"Crazy Geologist"

In the early 70's, I was working in the State of Oaxaca, Southeastern Mexico in the vicinity of a Mixtecan Village. At that time most people there spoke only the Mixtecan Indian Language, so getting a bilingual field assistant was a hard one. I was lucky having a steady bilingual assistant, but then and there we needed a field guide. Eventually I hired one, who barely spoke Spanish, and set off to work along a river bed, to check contacts, structures and the like.

By mid morning, my assistant chuckling told me that the field guide wanted to quit and be paid right on the spot. I was quite surprised, and ask him why the guide wanted that. He told me that the reason was that I was crazy, and that he did not like to be around crazy people. Even more surprised I ask him, why the guide though so. He said that the whole morning I was doing crazy things, like walking where there was no road, that I blessed the rocks (my moving the arms along inclined strata), that I prayed before the rocks, reading from my book (checking or writing data in my field book), that I hit the rocks, and then kissed them (taking rock samples and moistening them to see the crystals/mineral with the hand lens), and the worst thing I did was that after so much apparent caring for the rocks, I tossed most of them!!!

Indeed, to persons not familiar with Geology, what we do in the field may appear senseless or downright crazy.

- Ismael Ferrusquia

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