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Wytheville
Enterprise
Apr 19, 2009
By DAN KEGLEY/Staff
How many times have you driven along Southwest
Virginia roads and looked at the rock formations beside them
instead of watching where you were going? Or did you ever wish you had an
accessible, easy-to-read primer that would help you understand the reasons this
region looks the way it does?
Collins Chew of Kingsport, Tenn., thought so, and he wrote a book that explains
the world beneath our feet.
“A Simple Geologic History of Southwest Virginia” is Chew’s latest publication
and is just out and takes as its region of focus the portion of Virginia from the Cumberland Gap
to Interstate 77.
“This book reviews the long and interesting series of events which gradually
assembled the land from diverse origins to result in the scenes we see today,”
Chew writes on the book’s back cover.
Mount Rogers, Whitetop and Wilburn Ridge, Chew
reports, were once at the center of volcanic activity caused by the thinning of
earth’s crust. That happened during an early bout of continental sumo wrestling
called plate tectonics, one of the forces shaping the land to this day. As a
result, the bedrock in those areas is composed of volcanic ash, long since
changed into hard rock.
Chew discusses the Rome
formation, providing a photo from Groseclose where associated material
contributes to brick making.
To the west, Chew examines faulting near Abingdon and a mammoth fossil find 29
feet below the surface of Russell
County.
East, he looks at formations along Interstate 77.
Chew has written other guides to geology, including “Underfoot: A Geologic
Guide to the Appalachian Trail” and
“Appalachian Trail Guide to Tennessee-North Carolina.”
It would seem fitting to call the author Dr. Chew, but the man is an example of
the heights of expertise the avocational researcher can reach. By profession,
he’s a chemical engineer, retired from Tennessee Eastman. Geology he does for
fun, and has for years.
One can gain an understanding of the region’s geology, he said, by recognizing
patterns that appear especially as the observant traveler moves across in a
northwest-southwest manner. The movement is perpendicular to the main lines of
the mountains that arose in those ancient intercontinental collisions.
Over eons, Africa shoved against the southeast of North
America, and something had to give. The Appalachians
rose up like wrinkles in a throw rug when a corner is pushed inward. Geologists
say that what’s left after more eons of erosion is but a hint of the mountains
former stature – higher than the modern Himalayas
that, by the way, earth scientists say are still rising.
The earth’s internal heat continues to drive continents about at roughly the
speed of a fingernail’s growth.
“The Appalachians are a big pattern, but you
can get into the smaller details,” Chew said. The big picture involves red
shale, gray shale and white sandstone in repeating patterns visible as one
crosses the Appalachians.
“Find one formation on one mountain and you can find it again on the next one,”
where once flat layers now overlap “like roof shingles.”
Move parallel with the Appalachians, he said, and the geology remains similar
from Alabama to New York.
For years, Chew concentrated on Tennessee
geology, titling his first book “The Geologic History of Bays Mountain,”
centering on the high ground adjacent to Kingsport.
His Applachian Trail studies showed him the repeating patterns in Appalachian
geology. Writing a Southwest Virginia book was
easy.
“Virginia was
the yard next door,” he said. “It didn’t take a lot to do Southwest
Virginia.”
Chew grew up outside Atlanta and has been all
over the earth studying its physical structure in a hobby that began with a
1951 summer job in a gold mine near Fairbanks,
Alaska.
As he settled back east after growing up outside Atlanta, he found Appalachian geology just
beginning to be well understood. That work continued in 1993, when he wrote the
overall Appalachian Trail guide.
“I had to write parts of ‘Underfoot’ three times as new information came in,”
Chew said. “A lot of the geology of this area as only fairly recently been
figured out.”
He reads geology textbooks and gets six geology magazines to keep abreast of
what’s new in these studies of the very, very old.
Chew doesn’t make money on his books, he said, because that involves taxes and
other complications that would make writing them less fun. His market is also
too small to build a publishing empire on his books, according to Chew.
“I really don’t sell enough of them to make a difference in my life,” he said.
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