Professor D, a doctorate in geology, had a notion about which of his students were smart and which were not. Roy and I were definitely not in the former category. Before the day concluded, we would have firmly convinced Doctor D of his notion. That day on the mountain, we decided Roy would start as the alidade operator and I would carry the pole.
The surface mapping procedure goes something like this: the pole man carries the pole to a point some distance away from the base station, preferably to a formational outcrop, or the contact between two formations. In his field notebook, he would enter the position as station 1, recording whatever geologic info was pertinent to that particular station. The alidade operator would “shoot” the position, marking it on the topo map, and then signal the pole man to move to another location. This would continue throughout the day. At night, back at the base camp, the two mappers would “connect the dots” until a surface geology map finally overlaid the topo map. This entire process would take about a week.
Before commencing the project, Professor D had tutored us briefly in the art of hand and arm signals. This is because large distances would separate the partners once the project began. When D finished his lecture, ten, or so, teams began setting up base stations. Armed with the unwieldy pole, I started down the hill in search of an outcrop and soon found one.
When I found the exposed outcrop, I was nearly 1000’ down the hill and I could barely see Roy and our base station through the vegetation. Extending the pole, I waited, sweat beading down my nose and the lens of my glasses. An angry horsefly dive-bombed my head as a buzzing mosquito flew reconnaissance around it. When I saw Roy wave his arms, I moved to another location. This process continued until I had moved five times. At this point, something extraordinary happened: Roy left the base station and began running down the steep hill toward me, his arms flailing. As he drew closer, I could hear he was yelling obscenities at me. From the red flush on his frowning face, I could tell he was not happy and I braced myself for his rapidly ensuing arrival at station 5.