Summations Only

...of Faith's scenario... The major problem with this is that if sediments came from the land and then were returned to the land, then if the depth of sediments after the flood was sufficient to lithify them, then the depth of the sediments before the flood was also sufficient to lithify them. This means the antediluvian land sediments were mostly rock and could not have been washed away into the sea by 40 days of rain, or even 1000 days of rain.

I think it is safe to conclude that Faith is unable to visualize the physical reality that would be represented by her words on this or any subject. As others have pointed out, she is unable to visualize in 3 dimensions, and, as she has demonstrated with her incomprehensible use of the word "landscape", uses certain words as a repetitive and comforting mantra dissociated from their conventional meaning.

I thought I answered this idea that the depth would have been the same by saying a lot of the stratified sediment left by the Flood came from the ocean itself, and that I'd assume the enormous amount of vegetation on the land would have contributed to the looseness of the soil there. Big trees have deep roots.

"Earth" can't become a sedimentary rock; "soil" can't become a sedimentary rock.

I've done a fair bit of dry stack masonry with sedimentary rocks. One of the ways you read the grain of the rocks is by looking at the orientation of the inclusions in the rock. Under magnification, all kinds of material other than sand are visible. The orientation of this material, which is squished flat, tells us which plane the rock will split along.

On a lucky day, you might even reveal a fossilized animal amongst all the fossilized bits of "dirt" and "soil".

As usual, your words have no connection to reality.

"Fossilized bits" is not what I was talking about, but about a whole lot of "earth" and "soil" supposedly incorporated into the sediment as part of the rock itself.

They have been rebutted with, as Percy has been pointing out for some time, no response from you other than repeating the same claim. Over and over again. The rebuttals stand until you successfully address them.

What in our examples of sedimentary layers forming today is the wrong time, place, shape, and extent to become a sedimentary rock layer?

Huh?

This post already has several replies, but I'm going to emphasize some things those replies didn't touch on.

Faith writes: Oh well, this is futile. You seem to think "earth" could become a sedimentary rock.

Of course it could. This has all been explained to you many times before. Endlessly repeating your original points makes it impossible for discussion to advance beyond square one. In any case it was just explained to you yet again by HereBeDragons in Message 2786 when he described paleosols.

Now let's put it in a flood context, but I'll call it soil instead of earth. Let's say that during the 40 days and 40 nights of rain while all the land sediments were being washed into the ocean that there were a few square miles of soil that just by chance didn't get washed away and survived the rain intact. Next the ocean rises over the denuded landscape, and also over this few square miles of soil that was not denuded. The ocean deposits a mile or two of sediments onto everything, both the denuded landscape and this few square miles of soil that was not denuded.

This few square miles of soil now lies beneath a mile or two of sediments and is under great pressure. The pressure is so great that the sedimentary layers above this soil layer experience diagenesis and turn to rock. Why doesn't this soil layer also turn to rock? What prevents it from happening? How do you explain paleosols?

Those are rhetorical questions. Naturally any sediments, including those with significant organic content, will experience diagenesis when subjected to such great pressure.

The rock wasn't there at all. IT WAS EARTH. Soil, exactly like today. "Earth" can't become a sedimentary rock; "soil" can't become a sedimentary rock.

Of course it can, see above. You're just breathtakingly wrong, as has been explained many times across many threads. Why do you insist on dumbly saying things like paleosols can't happen when people have already shown you examples of them having happened? Here's yet another example of paleosol strata, i.e., lithified soil, at Chalk Butte in the Powder River Basin that spans eastern Montana and Wyoming:

Hopefully the geologists will correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe paleosols are common strata. Soil implies a non-coastal region, i.e., regions generally at a higher elevation than coastal regions, and so they aren't often preserved, but it can happen. Rapid sea rise or rapid subsidence or some combination could do it. Particularly deep soil deposits in an area that experienced net deposition for a considerable period (say in a valley) where the deeper portions would be preserved if a transgressing sea were to advance across and processes related to Walther's Law were to chomp up the land, that could do it. There are no doubt other ways.

Earth is made up of lots of things besides the simple separated sediment that form the rocks in the geo/strata columns.

I don't know that it would be accurate to call the sediments that formed the more familiar strata types simple, but you are correct that soil can have many components. If I dig into the soil in the woods surrounding my house here in New Hampshire I first hit forest mat a couple inches thick (decaying leaves, pine needles, twigs, and random detritus) then a rugged soil filled with small stones, then hard clay (about a foot down), and there are always rocks (a stone wall was built from the rocks I extracted from the ground while landscaping the property) and roots and burrows (particularly of chipmunks, which seem to prefer a residence close to the house), and sometimes pieces of buried tree (trees, even small ones, apparently take much longer to decay when buried than you would think).

And guess what? These same sorts of things found when I dig into the ground here in New Hampshire are what is found, in lithified form, in paleosol strata. Whatever was in the soil when the area became buried and later lithified, it'll still be there for us to study should the layer ever become exposed, except that the organic components probably don't survive very well, maybe mostly pollen grains and tiny tough particles.

Earth can't become one of those rocks. You can't turn earth into sedimentary rock so how are you going to get the next rock in your supposed stack of rocks? You aren't. Sigh.

Again, when you subject something to great pressure, whether it's soil or sand or mud or silt or clay or calcareous ooze or pelagic or some combination, it will experience diagenesis and lithify.

You say to look out my window for evidence of, what?

You asked what animal could live on a flat expanse of one sediment, so Tangle suggested you look out your window. Of course it's possible that though Nevada has great expanses of flat areas that perhaps you live in a mountainous part, but you get the idea. If you don't live in one of the flat areas then it shouldn't be hard to imagine what you would see if you did live in a flat area and you looked out your window. You would see animals (during the day probably ground squirrels, chipmunks, birds, insects, maybe the occasional deer) living on a flat expanse of one sediment, soil.

Of course many more types of animals live in your flat expanse of soil than the ones you will usually see out your window during the day, like raccoons, mice, moles, mountain lions, snakes, lizards, etc.

Here in New Hampshire when I've looked out my window I've seen birds, squirrels, chipmunks, fishers (a type of weasel), wild turkeys, deer, neighborhood cats and dogs, and once a black bear. They all live on a rolling and hilly expanse of soil. Though very hilly and even mountainous in many parts, New Hampshire does have some extensive fairly flat areas, like the southern and northern parts, and particularly as you approach the coast. Were New Hampshire to somehow become suddenly inundated then sediments would begin accumulating atop the soil, and as the sediments accumulated to greater and greater depths then the processes associated with diagenesis would play a greater and greater role.

In the strata there are only bare flat rocks with some fossilized green things here and there inside them.

Why do you say that strata contain only "some fossilized green things"? You mean fossilized plants? What about animals?

Nothing that flat exists on the earth's surface normally,...

Why do you keep repeating things that are self-evidently not true. You've seen images. Your own state has vast stretches of flat prairie. This is Ash Meadows:

...and no single-sediment either.

Most sedimentary strata isn't "single-sediment" either. HereBeDragons noted the same thing, mentioning the Coconino as one of the exceptions. Here's an example of how varied strata can be. This image is of sandstone paving stones:

It takes special conditions to get those characteristics. The surface of the earth is made up of lots of different sediments and organic matter, the rock layers are not.

Most strata are not paleosols, so of course most strata do not resemble lithified soil. But soil is just sediment that happens to include a large organic component because life grows in, on and above it, contributing excretions, detritus, and its entire self when it dies. Take away the organic component and soil is just the products of erosion that will eventually be transported to the sea where they'll be sorted by the differing intensities of water action into sand, silt, mud, clay and the pelagic sediments.

The surface of the earth is variegated in many ways, the strata are amazingly flat and uniform in character.

As has been explained many times, most strata (especially the ones you're obsessively focused on at the Grand Canyon as if all strata everywhere in the world are the same) result from Walther's Law, which produces fairly flat strata by its very nature. I think you still don't understand Walther's Law. Your reluctance to respond to my posts about Walther's Law tells me you're afraid to understand how it really works because it would force you to discard so much of your flood scenario, not that there aren't many other very good reasons for discard that you also won't discuss.

At some point in the "time period" the rocks that supposedly represent it had to have covered the whole area they now cover within the stack of strata.

Yes, except that at any particular epoch or age these rocks that covered the whole Earth were not rocks - they were loose sediments sitting atop the Earth's surface, either on land or sea floor or lake floor.

When that happened nothing could live there.

Of course life could live there. It was the Earth's surface at whatever epoch, age or period you're talking about, and just like today life then lived on soil, on desert, on mountains, on prairies, on coastal plains, in swamps and lagoons, in the air, in the ground, on the beach, in the water, on sandy coastal sea floor, on near coastal sea floor or mud, silt and clay, on deep sea floor covered with pelagic sediments, and on calcareous ooze beneath warm shallow seas. Any part of that past Earth that happened to become deeply buried beneath sediment would become lithified. If one day uplifted and exposed at the surface through surface erosion or downcutting by rivers and streams then we could study it and see what the environment was like back then, and if it contained fossils then we could learn something about what life was like back then, too.

Even if it was only a short period in the millions of years everything would have to die. if it was a wet sediment nothing could live there,

A significant proportion of ocean life lives on and in wet sediment.

...and when it became rock nothing could live there,...

But it only becomes rock when deeply buried. If the topmost sediments of sea floor over a period of a few million years slowly become buried (along with the remains of some of the life that lived on and above it) beneath a mile of sediments then life still goes on as before a mile above on the sea floor.

...but the point is it HAS to become exposed sediment or rock to become a layer in the geo/stratigraphic column.

You may have been trying to say something different than what you wrote, but as written this is self-evidently wrong. Lithified sediments do not have to become exposed to become part of a stratigraphic column. Why would you think that they would? There must be many strata all around the world that we don't know about yet, but they're still part of stratigraphic columns. This is definitional - it isn't an arguable point.

Sigh. I know this is futile for most here, but maybe someone will get it.

You have managed to get through a whole post without saying almost anything correct, and most everybody gets that.

Sigh. The Holocene "covers the entire Earth." Sigh.

Yes, by definition. The Holocene is the present, and all current geologic change is taking place in the present, which is the Holocene. Again, this is definitional - it isn't an arguable point.

And you expect the Holocene to end up as a flat slab of rock?

Some of it, of course. It's inevitable, particularly the sea floor, though most of it has a limited lifetime compared to continents (some sea floor accretes onto continents). The abyssal plains are some of the flattest places on Earth, and they're accumulating sediments in the neighborhood of a few centimeters per thousand years. In 10 million years the sediments on todays deep ocean sea floors will be buried nearly a half mile down, more than enough for lithification to be well underway.

Have you ever looked at the surface of this Earth?

If it's land you were thinking about when you asked this question, most land does not become strata. Land that does become strata is most often near coastal. For example, this is reflected in the strata beneath Brian Head. By the time land becomes coastal it has usually been eroded fairly flat, and if not then the ocean will grind away at it. But most strata is marine, and most of that has been created by sea transgressions and regressions that leave behind sedimentary strata reflective of Walther's Law which generally results in extensive fairly flat sediments. Walther's Law is something you still don't understand.

The stuff you've supposedly "explained" to me does not make any sense whatever.

We'd be thankful, after the incredible number of times this stuff has been explained, if you just remembered it. I bet most of us have given up hope of you ever understanding it, and certainly no one believes that mere facts will ever convince you.

--Percy

Edited by Percy, : Typo, grammar.

Faith writes: I do wish it would be acknowledged that just because my views have been "rebutted" doesn't mean the rebuttal is automatically correct,

Nobody is claiming that the rebuttals are "automatically" correct. A proof that 1+1=2 might not be a valid proof even if the conclusion is correct. In fact, we do see some disagreement among your opponents about the details of the rebuttals.

But what they have is a vast network of rebuttals that all point to the same conclusion --> Your explanation doesn't work. You're complaining that one beam won't hold up the Empire State building and you're right - but they don't have one beam, they have thousands.

"Fossilized bits" is not what I was talking about, but about a whole lot of "earth" and "soil" supposedly incorporated into the sediment as part of the rock itself.

What, precisely, do you think "earth" is composed of?
What, precisely, do you imagine it would look like after being compressed under a few billion tons?

Did you dig that hole in lawn yet? Notice the smooth transition from grass to roots to dirt to "less dirty" dirt?

ABE: Apropos my earlier message re sandstone: When dealing with sandstone, it is common to find areas that are more brown and crumbly and referred to as "rotten" because they lack structural integrity. Almost as if the sediments in that place had a higher than normal organic ("soil") content.

Edited by Capt Stormfield, : No reason given.

If it's land you were thinking about when you asked this question, most land does not become strata. Land that does become strata is most often near coastal.

I just lost a fairly long post I was composing and am not up to reconstructing it right now but I remember all its parts so may come back to it later.

This idea that "flat" land of the sort you are always showing photos could ever become a rock like those in the geo/strat columns needs to be answered but I don't think any answer will do it for you. I don't know how anyone could possibly be convinced of such an idea but of course you'll remind me that incredulity is not an argument. Too bad, it really should be in a case as obvious as this.

There is no landscape of the sort you illustrate with photos that is anywhere near the extent of the rock formations you think could come from such land. I got descriptions of the Navajo formation and the formations above it, and they all cover from four to six or seven BIG current states of the USA. I also found one photo showing the straightness and flatness with knife-edge contact and was about to track down the others when I moved to another page without saving the post and lost it. None of your "flat" landscapes could ever form a knife-edge straight contact with another, let alone cover even a hundredth of the territory the rocks actually cover. If you can't see it I despair of ever getting anything across at all.

Perhaps this description will help get across my problem with your argument. If not I hope to get a second wind and come back to redo the post although I know only too well that nothing I do is going to suffice for you.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Percy writes: And guess what? These same sorts of things found when I dig into the ground here in New Hampshire are what is found, in lithified form, in paleosol strata. Whatever was in the soil when the area became buried and later lithified, it'll still be there for us to study should the layer ever become exposed, except that the organic components probably don't survive very well, maybe mostly pollen grains and tiny tough particles.

Except as casts which have also been shown and in fact are direct evidence not just that there was a landscape but also average temperature, elevation, seasons, rainfall, predators and other factors.

Change leaves evidence.

Change leaves evidence.

True.

However, you are having a dispute with someone who literally refuses to acknowledge that sedimentary rocks are formed from sediment. Do such expenditures of energy really have a point?[1]

[1] Totally rhetorical.

What, precisely, do you think "earth" is composed of?

A mixture of different sediments, different sized pieces of stone, not sorted but mixed, different kinds of soils, salts and so on.

What, precisely, do you imagine it would look like after being compressed under a few billion tons?

Not neat and flat but probably quite hard and lumpy. It wouldn't take billions of years to get a layer of hardpan a foot beneath the surface, not neat and flat but hard and lumpy. Then more hard and lumpy and unsorted variegated stuff would be above it, and in fact impossible to differentiate from it. You aren't going to get neat layers of clearly different sediments.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Where on earth did I say "paleosols can't happen????"

Here's a paragraph from Wikipedia, Geological Formations, that is about the connection between the strata and the time periods.

Usefulness of formations[edit] ...Formations were at first described as the essential geologic time markers, based on their relative ages and the law of superposition. The divisions of the geological time scale were described and put in chronological order by the geologists and stratigraphers of the 18th and 19th centuries.

Without the strata there would be no Geological Time Scale. How convenient that each time period has at least one such rock.

The following are descriptions and some photos of some of the formations in the Colorado Plateau, from top to bottom, to show, first, how extensive they are, covering far more area than any pseudo"flat" landscape you can come up with, and certainly making it impossible for the dinosaurs to live there at that time; second, how recognizably different they are from each other, which is really the point of my calling them "single sediment." They don't have to be literally single sediments to be homogeneous enough to be recognizable, unlike your ordinary earth surface mixtures. And third, examples of very straight flat layers such as the Entrada formation with tight contact between Entrada and Curtis formations; and the Navajo as straight, flat and tight as I could find it with the Entrada above it etc. The clear differences between all of these formations in color and composition certainly don't suggest any normal earth surface landscape to me, but I know you'll pretend it is.

The Entrada Sandstone is a formation in the San Rafael Group that is found in the U.S. states of Wyoming, Colorado, northwest New Mexico, northeast Arizona and southeast Utah. Part of the Colorado Plateau, this formation was deposited during the Jurassic period sometime between 180 and 140 million years ago in various environments, including tidal mudflats, beaches and sand dunes. The Middle Jurassic San Rafael Group was dominantly deposited as ergs (sand seas) in a desert environment around the shallow Sundance Sea.[1]

Of course I don't buy any of the "depositional environments" stuff about tidal mudflats, beaches and sand dunes etc.

Picture of Entrada beneath Curtis formation, showing straightness/flatness and tight contact:

The Carmel Formation is a geologic formation in the San Rafael Group that is spread across the U.S. states of Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, north east Arizona and New Mexico. Part of the Colorado Plateau, this formation was laid down in the Middle Jurassic during the late Bajocian, through the Bathonian and into the early Callovian stages.

Picture below: Carmel formation shows nice straight layers eroded into monuments in Goblin Valley. Different layers have their own character easily distinguished from each other. Not mixed like ordinary earth surfaces.

Navajo Sandstone is a geological formation in the Glen Canyon Group that is spread across the U.S. states of southern Nevada, northern Arizona, northwest Colorado, and Utah as part of the Colorado Plateau province of the United States. The Navajo Sandstone is particularly prominent in southern Utah, where it forms the main attractions of a number of national parks and monuments including Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area,[3] Zion National Park, Capitol Reef National Park, Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, and Canyonlands National Park. ...Navajo Sandstone often appears as massive rounded domes and bluffs that are generally white in color.

The Navajo often appears in those swirly forms like the Wave, but here's a picture of the Navajo beneath the Entrada in straight horizontal form:

The Kayenta Formation is a geologic layer in the Glen Canyon Group that is spread across the Colorado Plateau province of the United States, including northern Arizona, northwest Colorado, Nevada, and Utah...the Kayenta is easily recognized. Even at a distance it appears as a dark-red, maroon, or lavender band of thin-bedded material between two thick, massive, cross bedded strata of buff, tan, or light-red color. Its position is also generally marked by a topographic break. Its weak beds form a bench or platform developed by stripping the Navajo sandstone back from the face of the Wingate cliffs. The Kayenta is made up of beds of sandstone, shale, and limestone, all lenticular, uneven at their tops, and discontinuous within short distances. They suggest deposits made by shifting streams of fluctuating volume.

The Wingate Sandstone is a geologic formation in the Glen Canyon Group of the Colorado Plateau province of the United States which crops out in northern Arizona, northwest Colorado, Nevada, and Utah.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Faith writes: However, many different species have the same "basic body shape". This is the coyote and the gray wolf. How do tell just from examining the skeletons that these are two different species: As I believe I said, they are the same Kind,...

Yes, you did say that, but there was rebuttal, and about that you've said nothing. So as I believe *I* said, kind has no definition. You're not saying anything that has any meaning.

...I don't differentiate them by their basic shape; their differences that make them separate "species" (or subspecies), are more superficial.

You say that today, but just a short while ago you said that kind and species were the same thing. For example, you defined kind differently in Message 1746:

Faith in Message 1746 writes: And also that variation is built into the genome of each species or Kind and can produce a great deal of diversity within the Kind, but that there is no evolution from one species or Kind to another.

And then you were even more explicit in Message 1812:

Faith in Message 1812 writes: "Kind" means species in the sense I'm using the term above. The words are synonymous, one the English, the other Latin, and "species" gets used for all levels of differentiation ("Species of cat" etc, while "Kind" includes all cats) so that it's hard to be clear when you use "species."

So around mid April species and kind were the same thing, but now in early May they're not. For you kind means whatever you need it to mean at the time. That's why your failure to define kind makes what you're saying nonsense.

Could you please define kind before you make any further use of the term?

And that's what I think is the case with the trilobites too: although they may differ quite a bit superficially they share a basic structure that identifies them as the same Kind.

What happened to your trilobite genetics argument? Did its absurdity finally strike even you?

But anyway, since you haven't defined kind then sure, all trilobites could be the same kind, who knows. But that would make chimps and humans the same kind, too, because certainly these two:

Are far more similar than these two:

Also, all insects share the same basic body plan - are all insects the same kind? All spider share the same basic body plan - are all spiders the same kind? All fish share the same basic body plan - are all fish the same kind?

So you need to define kind, and you need to be very careful about it, because otherwise chimps and humans will be the same kind, and we can't have that, can we.

They all share the same features. It's possible I'd want to separate some into separate groups if I spent more time on it but to me as long as they have the basic tri-lobite form they are the same Kind. They have so much variety within the Kind because all the known specimens are pre-Flood.

You have no evidence or even a definition for trilobite kinds, and you're mixing that all up with something else you have no evidence for, the Flood. You haven't said anything intelligible.

After the Flood the genetic diversity of creatures that were preserved on the ark was greatly reduced because of the bottleneck.

No evidence of any life-wide genetic bottleneck dating to 4500 years ago has ever been identified - it isn't something that could be missed. And as has been pointed out time and again, too many genes of too many organisms have far too many alleles for this bottleneck to be possible, especially for any scenario that rules out mutation.

That is probably also true of most of the creatures that survived in the oceans too.

You still haven't explained why you believe most sea life died in the flood. You said it was suffocated by sediment, but I did the calculations showing that total land sediment volume was only 10% of ocean volume at the time of the flood, so they didn't suffocate. You'll have to find another explanation.

You also haven't explained why you believe most sea life died - what evidence are you looking at? Genesis will provide you little comfort since you've decided that Noah took no sea life aboard. God said, "I will wipe from the face of the earth every living creature I have made," so if there were no fish on the ark then arrivederci fish.

Dogs differ from cats in the basic structure,...

Anyone with half decent eyesight can see that's not true. Plus they're both mammals, and they all share the same basic structure.

...the skeletal differences,...

It takes only a casual glance at these images to see that the skeletal differences between cats and dogs are far less than the differences between those trilobites:

...that's what makes them different Kinds...

Again, kind is a word with no definition, so you haven't made an intelligible statement.

...judging at that basic level (but they are also behaviorally extremely different, dogs are all behaviorally clearly dogs and cats clearly cats).

Is behavior part of the definition of kind now? And how are you comparing dog/cat behavioral differences to trilobite behavioral differences?

Humans and chimps differ in their basic structure,...

No, they don't. Humans and chimps have the same basic structure.

And if you think those images of humans/chimps and cats/dogs show greater differences than those trilobites then all it tells us is that your eyesight is far worse than you've let on.

...that's what makes them different Kinds at that level too,...

Again, kind is a word with no definition, so you haven't made an intelligible statement.

...forget behavioral differences which are enormous to say the least.

Again, is behavior part of the definition of kind now?

They do not have the same basic shape despite having the same appendages as do cats and dogs as well. I think the difference in basic shape is apparent in both comparisons.

First you claimed body plan was the criteria, but all mammals have the same basic body plan, so now you're claiming the criteria is basic shape? Inconsistent much?

That's how I sort it but since all this is subjective...

Yes, since you're making things up what you're doing is highly subjective. You need objective criteria, beginning with a definition of kind.

...there's no point in trying to argue it beyond this point.

While your criteria are subjective (and ill-defined and constantly changing), your judgments about degree of differences between creatures are objectively wrong.

I suppose you'll continue to see it the way you do and so will I see it as I do.

But we all know you can't see.

--Percy

...not neat and flat but hard and lumpy. Then more hard and lumpy and unsorted variegated stuff would be above it, and in fact impossible to differentiate from it. You aren't going to get neat layers of clearly different sediments.

At the risk of pointing out the tragically obvious, you have just described how the ongoing accumulation of "hard and lumpy and unsorted variegated stuff" becomes an undifferentiated layer after lithification. A layer . Not many layers. Those other neat layers come later.

Note that those lumpy, variegated surfaces and the things that live on them are colloquially known as "landscapes". You should let the little compartments in your head talk to one another. Also try to imagine the actual nature of the reality that your words purport to represent.

The next "neat" layer(s) may not form for eons, and the layer we have chosen to focus on may well have been smoothed by other forces before being covered by them, or subsequent activity on the surface can remove the layers that did the original compression and plane the area smooth prior to yet another round of sedimentation or whatever. Have you seen how thoroughly ice sheets can plane away topography? The mountains up where we go boating are littered with hanging valleys in which the stone has been planed smooth by glaciers. As they silt in from erosion and vegetation, the next layers to be lithified will be sitting on glass smooth stone. Neat smooth layers of stone on stone in valleys where grizzlies now roam.