One of My Favorite Places/Where I Grew Up

http://www.nps.gov/glba/planyourvisit/gustavus.htm

Gustavus Beach (a glacial outwash plain & the longest sand beach in SE Alaska)

One of my favorite places is the place I've chosen to call home - Gustavus Alaska. It is geologically and geographically unique and is a beautiful place, home to many wonderful people. Living and working in Wrangell is a fantastic opportunity and my students are amazing humans, but it still isn't home. Gustavus is the place where I met and married my best friend and where I've forged many other important and lifelong friendships.

 http://www.wmich.edu/corekids/Michigan-Geology.htm

Geologic Map of Michigan

It’s flat! Well the whole state isn’t flat but it was where I grew up in the Thumb of Michigan. The Lower Peninsula of Michigan is shaped like a mitten and is surrounded by Lake Huron to the east and Lake Michigan to the west. I grew up in the heart-of-the-thumb where flat is understandable since the area was a tamarack swamp before it was cleared and drained to farm the rich organic soils.

Historically, tectonic, limnological, marine and glacial processes eventually created a lowland where many plants thrived and later died to add to the rich soils crushed by glaciers from granite rock (Spiroff, 1960). When we were kids, we used to dig up marl from the same field where in the winter we ice-skated and played hockey because then, as it had been for millennium, it was a low spot in the terrain.

The bedrocks found in the eastern part of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan are some of the oldest on earth, having formed more than 3½ billion years ago, and existing still as the craton of the North American continent. [See Michigan Geologic Time Line List (link to a Word document)]. Although old, these are not the oldest rocks on Earth, which are located in northern Quebec Oldest Rocks on Earth.

Spiroff, Kiril (July 1960). Souvenir bulletin of the jasplite. Retrieved from www.michigan.gov/documents/.../GIMDL-GGGHM_302331_7.pdf

Screen shot of Brown City, Michigan (Google Earth)

Screen shot of Michigan's Lower Peninsula (Google Earth)