h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I've asked this elsewhere but thought it might help if the
Q&A were here where it is immediately relevant, at least
until you revise with a footnote or additional explanation.

"Most of the park has returned to the untouched, unpopulated
labyrinth of butte and hoodoo?"

"Every day fossil bones tumble out of the soft rock of the valley
walls, crumbling from the shafts of the eerie, hard-capped hoodoos."

So. what's a hoodoo?


~jwf~

I'm sure there's a punchline here somewhere.


What's a hoodoo?


Whatever hee needs too doo.



A hoodoo is a geologic feature produced by the action of wind and/or water on a landscape wherein a relatively hard layer occurs on top of a relatively soft layer. The result is a sort of mushroom shape, a column of soft stone capped by a chunk of harder stone which prevents the column from eroding as rapidly as the uncapped surrounding layer.



Hoodoo is the name for such things.


So, you think maybe a footnote might be in order?

No butte a doubt it!

So a hoodoo is a butte with a cinch-belt.

Seriously folks, I think butte needs a definition as well.
Maybe even links to photos of each type of erosion column.

That John Ware character is interesting as well.
Is there more to his story?


~jwf~

'Is there more to his story? '

Certainly there is.

I'll certainly be doing some touching up on the thing, and I really should add more about Mr. Ware.


I can't believe how provincial you Easterners are -- not knowing what hoodoos and buttes are.









I'm sure I'll flesh the thing out more over the next few days, including explanations of elementary geomorphological terms.

I still have to finish reading Sternberg's book and rereading Bowling's novel (The Bone Sharps) concerning the period.


I also have a tremendous urge to go down to what was once Steveville. I've been investigating it on GoogleMaps and through Alberta Government documents on line. It seems that there is an outlier patch of land a little outside the principal park area, a patch of land in the flats on the north bank of the river, just beside what was Steveville. This patch of land was set aside as part of the Park, although not contiguous with it, to be a campground. On Google streetview it very clearly is a campground, but there is no signage on the road and I could only find a few references to it online, none of them on the Park website. It comes up in media announcements of fire bans in Provincial Parks and is called the 'Steveville campground'.

Now I've got two road trips planned for this summer -- in opposite directions.

>>...got two road trips planned for this summer -
- in opposite directions <<

And they said the Bye Polar brain flu thing wouldn't be contiguous.
And here's you, a one man epidemic ready to spread your wings to the
four stronger winds.


O btw
I knew what a butte was. I was wondering on behalf of a whirled wise
audience who prolly think hoodoo is summat else again. And, fair dues,
if you go much further east of here I doubt anyone knows from butte.


~jwf~

I was reading Sternberg this evening and I realized . . .



I have to mention 'coulees'!!!!


Do we all know what a coulee is?








Seriously, in daylight, when I've had less beer, I'm going to work out a clarification of these quandaries.

and, most importantly . . .






Thank you, sincerely, for the feedback.

I believe a coolie is a...

No wait, isn't it sorta like a wabash, no not a wabash, doh,
what's the word... a low ravine, subject to flash flooding.


~jwf~

an arroyo, a wadi . . .

"wadi"!


~jwf~

I think I'll be adding a bit more detail about the geology of the area and I'll try to include some definitions there.

'What's a hoodoo?'


It depends on whether the hoo wants Horton to hear him or not.


I've done a little tweaking around the Steveville parts, more clearly (and accurately) placing Sternberg's first camp and linking the luxury he enjoyed to the Spartan facilities of the present Steveville campground.

I still haven't gotten to the geology details.

hey, ~jwf~, have you got any thoughts on the entry as it is now? I'm thinking of sending it off to Peer Review soon.

Thanks for the added detail about the life and death of John Ware.

A very interesting character, likely unknown outside of southern Alberta.
But definitely an important Canadian folk legend.


The added footnotes are somewhat helpful. Your description of a
butte is now what I thought a hoodoo was - ie: capped and cinched.
Now I'm gonna have to look up mesa too. I thought it was a VERY wide,
flat, high plain possibly edged by high cliff drop-offs as in the final
scene of Thelma and Louise. It needs to be accessible from at least
one side. You seem to say it's just a flat-cap topped butte and that's
what you said a hoodoo was. Needs images. Or at least a list
of the definitions side by each. Or maybe I'm just not reading it
clearly or able to imagine the distinctions.

On the whole, I'd wait a few days before submission and think about
shuffling some bits around. There are three main elements - paleontology,
geology/geography and biography. Paleontology is of the greatest general
interest and it might (for example) be more enticing to start with paragraph 2:
"(more than) 65 million years ago..." before plunging into the arcane details
of the present day flow path of the Red River.

I love the subheading 'The Ancient, Towering Cemeteries of Creation'
and your explanation of its source. I am less excited about how the
Red flows into Saskatchewan.



~jwf~

Yeah, the bit about joining the Saskatchewan was an afterthought. I'll rethink it. And I'll look at the definitions.

a hoodoo is often shaped like a tall mushroom.

a butte is a narrow mesa

a mesa is a wide butte.

I've done a bunch of tidying, link adding, butte clarification (that's a phrase you don't hear every day) and some expansion of the information about Tyrrell.

I'm still thinking about what you said about the first two paragraphs. I agree that the second is a stronger start, but I wanted to have the Towering Cemeteries of Creation header, and I find it looks better if there is a blurb before the first header rather than starting the thing with a header.

In any case, I'm thinking I should wait until I finish reading Sternberg's book about his time in the Valley because the last half is sort of a senile dream vision of wandering around amongst the Cretaceous dinosaurs with his long dead young daughter (yikes) followed by long passages of doggerel -- I mean poetry.

I'm thinking there might be some good header material in all that.

The opening sentence "65 million years ago..." could precede
the header which sets up the reference to the 'towering cemeteries'.

In fact the first two sentences could.

( I find the repetition of the word species in the second sentence a
bit clumsy. How about 'critters'? )


Anyway, I'll let you have some more time to diddle with it before
I give the whole unit another review. Lemme know.

*Egads - I've very deliberately avoided doing any PR for ten years -
wouldn't do this for everybody y'know. Mostly cuz I know you can
handle a little constructive and well intentioned criticism *


~jwf~

Somehow I had already changed species to creatures in that second sentence, I think.

I've still got to consider the question of the opening some more.


By the way, I finished reading Sternberg's book and . . .




What a sad load of awful verse he finished with.


Thanks for taking all this time with it.

I took a minute and tried to tighten up the first paragraph and I think it's an improvement.

It is. And it works.

Cripes, I'm down to nitpicking now... but
because there are so many Proper Nouns in the first
paragraph maybe you could take the caps off South
and River.

Other than that it's looking good and the footnotes
are quite helpful. The links are too!

God I hate what h2g2 footnote numbers do to spacing.

Damn... I should just shut up now...
but... I know you want it to be good, better than the
average entry, so I'm just gonna say you should look at
any sentence that has more than four commas and maybe
break 'em up a bit.

And... maybe you should add one between 'cut' and 'forming'
in the first para. But then the rest of that second sentence
would have to loose the 'heart' and become something simpler,
like.. "..ever deeper into the valley it has cut, forming what are called
the Bad Lands of the Red Deer river. Here is Dinosaur Provincial Park,
an area designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 19xx."

Oh god I'm getting way too nitty aren't I.
Yeah, I know, if I'm so goddam smart why don't I write more Entries.

~jwf~

I took the caps off as you suggested.

I also hate what the footnotes do to the spacing.

I have a tendency to make long sentences (the Classical Latin influence) and I also tend to scatter commas 'like the small rain on the tender herb'. I'll have a look at them.

And I did a little something with that second sentence.