Duathlon Dinosaur

Recently Karina and I traveled to Southern Utah to take part in a triathlon (which became a duathlon) and look for dinosaur fossils.  Being near dinosaur bones makes me stalk around like a dinosaur, so the following tale will be told from the point of view of Duathlon Dinosaur - a modern day two-parted, multi-sport, bipedal, mostly-human-but-still-lizard-like Anthopocene dinosaur.

Duathlon Dinosaur (Biker runicus-lizardii or DD) is a traveler fond of journeying to events they heard about on the Internet, and taking circuitous routes that take them to meet friends and those places you've only ever seen signs for but always wondered about like Dinosaur Quarrys and Dino Trails and the things in Green River that aren't gas stations.

In mid-June of 2014 it was possible to see these dinosaurs travelling to meet their good friend Emma for a fishing lesson, because DD is pisciverous.

While unsuccessful at actually catching a fish, we were highly successful at having some fun.  

From there DD traveled to the Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry near Elmo, Utah, where they discovered visiting hours were over.  But they continued on foot because DD had seen the signs for the quarry and always wondered what was there.  When else would they have time drive all the way to the literal middle of No Where and look for dinosaur bones?

The Cleveland-Lloyd Quarry contained the densest concentration of Jurassic dinosaur bones ever (more than 12,000 bones belonging to 74 different specimen).  

Never one to be deterred by a fence that can easily be walked around, DD poked around the closed quarry.  They were able to look through windows to see another, older dinosaur currently being excavated at the quarry (but were sad they couldn't help with the excavation themselves).

Building covering a dinosaur that was being excavated.  Based on average wind speed during our visit, taking the dinosaur finding indoors made a lot of sense.  

They also spotted a ferocious dinosaur assembled in the closed visitor center, but DD was not afraid because they are faster then a dinosaur that's all bolted together.

Ferocious Allosaurus fragillis.  Most of the bones excavated from the quarry belonged to carnivores.  

The natural habitat of DD is arid and spectacular.  Prime habitat has interpretive signage.  The Cleveland-Lloyd quarry had all of this in spades, so DD explored the Rock Walk in search of fragments of sauropods.  And they found them because DD has sharp, fossil-finding eyes!

Sauropod fragments we spotted on the top of a knoll.  

Sauropods are large, plant-eating dinosaurs that roamed Utah during the Jurassic Period, 203-145 million years ago.  Utah was a much different place then - there was an ocean and huge swamps and lush vegetation to support these creatures.  The idea that Utah was once such a different place and the process of fossilization gave Duathlon Dinosaur something to ponder.

After this dinosaur died all the porous spaces in its bones were filled with minerals, turning it to stone.  

Nowadays (the Anthropocene) there is a lot of aridity and shrink-swell clay in Dinosaur Country.  Shrink-swell clay has layers of crystal on the inside that can hold water and expand (up to 1000 times) when wet and then shrink when dry.  This leads to a popcorn-like texture on the surface that is pretty rad.

The popcorn-texture and cracks suggest that this soil has been wetted and dried repeatedly.  It's hard to believe it ever rains at the quarry though, given how dry it was when we visited.  

Structures would never survive on popcorn clay because it is unstable, but mounds of popcorn clay are ideal for Duathlon Dinosaur's yogic displays, as they are fleeting and off-balance to start with.

In addition to having sharp eyes for dinosaur fossils, DD also has a strong appreciation for plants, particularly this grass that glows when the sun is setting.

Desert plants are great plants.  

Dinosaur means terrible lizard, and DD has a fondness for other lizards that are less terrible but still pretty fantastic.

Un-terrible lizard scurrying around it's ancestor's stomping grounds.  

Duathlon Dinosaur is a natural climber, in addition to a love for biking and running.  The boulder field at the quarry provided excellent opportunities to show their natural skill.

Velociraptor.  Obviously

Duathlon Dinosaur then traveled to Green River, Utah, barely escaping the arid badlands of Elmo and their distinct lack of water.  The original goal of this particular journey was to compete in a triathlon called the River Rampage.  Unfortunately the Green River was running super high because of a fish larva mobilization thing farther upstream (normally great news), so the swimming portion of the triathlon was cancelled.  This was both a relief and a disappointment.  Duathlon Dinosaur (both halves it would seem) is not a strong swimmer and the idea of swimming was intimidating, but DD also loves new things and was excited at the prospect of competing in something new like a Tri.  Despite the disappointment and intimidation, Duathlon Dinosaur thought the Green River looked peaceful and beautiful the morning of our competition.

20,000 cubic-feet per second of water, hopefully carrying lots of Razorback sucker larva.  

Duathlon Dinosaur, multi-sport competitor that it is, was able to dominate in the smaller field of participants that made it to the duathlon.  By bike and by foot, DD loves going fast.

Karina-Dinosaur got first place in her division, completing the bike ride in 44:05 minutes (that's a 17.1 mph pace, excellent) and the run in 26:38 (that's 8:52 minute miles, speedy devil), for a total time of 1:12:36 to complete the Sprint Duathlon.

Becka-Dinosaur got third place in her division, completing the bike in 1:25:20 (a 17.8 mph pace) and the run in 49:01 (for 8:03 minute miles) for a total time of 2:14:59 to complete the Olympic Duathlon.  I feel particularly happy that I excelled during the run, completing it faster than the overall winners in my division, by channeling my inner dinosaur (I was pretending to be a Velociraptor).

DD love their bikes.

Following this great adventure, Duathlon Dinosaur continued toward Moab, the center of all the best DD habitat in the world.  It is on this leg of the journey we stopped by the Dino Trail in Mill Canyon.  There we marveled at the length of the Camarasaurus leg bone, but did not fear because we would be faster.

But seriously, the Camarasaurus was gigantic.  

We also saw just how big sauropod bones are, but did not fear because we are smaller but more ferocious.

The modern-day lizards might be more ferocious than DD, so we gave them plenty of space.

This may be a longnose leopard lizard

We also learned more about the flooding events that initially covered these dinosaur bones.

Cross-section of a fossilized Jurassic period dinosaur bone

Vertebrae of a dinosaur that has been turned to stone

Turned to stone and embedded in more stone

Layers of sediment with bigger rocks were deposited during big floods and the finer sediments were deposited during lower water parts of the eon.

We even saw evidence of the past environment that supported these giant, plant loving dinosaurs in the trunk of this petrified tree.

Then Duathlon Dinosaur wandered on to Castle Valley where we ooh-ed and aaw-ed at the giant stone towers and mesas that were deposited at the same time the other terrible lizards were roaming around and have been eroding slowly ever since.

Wingate Sandstone (or Dinosaur Sandstone, as I will call it in the future) is so excellent to climb.  

Duathlon Dinosaur's final stop was the Fisher Towers, an amazing section of mudstone that helped DD appreciate that while we are fast and ferocious, we are but a speck in this large, long-historied world.

Cottontail Tower

Erosion is continually on display in the Fisher Towers, where the rock appears to be both sparkling and weeping mud.

Karina can feel the rock's pain

DD is most at home in dry, spectacular places like the Fisher Towers.

Ancient Art

Here we can show our amazing abilities of cooperation that are necessary to climb safely up to potentially precarious positions and take pictures with both halves of Duathlon Dinosaur in it.

Dry, spectacular habitats are also excellent places for DD to display their incredible jumping ability.

After all this adventure, Duathlon Dinosaur returned to the Valley of Cache they call home, but continue planning epic adventures to have by bike, foot, and car.

Be Excellent to Each Other

I'm going to start off with a few confessions.  1.  I love popping things: zits, infected cuts, ingrown hairs.  It's very therapeutic to me.  2.  My favorite playlist is called "Rage Aneurysm, I made it one day when I was in a very bad mood and had a whole lot of computer time ahead of me.  It starts with Bette Midler's "The Rose" and ends with Miley Cyrus' "Wrecking Ball" and I'm not ashamed that I love both of those songs intensely.  3.  I work in very muddy places and rarely remember to bring hand sanitizer with me so I've eaten at least a pound of mud inadvertently by eating my lunches with dirty hands.  I'm alright with that.  4.  My least favorite word in the entire English language is obedient.  I do not like being told what to do and I feel valuing obedience over intuition leads to conflict.  5.  I'm a feminist and the things Mormon feminists have been writing, whether or not they want the priesthood, speak to my heart.  The things being written to denounce and misunderstand feminists are breaking my heart and make me feel like the church of my youth has no room for people like me.

*Below is simply an extended crying session about feeling rejected the church I grew up in, plus some Star Wars and links to videos and articles about empathy that I think are really great.

I've been working on getting that last confession out for 1.5 years now.  I hesitated because it hurts my heart so much when this issue (gender roles in the Mormon church) flares up.  I was so excited when members of the Mormon church started talking about gender issues and it felt like a major letdown when the issues weren't addressed and divisions were drawn among members who are my friends.  I also hesitated because it feels passive-aggressive to add my voice to the internet defending my own point of view rather than telling my friends who have posted things that are hurtful "Hey, that's hateful and terrible.  You've got a feminist friend, I hope you didn't realize that before."  I also need to avoid ranting, because that's when the hurtful words really come out, when you can tell an author has bottled their feelings up for so long they can barely put full sentences together because they have so many forceful things to say.  Finally, I don't think my words add anything new to the discussion.  There are many more eloquent writers and so many more well versed in scripture.  I hope simply to put a friendly face on feminism to my friends who view it as an enemy to their way of life.  So here is my adventure for the day: state my position, my soul's cry, clearly without denigrating the people who disagree with me.  I can't avoid offense, I've seen that even discussing the issue of feminism is stressful and offensive to many followers, but it's an important issue to me so I will be polite.

One last thing before I start: I love you whether or not you share my beliefs about faith or womanhood.  I hope you, dear reader, can return the love.

I haven't been an active member of the church for several years now.  I didn't leave the church because of gender issues, I had larger troubles with faith itself, but I continued to attend meetings for a while because I had friends in my congregation and I enjoyed hearing positive messages from faithful people.  I stopped attending within a few months though, because without faith the congregation I was attending was a stressful place.  No one shared my politics and openly talked about liberals as the enemy.  Worse, I felt like there was no one in my congregation who wanted the same things out of womanhood as me.  I want to learn everything and go everywhere and have kids that I raise to be curious and kind and awesome.  I felt like the way we were being preached to about womanhood, to find and support husbands who were good leaders rather than being our own leaders, and that life doesn't really start until you're married, were more cultural than doctrinal.  I felt like I didn't belong in the church and that the stress I felt when I attended was actually bad for me.  Then in December of 2012 I read a blog post about religion that stirred my heart, which hadn't happened in many years.  It was about being a feminist in the Mormon church, feeling like you were all alone within their congregations, and the changes they would like see.  In particular I liked this paragraph

Sometimes, being a Mormon Feminist is a lot like being a Who. Some of us go years and years, thinking we are the only one. We feel like dust specks, invisible to the larger community of Latter-Day Saints. When we’re lucky enough to realize that we’re not alone, that there are lots of Mormon Feminists, fighting the good fight for gender equality in families and congregations everywhere, it feels like a miracle. There are enough of us that we’ve formed our own little Whovilles in more liberal cities and here on the internet. Among ourselves, we talk about Mormonism as we understand it, as a gospel of love, acceptance, and forgiveness. We envision a world where we can participate fully in our religion, where we are afforded the same opportunities as our fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons: a place where programs for girls receive funding on par programs for boys; a place where young women are encouraged to serve missions on the same terms as young men; a place where women can finish their schooling without being criticized for putting off marriage and pursue careers without being condemned for abandoning the home; a place where mothers can bless their sick children and preside alongside their husbands in the home; a place where our spiritual progress is based on our worth as individuals, rather than on our relationships to the men around us.

 Within that post and another blog I really like (Mormon Child Bride) I read the soulful cries of women who loved their gospel so much they were willing to see past the voices that actively disdained them so they could be spiritually filled and raise their children within that same place they were raised.  I was so happy to know that there were people who felt like I did and were willing to make their relationship with the church work even though it was an uphill battle.  In the words of the original Whoville blogger I saw a great testimony and a raw love for Christ.  I loved the idea of banding together and making feminists within congregations known through the whole "wear pants to church" thing.  And it was about time someone admitted that most congregations are not safe places for progressive ideas.  I was completely caught off-guard by the vocal opposition to the simple idea of feminists making themselves known.  All over the Mormon internet world I read people saying, literally, "Go somewhere else.  There is no room for your feelings here."  There were some explanations about why some believed changes to gender roles were inappropriate, but words matter and the angry voices were the ones that stuck in my head.

I have cried more about the mainstream Mormon rejection of feminism than I thought I could.  I didn't realize that I could actually feel more excluded from the church than when I was sitting silently in the congregation.  Ordain Women and its leader might have been pushing too fast for change, I'm not really as knowledgeable as I should be on the doctrine of what they're asking for.  But there are so many other important questions they're raising, like why the modesty doctrine focuses on making women cover their shoulders rather than all members actually behaving modestly; like why it's acceptable to invest so much in Boy Scouts without similar investments in teaching girls; like why men should be strong, decisive leaders and women should be virtuous and obedient.  It absolutely breaks my heart when I hear someone calling sincere questioning about women's role in the church called power-grabbing, dissent, apostasy, stupid....  I had hoped that all followers could see the thing that unites them all, a love of the church and a strong desire to be there.  I didn't realize feminist had become a dirty, threatening word.  I expected to see more compassion.  Perhaps the ability to look inward and remember a time that we all felt like something we were being taught didn't jive with whatwe felt, a time we have felt excluded.  I had hoped with the Church's focus on agency that more followers could accept that one member's progressive thinking wasn't a threat to their own decision-making.

The things I've read from the more conservative and vocal factions of the church are so full of fear and anger, I can really only understand it by recalling the words of Yoda: "Fear is the path to the dark side.  Fear leads to anger.  Anger leads to hate.  Hate leads to suffering."  There are currently blog posts and statements being passed around the interwebs suggesting that Christ did not teach as much about acceptance as we (progressive folk) would like to believe and every time someone posts it with a "Hell yeah" I have to steady by pulse and sometimes dry my eyes.  They all suggest the people they disagree with can't just pick and choose the scriptures about a loving, accepting Christ because there are also scriptures (which they've chosen) that support exclusion and judgement.  Anyone with a knowledge of the Bible can find a verse to support what they feel because it's a long book, with multiple authors and some contradictory messages.  For me, there's a song I used to play for the primary kids that sums up how I feel about the teachings of Christ:

I'm trying to be like Jesus;
I'm following in his ways.
I'm trying to love as he did, in all that I do and say.
At times I am tempted to make a wrong choice,
But I try to listen as the still small voice whispers,
"Love one another as Jesus loves you.
Try to show kindness in all that you do.
Be gentle and loving in deed and in thought,
For these are the things Jesus taught."

Simplistic?  Yes.  But I prefer that to longer explanations about why it's ok to exclude someone I don't agree with.

It's likely clear by now that I've pretty much just been talking about feelings.  I feel like there hasn't been enough recognition that faith, identity and acceptance are all very important and individually-specific feelings that are worth fighting to hold on to, but feelings nonetheless.  I have no scriptures or prophets to quote and you may be asking yourself why I feel like I have a dog in this fight at all.  I feel so strongly because my family is part of the church and I don't like feeling things that make me distance myself from that place that holds my family.  I've written so many journal entries about feeling rejected by the church, I've searched out things that make me feel like I could belong some day, like Feminist Mormon Housewives, because I don't want to turn away from the Church that gave me my roots.  I don't want to harden my heart against the entire institution so that I won't care what they say. I don't want to tell my people "Quit hoping for me to come back because there's no place for questioning minds where you come from."   Unfortunately that's the message I've gotten this week.

I know its been rough for people on both sides, for me the hard part has been seeing so many examples of "I don't believe this ____ and I think anyone who does believe it is a jerk."  I miss seeing the beautiful declarations of faith that fill me up, those examples of people making positive declarations of faith "I believe this ____."  I love hearing testimonies.  I'm so tired of crying, remembering the reasons I stopped attending church.  I'm scared of the results of Kate Kelly's disciplinary hearing because I don't want to read a wave of self-congratulatory "we were right, they were wrong" posts or "ugh, I hate knowing the people I sit next to believe anything different from me", but I'm afraid that will be all that comes of this.  (And that fear might lead to the dark side....).  It's possible that some voices will step forward to recognize the differences within congregations and potential options for discusses differences of options, including which topics are doctrinal and relevant to discuss during church and which are political and do not belong.  It's possible that a few on either side of the debate will recognize the things they have in common with each other and find the right words to move forward and talk with one another.  I hope the last part happens.

So, that's all I have to say.  Please treat everyone well, even the feminists, because we all want to feel we belong somewhere.  If I've still got your attention, I suggest reading this commentary about church congregations being safe places.  Perhaps check out this opinion piece about what one person took with them when they left the church.  Whatever you do, definitely check out this amazing video about empathy.

And what would all that crying be without a picture of the people who make me feel like I belong.  

Seriously, my family is great.