Latest from Gil Mull group: interpretive panels almost done

Kay Cashman

Petroleum News

“We are very close to finishing up the interpretive panels; they look awesome!” Tom Homza wrote in an Oct. 31 email to a loosely organized group of 80-some friends, admirers and colleagues of the late renowned Alaska geologist Gil Mull.

The group’s first accomplishment was the June placement of a remembrance plaque in front of the Arctic Interagency Visitor Center in Coldfoot, on the southern slopes of the Brooks Range.

The plaque, which contained a brief bio of Gil, was placed on an existing wall in the rock garden that contained two sizable Kanayut formation boulders, a particularly beautiful rose-colored chert pebble conglomerate that records the erosion of an ancient mountain belt.

Another of the group’s projects was the Charles Gilbert “Gil” Mull Field Camp Scholarship; a project spearheaded by Geosciences Professor Michael Whalen of the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

The group’s goal, which they exceeded, was to build a minimum endowment of $25,000, that would provide a UAF scholarship in perpetuity.

Another project was a series of interpretive panels to be placed at key locations in the Brooks Range.

That effort morphed to include a broader “Pioneers of AK geology” series (not just Gil) of interpretive panels - the topic of Homza’s Oct. 31 email.

Homza also asked members to look at any of Gil’s emails that they had kept, for a John McPhee quote that Gil included at the end of all his emails.

The quote was: “Geologists inhabit scenes that no one ever saw, scenes of global sweep, gone and gone again, including seas, mountains, rivers, forests, and archipelagos of aching beauty, rising in volcanic violence to settle down quietly and forever disappear - almost disappear.”

If you’d like to receive the group’s monthly email contact Homza at [email protected].

- KAY CASHMAN