Geology in Gardar, opus III
Early in the season this year, we welcome Laurent Geoffroy for the third and last year of his research in Gardar. Will the giant dykes from this region reveal their secrets?
We're still working on a time scale... immeasurable. This question recurs every day of his short stay. Breakfasts are punctuated with diagrams showing the birth of the universe 14,000 million years ago, the birth of the solar system 4,500 million years ago, the emergence of the rocks we're sitting on here in the Gardar region 1,500 million years ago... and the appearance of Man very recently, just 0.3 million years ago. Vertiginous. Just enough to put in perspective our presence on earth as thinking homo sapiens, the unique living being capable of questioning past and future.
To go back in time, you have to take a step back. This year, Laurent chartered an helicopter for one day to observe different sites from above, but also to land on massifs close to glaciers inaccessible by boat. He could discover new dykes, these magnificent veins of magma, note their positions and their orientations and thus add pieces to the enigma of tectonics in this part of the world.
On a smaller scale, we were less fortunate: a two-days storm kept Vagabond at the dock, giving to Laurent the opportunity to survey the glacial valley north of Narsarsuaq and to make some nice findings. But a freezing rain during his week in Greenland didn't help his fieldwork. Nonetheless, we continued to survey some observation sites with Laurent, notebook and compass in hand.
On board, always ready to question in depth and immortalize with his lens, Pierre Petit, film director, is building a documentary on this research; it's another challenge to show what is easier to explain in words than in pictures! His camera doesn't go back in time... As an off track mountaineer, he adapts to the situation, patiently sketching, tracking and capturing light when it seems to speak to him.
