as a result of two continents colliding head-on. But the evidence for where the actual collision zone might have been was very sparse—there was no good way to identify where the rocks from the old southern continent ended and the rocks of the northern continent began. Compounding the uncertainty was the underlying debate of whether plate tectonics even functioned that long ago.

  The areas where John and Kai and their colleagues had worked were central to answering those questions. The evidence they had developed suggested that the collision zone, which would have required exactly the same kind of massive movement and deformation they described, might be within the areas they had worked.

  Those who study the history of Earth are few, and the areas involved are vast. Knowledge is sparse. Given the immensity of the terrains the continents cover, those dedicated to unraveling the story of evolving landscapes devote their lives to finding the nuance and subtlety held within a specific setting. Some spend their lives immersed in the history of the Alpine system, climbing and hiking through those beautiful mountains. Some are owned by the Himalayas, or by the vast openness of the Canadian shield. For John, Kai, and me, it is Greenland.

  Inevitably, commitment to place becomes personal—our identity is affected by the time we spend walking the fragment of Earth that has captivated us. The chosen place permeates being—terrain embeds itself under fingernails, tangles in hair, makes skin bleed and scars the heart and mind. Every thought, conscious and not, becomes riddled by knowledge derived through wandering there; remembered vistas from that world unexpectedly insinuate themselves at random times and in unanticipated ways, forcing an acceptance of a link between what we experienced there and what is lived in the moment here. We are composed of where we have been and what we have seen.

  John and Kai were part of a pioneering generation that helped refine Greenland’s history. They and their colleagues described in detail the characteristics that defined the “mobile” part of that land—the folds and sheared layers, the discontinuities and disrupted features. Over the years, they mapped major tectonic elements, documenting evidence for miles of displacement along several of the shear zones. They published respected papers in scientific journals, and were recognized authorities because of their work. They knew that land better than anyone. But in the late 1990s their reputation as field geologists and scientists was challenged by a paper that said, in essence, the work they had done was deeply flawed.

  THE GEOLOGICAL SURVEY HAD FIELDED a number of small teams in a very large area and it had been decided that each team would check in by radio with a base station at Aasiaat each morning and evening. That would allow a rapid helicopter dispatch if an emergency happened. It was the first and last year in which we checked-in by radio, since, in later years, we were the only team in the region and the cost of a base station could not be justified. On the second evening of our expedition, we were confronted with an identity crisis. For our first radio check-in, we needed a name to identify ourselves so we would not be confused with others in the field. We were the last team to be placed in the field that year and would be among the last to leave. Before our arrival, each team had taken a name to call in with, and we needed something unique.

  We quickly tried to come up with a snazzy name—call-in time was fast approaching. When the moment arrived, John and I looked at Kai and shrugged our shoulders. Kai pursed his lips, clicked the button on the microphone, hesitated, then said, “This is Team Alpha to base, over.”

  There was a pause at the other end; then base responded, “Come in, Team Alpha. Welcome!”

  After the call-in, we asked Kai why he named us Team Alpha. He said it came to him that we were the oldest folks in the field, making us the alpha males.

  LATER, AS WE WERE SITTING IN THE COOK TENT talking about plans and challenges while Kai prepared a chicken—the last fresh meat we would have for weeks—I asked about the comments from the previous evening that seemed so emotionally laden. Quickly, the mood became more serious. John looked at Kai and Kai nodded. John reached into his stash of reading material and handed me a seventeen-page paper published five years before.

  The paper asserted that Kai and John, among others, had made basic and fundamental mistakes reading the rocks. The new publication stated that the NSSZ showed very little evidence of significant movement. It said that in a collective misinterpretation an essentially trivial feature had mistakenly been given major tectonic significance. The words shear zone were removed from maps in the paper and replaced with straight belt.

  Science is a messy business; everything we know is, at best, a simplification of what is real and is therefore inherently flawed. As a consequence, everything we do ultimately requires corrections, implying that nothing published is completely right. It is every scientist’s expectation that whatever he or she publishes will be improved upon by others, who will provide more nuanced and detailed observations that address questions about the world. Indeed, it is an honor to be a building block in an ongoing refinement of the story of how a landscape has evolved. But in the case of the paper I was reading, it was difficult to escape the fact that Kai and John’s work had been summarily dismissed.

  About halfway through reading the paper, I stopped to ask them if they agreed with what it was saying, that they had been wrong about how they had interpreted the geology. “Of course not!” was the answer. At first, they spoke with disciplined calm. But quickly, with increasing emotion, they signaled numerous inconsistencies and errors in the paper, fundamental mistakes and misinterpretations that exceeded what the paper itself had, inaccurately, called to task. But only those intimately familiar with the real rocks would ever know.

  Kai pointed to a black-and-white photo that showed horizontal layers on the face of a cliff wall. The text of the paper interpreted the geology as flat-lying layers in gneiss, indicating structure that was incompatible with the model of a shear zone with nearly vertically inclined fabric. “You’ve been there, Bill. Do you remember? Those aren’t flat-lying layers!”

  At first, I did not recall the location or the rocks. Kai then commented that I had seen it during my first expedition to Greenland, at a site where the edge of the shear zone was being investigated. Memories then flooded back.

  We had camped on a small finger of water on the south shore of Nordre Strømfjord. To introduce us to the geology we would be working on, Kai took us on a daylong hike away from the fjord and into the country that bounded the southern edge of the shear zone. All the rocks where we were camped were vertically inclined gneisses with bands of dark and light layering that varied in thickness from inches to many feet. All the layers trended in an east-northeast direction. The hike he took us on was across the layering, heading south. Since there was no trail, the route he chose followed streams and small valleys. The cliff wall shown in the photo in the report was bounded on its west end by one of the valleys we had followed. As we walked by the end of that ridge, we could see that exposed on its barren surface were steeply inclined, but not vertical, dark and light bands. Kai stopped us and pointed out that the farther south we would go, the less steeply inclined the layering would be. Where we were was the southern edge of the shear zone, the place where the dark and light layers had been progressively rotated and twisted into parallel orientation with the main fabric in the central part of the tectonic belt. The reason the layering looked horizontal in the cliff wall depicted in the photograph was because the cliff face ran exactly parallel to the trend of the layers, not across the layering, where the steeply inclined orientation could be seen.

  One learns in any introductory geology class that what one sees in the field requires careful observation and measuremen
t in order for one to understand what is actually there. The land we walk over is a three-dimensional surface that intersects complex geological structures. Piecing together the actual form the geological bodies possess requires following them across ridges and valleys, mapping them, touching them, and astutely observing how the land surface and rock forms affect what is seen. Clearly, the published photograph had been taken at a distance from some shoreline vantage point or cruising boat and thus was not part of a field excursion to verify an interpretation.

  Consequently, as things stood in the international scientific world, the work Kai and John had published was implicitly worthless and could be seen as one more example, among thousands, of failed scientific ideas.

  When I had finished reading the paper and began discussing with Kai and John the scientific conundrum we were in, I realized the devastation and angst they must have felt. I had known these men well for many years; I had watched them argue and debate, examine data and analyses, discuss conflicting ideas. I knew them to be critically thoughtful. John was a data-driven man, always examining information through the lens of logic and rigor. He was not a sloppy scientist. Kai was a grand thinker. He had worked long and hard at piecing together fragments of information into concepts and models that could explain mountain systems. He had studied the giants of geology, those who had made huge leaps in thinking about how Earth evolved. He could see patterns and relationships that were often, at first, vague and equivocal. But his ability to weave together the threads that unified a fabric was brilliant. To think either of these men could have been so misled in formulating their concepts was inconsistent with everything I knew about them.