By Stephanie Kyriazis
Originally published January/February 2011
Some Native American tribes attribute the postpile of Devil’s Tower to the clawing of a giant bear trying to eat seven young women who fled to safety on the rock. Photo by Erik Marr
All organisms are profoundly shaped by the landscapes upon which they are born and live. Seedlings flourish in sheltered crevices, condors roost upon craggy aeries, and bighorn sheep elude predators on precipitous slopes. Geology is the foundation of every biotic landscape, and human landscapes are no exception. Civilization is constructed on the banks of rivers, lakes, and oceans, nourished by the fertility of the soils, and challenged in battles whose outcomes are dictated in no small part by the lay of the land and the contenders’ intimacy with it.
When we interpret geology, our task is to facilitate “emotional and intellectual connections between the interests of the audience and meanings inherent in the resource,” according to the NAI Definitions Project. Getting folks to think about rocks is simple, since geology is a science replete with stimulating concepts like deep time, evolution, and tectonic motion. Yet many interpreters struggle with the emotional dimension of geology interpretation. How do we get people to feel about rocks? How do we get them to recognize that something so apparently silent, slow, and sedentary could be relevant to our noisy, rapid-fire, mobile human lives?
This past summer, I sought to answer these questions for my masters thesis in resource interpretation from Stephen F. Austin State University. I traveled to 12 national parks and monuments, video-recording geology-themed interpretive programs, administering questionnaires, and conducting focus groups with visitors. What follows is research-based insight into how interpreters can help audiences consider rocks both in their minds and in their hearts.
Meeting Them Where They Are
When I asked visitors about their interest in geology, several common threads emerged. Many folks brought up fond childhood memories of rock-hounding or geode hunting. Both children and adults expressed fascination with fossils and dinosaurs. Finally, attachment to scenery back home or to a peak experience during travel to a geologically spectacular locale stimulated enthusiasm in visitors. This final thread, the aesthetic enjoyment of rocks as scenery, tended to provoke a general interest in how things got to be that way, which motivated most folks’ attendance of geology-themed interpretive programs.
You may recognize that the geologic interests expressed above are casual. The extent of most Americans’ formal geology education occurs during a semester-long earth science class in middle school. In terms of depth of understanding, this compares pitifully to the year-long biology (or physics or chemistry) courses taken in high school. Herein lies the challenge of geology interpretation. While interpreters can expect a general audience to understand the fundamentals of predator-prey relationships, the role of decomposers in an ecosystem, or the nuances of photosynthesis, they may not possess the same expertise when it comes to geology. Recalling that semester of middle school earth science, audiences can probably summon the names of the three rock types, and will know that earthquakes and volcanoes have something to do with plate tectonics, but they are ill equipped to look at a landscape and extract information about its origin.
The good news is, despite a lack of formal education, most park visitors’ casual geologic interests hinge on basic human curiosity. At Glacier National Park, a visitor framed it this way, “You’re in the mountains and you don’t have any basic knowledge or understanding of geology. It’s kind of like being in an art museum and all the names of the paintings and the painters have been taken off…. It’s pretty and nice, but you don’t have a good understanding.” Harnessing aesthetic appreciation for and curiosity about geologic scenery is a great place to start. Other techniques for stimulating emotions during geology programs include playing the extremes of geologic time, building a biophilia bridge, and situating visitors in their own geologic experience.
The Ephemeral and the Eternal
The spectacular formations at Badlands National Park are geologically ephemeral and will some day erode away. Photo by Stephanie Kyriazis
When gazing at the stone edifice of the Rockies, one is inclined to imagine the mountains have been around forever. Because so many people think of rocks as everlasting, park visitors are often surprised to discover that geologic phenomena can be ephemeral. At Badlands National Park, where an interpreter pointed out that rock formations are soft and the erosion rate high, one woman reflected, “I felt a little sad when I realized in approximately 500,000 years it won’t be here.” Conversely, the apparent eternity of geologic time also stirs feelings.
“I love that sense of insignificance you have,” a visitor declared at Craters of the Moon National Monument. Both of these statements highlight the dichotomy of geologic time—that it encompasses both the enduring and the fleeting—and the emotional responses that can result.
A Biophilia Bridge
In 1984, renowned biologist E.O. Wilson coined the term biophilia to describe “the innate tendency” of humans “to focus on life and lifelike processes.” He subsequently hypothesized that this tendency is genetically hardwired in our species, a supposition largely supported by more than a decade of research. Sadly, no analogous geophilia has emerged in the scientific literature. However, when discussing geology, an interpreter can leverage visitors’ biophilia to foster a connection to the rocks.
The spectacular formations at Badlands National Park are geologically ephemeral and will some day erode away. Stephanie Kyriazis
A preteen girl I interviewed at the Grand Canyon declared, “I don’t really like rocks, but I like what it does to other things, like habitats for animals…. A lot of animals like to live under rocks, and there are snakes and lizards that like to sun on rocks.” Interpreters at Craters of the Moon National Monument emphasized the protective quality of cracks in the lava rock, where nutritive soil gathers and seedlings hide from intense wind and sunlight.
A ranger at Zion National Park pointed out tiny snails that exist only on spring-drenched sandstone walls. In a lava tube at Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park, a guide explained that while the island’s porous basalt prevents rain from gathering at the surface, Native Hawaiians could collect drinking water as it dripped from cave ceilings. In each of these examples, geology equals survival, a powerful universal concept that stimulates empathy toward living organisms, and builds appreciation towards the rocks that support them.
Describing the intimacy between Native Americans and their geologic environment using mythology or oral history can also engage visitors emotionally. Most North American indigenous cultures consider rocks just as animate as living things. For instance, at Devils Tower National Monument, local tribes explain that seven young women pursued by a giant bear found sanctuary upon a rising rock. According to the story, the frustrated bear’s claw marks are preserved as the postpile ribs of Devils Tower. At Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park, interpreters invoke Pele, the capricious volcano goddess to whom Native Hawaiians attribute the islands’ eruptive behavior.
Historical figures can summon a similar geologic kinship. At Wind Cave National Park, interpreters ask visitors to imagine themselves under the care of Alvin McDonald, the 16-year-old boy who led tourists on guided adventures through the caverns in the 1890s. MacDonald’s promotion of the cave at the World’s Fair and beyond ultimately led to the cave’s protection as a national park. Tragically, the young man died at the age of 20, but his legacy of speleological enthusiasm endures in the heart of every visitor who witnesses the cave. At Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument, visitors connect emotionally to the story of volcanologist David Johnston, who died engulfed in the debris of the erupting volcano. As a young woman shared with me, “One of the things that has always touched me in terms of this spot in particular is this is the place where Johnston died for his job.”
Personal Geologic Experience
Geology-influenced natural disasters like landslides, earthquakes, floods, volcanic eruptions, and tsunamis afflict humanity with a frequency that fuels our news cycles. Consequently, almost everyone has an emotional reference to such events, from general mourning for victims to personal experience with a tragedy and its aftermath. Chances are, at least one disaster has shaped the geologic landscape of your site. Even if the event pre-dates human occupation, the associated feelings can still be used as a touchstone in an interpretive program. Emotion can even transfer from one type of disaster to another, as seen in this survey comment from Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park: “Amazing that people got so close to active eruptions. Sad to see the town that was wiped out by lava flow—reminds me of Hurricane Ike (Galveston, Texas – 2008 – destroyed our beach house).”
Natural disasters may permeate our knowledge of the world, but not everyone can think of a geologic experience that touched them personally. Most folks are willing to visualize themselves embedded in different environmental circumstances, however, which inspires another technique: resource immersion, real or imagined. At the Grand Canyon, a ranger asked his audience to consider the process of personal fossilization, starting with giant dump trucks burying the audience alive in sediment.
“I gotta admit,” one man responded, “I hadn’t thought about what it’d take to be a fossil till today.” Similarly, on an exposed ridge at Mount St. Helens, the interpreter viscerally guided his audience through the eruption. “When you are out here and he starts telling you about…how the trees were mowed down, and this part was blown down and that part was shot-gunned, and that part was incinerated, it brings the shock of the thing to you,” a visitor pondered afterwards.
Cultivating emotional connections between visitors and geologic resources is fundamentally about shifting their frame of reference, from a world where rocks are merely a passive backdrop, to a world where rocks set the stage for all action—animal, plant, and human. Whether you start with scenery, invoke the mysteries of geologic time, leverage biophilia, or situate visitors in their own geologic experience, you provoke your audience to recognize that rocks are relevant contributors to human life, and worthy of emotional ties.
Acknowledgments
The author thanks the staff and visitors at the public lands in her study. She is also grateful for the support of her advisor, Dr. Theresa Coble, and NAI for a 2009 scholarship award.
Stephanie Kyriazis feels a strong emotional connection to rocks and hopes you do too. She is the education specialist at Death Valley National Park and an academically trained geologist. You can contact her at stephanie_kyriazis@nps.gov.
