A rift in time by Claude

Cover image credit: Shot by the author when she was in Espoo, Finland.

Writer’s block and research rabbit hole are experiences Claude can never relate to, but Claude is my new assistant (hired yesterday) to keep me floating during such moments. I’ve been working on a three-part audiobook on the chosen rock of the Canadian Cordillera for over four months, but life’s enriching tangents keep pulling me away from my storyline.

Life-enriching tangents

The demise of the Slide Mountain Ocean on the Canadian Pacific took my characters to southern Alberta and the Frank slide of 1903, which then carried them to the northern fleur-de-lys of Newfoundland and dumped them on the Montmorency fault of the St. Lawrence rift system in Québec.

But a seismic-slip geomarker and the opening of the proto-Atlantic ocean called Iapetus became a serendipitous encounter that derailed my third chapter and converted my three-part audiobook into a five-part series.

Wish Claude could feel the exhilaration of tangential encounters and the exasperation of missed deadlines.

I’m staring at 48 geology research papers related to listvenite, lawsonite, eclogite, and some other -ite, and I want Claude to conduct the literature review so I can focus on my story and its characters.

Iapetus: A rift in time

I enjoy reading research papers and love writing poems and scripts, so Claude will probably help me with other things (like coding 😑). But I don’t mind entertaining some fun samples from Claude like this poem explaining a geology paper on the timing of the Iapetus ocean rifting away.

In ancient rock, a story lies,
Of continents that split and rise.
Rodinia, a land so vast
Now cracked and broken in the past.

Pseudotachylytes, quake-born stone,
Hold secrets of an age unknown.
In Quebec’s falls, where waters roar,
Geologists seek to explore.

With argon’s clock, they measure time.
Six hundred million years sublime,
When Iapetus began to form,
And continents began to transform.

Encapsulated, samples small,
Multiple subsamples, tell it all.
Six-thirteen to fourteen, they say,
When rifts began to have their way.

Grenville’s basement, Long Range dikes,
All align as evidence strikes.
A puzzle piece now firmly placed,
Earth’s history more tightly laced.

From microscope to mountain high,
These scientists unravel why.
Our land appears as it does know,
Tectonics’ dance, they seek to show.

So in these rocks, a tale unfolds,
Of Earth’s own drama, brave and bold.
A testament to change profound,
In silent stone, a story found.

The geology paper

Folks interested in the geology paper, see Timing of Iapetus Ocean. And those looking for a natural sleep-inducing aid, listen to an excerpt of my crude story: The chosen rock and the East Pond gneiss