11 Wonder Made Me

It never occurred to me that my life would take me far from the lush glacial landscape of my lakeside home in Rochester, NY, to the rugged and rocky American Southwest. Only once before had I traveled west as a five-year-old on a visit to see family friends. I remember very little of it and certainly nothing about the natural environment, except for the squirrels at the beach that would eat potato chips out of my hands. After that, my travel stayed east — Cape Cod one summer, Florida another, and the occasional foray across the northern border to the Canadian side of Niagara Falls.

Neither of my parents were hikers or campers, nobody in my family was a scientist, and we never discussed the natural world. One of my closest friends had a photographer for a father and they had photos of the Grand Canyon and Yosemite in their home, places they had been. I never once wondered why the canyon was so big, or why the layers were different thicknesses and colors, or why Half Dome was indeed half of a dome — where did the other half of solid rock go? If only I had known what unstoppable forces had been at work in those places, if only someone had told me that it had taken five million years of flowing water to eat away at the layers exposed in the Grand Canyon, layers that recorded over one billion years of Earth’s history, maybe I would have wondered how it was possible that water — something I found soothing and associated with comfort — could rip into solid rock and leave behind a hole that is eighteen miles wide and over a mile deep. If I had been told of a glacier carving its way through Yosemite Valley, grinding off half of that mountain of solid granite as it went, maybe I would have fallen for geology sooner. Because, those tales are true, and are perhaps more fantastical than any fiction one could write. It was stories like these that eventually ignited my love of the Earth, and a curiosity to unravel some of the secrets held in its rocks. Even the idea that rocks could tell stories was something I had never heard before. Who wouldn’t be curious about that?

From a young age I wanted nothing more than to be an entertainer, like my father. My plan was always to do something creative — act, write, do comedy — anything that didn’t involve math, which I was sure was too hard for me. My father owned the first comedy club in Rochester, and as a kid he let me hang out there, practicing on the stage when nobody was around, and staying up late to watch him jam with a local blues band on Wednesday nights. My dad and I were very close, my identity wrapped up in the things we enjoyed together, like music and funny movies. If you had told me then that someday I would become a scientist, I would have said it was impossible.

When I was nineteen my father passed away. His death took many weeks and it shook me to my core. I wasn’t sure who I could be in the world without him. I had to be back at school just two days after his funeral, devastated and adrift. It was the perfect time for something unexpected to find its way into my life, as I was no longer confident in my chosen path. A loss like that can cause us to reevaluate where we are and where we are going. For me, I wasn’t sure anymore, and so I was ripe for something to take hold and give me a new purpose.

For me, that new purpose ended up being the struggle to become a woman in STEM. Months before, I had taken a geology class because I had to take some form of science. Despite my determination to hate it, there was something so alluring about the images my geology instructor projected on the screen in the lecture hall. Mount Everest, the highest peak on Earth standing 30,000 feet above sea level: I learned it had limestone at the top, a rock that forms deep in the ocean, now sitting at the base of the stratosphere, thrust upward as India and Asia collided more than 50 million years ago. What an irresistible story that was — one that I could barely understand, but for some reason I wanted to. There were so many things I wanted to understand: The Cascades of the Pacific Northwest; The San Andreas Fault in California; The Grand Canyon of northern Arizona. I had never considered these things before and didn’t even know what geology was. The Grand Canyon, more than any of the others, lit me up, with its rocks of red and gold, the colors of a sunset, holding tales of days when Arizona was not a desert but covered by warm seas teeming with life. These colors were so different from the lush greens and blues of my home and I wanted to stand among them, soak them in, feel the rocks under my feet warm from the sun and see wide open spaces with nothing but mountains on the horizon. I had never walked among mountains like that, never felt their grace.

The summer my father died I spent time at his bedside in the hospital, flipping through the highlighted pages of my Geology 101 textbook. I had kept the book after Freshman year, which seemed weird, but now I know that it wasn’t. I kept it because I was interested. I wanted to go back to it, read it more intently. The words were poetry to me — lyrical descriptions that evoked the beauty and wonder of our planet. “…when compared to the Earth, the moon is a lifeless body wandering through space and time.” What a notion: Earth being life-full and traveling with intent. It seemed hopeful and irresistible.

When I returned to school, I had a new plan: follow this curiosity and declare geology as my major. It was terrifying — I was way behind in math and science — but I did it anyway. For the first time in my life, I found myself pulled toward something completely out of my comfort zone, which seemed like a great place to discover who I could be.

Eventually, studying geology took me to Tibet, where I spent months doing field research out of a tent in the middle of nowhere. It was there that I learned that I was tougher than I thought, and that I actually could be a scientist. Becoming a scientist changed my life profoundly. It gave me a new way of looking at the world — with wonder, awe, and trust of the scientific process. Because without it, we wouldn’t have these great stories to tell, the “when” and “how” and “why” of some of the most profound scientific discoveries. We would not know that the Earth formed over four-and-a-half billion years ago, or that earthquakes and volcanoes happen because of moving plates of rigid rock that move around on Earth’s surface, or that Mount Everest is the result of two of those plates slowly colliding over tens of millions of years. Our curiosity lights the fire to find knowledge and understanding, and the process of science gets us there.

Maybe my life would have been just as great if I had become a writer or a performer. I guess I will never know. But I am thankful every day that I took a chance and followed my curiosity. Being a geologist rocks!

About the author

name: Jessica Kapp

Jess Kapp is an associate professor of practice in the Department of Geosciences, and coordinator of the Exploring Perspectives area of the General Education curriculum. She believes in the power of exploration, as she discovered her love of geology as an English major taking a general education science course. It is the unexpected paths we all find ourselves on at one time or another that Jess knows are worth following, which is why she loves to spend time outdoors, travel, and write about science and its impact on her life.

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