The topic is: "What Geological features about the area you call 'home' do you love? and what do you not like?"
There is no one ideal place to live and study all the earth processes that fascinates me; I have had to pick one place - settle there and call it 'home'. Every place that I have ever lived and called 'home' for awhile has always had very interesting geologic features to it that makes it unique. In Northeast Ohio it was the effects of glaciation, in Southeastern Ohio it was the Paleozoic Cyclothems exposed in the Appalachian Plateau, and currently I live on a bayou in Louisiana. What is it about the area you that you now call 'home' that is so fascinating to you. What do you not like? Did you choose to live where you are because you love the geology of the region and just wanted to live the in the area or was there another reason that brought you there?
Since I put out the call I felt I needed to get something together for it. So here's a little of what I have to muse about my home area.
About 30 years ago I move to the area I now call home because of a job offer with a major oil company. At the time I had a few job offers, I basically had to choose between Houston, TX or Shreveport, LA. Neither one of which really appealed to me since they were both so far from my family and home in Ohio. I choose Shreveport (and less money) because it was a small city and didn't have the traffic & city problems that Houston had. I have never regretted that choice since I find the city such a wonder place to live.
The company I worked for had its office located where it was because it was right in the middle of the area where they had most of their production going on. I was hired as a developmental geologist and being close to the fields did help a lot. Back then it was the era before fax machines and personal computers, we had to commute to the wells to do our work and get the information ie logs and cuttings. So it was the prolific oil and gas in the subsurface that brought me to the area and made it possible to make a living here..
At the time the company I was with was mainly concerned with just oil production and we were mostly looking at the Tokio formation. This formation had been drilled through a lot and never developed much because the logs indicated there wasn't oil there, but the drillers reports did report traces of oil as they drilled through it. The mystery was finally solved when they started to take core samples of the zone and realized that there was a high amount of volcanic ash in it that was suppressing some of the electrical responses of the logs.
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Now a days the area is all abuzz about the Haynesville shale. It is a gas play and there is some exciting things going on with it. When I was working as a developmental geologist we did not have any interest in it because of two reasons. One it was gas and my company was only interested in oil -- if gas was also present that was considered a bonus but we were not to actively search for gas. And the other it was in a tight formation which at the time the technology just wasn't there to be able to produce it economically. (boy have things sure change in 30 years)
to get some more information on the Haynesville shale go to
http://geology.com/articles/haynesville-shale.shtml
Here are some old diagrams that I got from when I took a training seminar from Shlumberger (1983) to help explain the subsurface geology.
All of this was exciting to be around and I did enjoy it. In mid eighties the oil industry went through a major slump and there were massive layoffs. In 1986, after getting transferred to Lafayette and working offshore (with totally different geology), my husband and I decided we were ready to start a family and I let it be known I wouldn't mind being laid off. So I got laid off, moved back to Shreveport, and had my 1 child in 1987.
We owned a home on a bayou and I loved living on the bayou. I found it so peaceful and relaxing to see the waters flow by while I was outside playing with the kids or working in the yard. After awhile we needed a bigger home. We couldn't pass up the chance to get a bigger home on the bayou and move there. We have been there ever since and really don't want to live anywhere else. Also having great neighbors makes it all the more wonderful. I should add that we are in a great location within 3 miles of anything you could want. What's nice about our bayou is the fact it makes a natural barrier so it keeps people out of the area unless they want to be there and feels like living in the country but lets you have all the conveniences of living in a city.
According the the 'Dictionary of Geological Terms' by the American Geological Institute (1976- pg 38-39): bayou - A lake, or small sluggish secondary stream, often in an abandoned channel of a river delta. Local on Gulf Coast. One of the half closed channels of a river delta. Local on the Mississippi delta. We are not on the Mississippi delta but the Red River which does empty into the Mississippi. Our bayou is call the Old River Bayou or as the locals call it 'the duck pond on E. Kings Hwy.' It is connected to the Red River and goes up and down like the river does, but not as dramatically as the Red.
The opening photo is a picture of my backyard on the bayou.
Here are two more taken on 11-28-10 the top is of the same tree that is seen on the left side of the opening photo.
If you go to my musings on AW -28 you can see some other pictures of the back yard. The bayou is so fascinating to watch, you never know what you will see. There are all sorts of critters that I have seen on it. I've seen ducks, geese, beavers, snakes, alligators, rats, nutria rats, possums, mice,
and the birds. I'm not much with birdwatching but I have seen a lot - my favorite are the purple martins and thus we have the birdhouses for them. Others we have seen: sparrows, cardinals, blue jays, robins, hawks, hummingbirds, egrets, swallows and may others I don't know their names for.
Because of the nature of bayou's the vegetation is very prolific and covers up any soil/rock exposure there my be. (I do miss my rock outcrops - but the peaceful waters more than make up for it) We do have two cypress trees growing near it and those trees really make you feel like you are in the south with their cypress knees protruding up through the ground. There is lot of other things growing but I really don't know much about it and don't feel like musing on them at this time.
The one thing I love about the south is the people and the food they like to make. It doesn't take much to get us a group together to have fun just visiting and eating wonderful things. One of their favorite get together is to have a crawfish boil; which is a whole other topic in itself.
The one thing I do NOT like about the bayou is it a breeding ground for mosquitoes. But then that's why I like the purple martins so much because they eat there body weight in mosquitoes everyday.
The other thing I do not like about where I live is its in the south and it gets HOT in the summer. Frequently we can have very long periods of time where it is 95+ with high humidity. Whenever it gets around those temperatures I find I just have to have some air conditioning to get a break from those extreme temperature.
I find Shreveport a great place to live and am happy living here.
