Summer Tastes Like Granite

Drop a fluffy slice of continental shelf on a plate of oceanic crust. Add water. Subduct. Be advised episodes of extreme shaking will periodically occur. If near the coast during a full rip of the subduction boundary, drop everything, pick up the kids and pets, move to high ground, hold on to something that won’t fall on you, and remain calm. The shaking will pass ( so will aftershocks, eventually).

As subduction progresses, the intrusion of seawater beneath the continental crust will lower the melting temperature of adjacent rock - producing magma plumes. Do not be alarmed. These plumes play a vital role in recycling numerous mineral compounds essential to modern life. Continue percolating magma to the surface for at least one million years. Here again, episodes of mild shaking may occur. If among these tremors, get to somewhere the heck else should word go out about a nearby mountain blowing itself to the bottom of a crater lake two thousand feet deep.

For best results, ensure the silica content of percolating magma plumes remains between 52 and 63 percent. Maintaining this balance correctly ensures that explosive surface eruptions will distribute rich layers of pulverized rock ash, superheated pyroclastic ejecta, and devastating lahars across wide areas. It is advisable, however, not to be present when the deposits are laid down (unless preserving a “slice of local life” vignette is considered desirable). Pay particular attention to drainage routes for lahars. Traveling a hundred miles an hour, these rivers of steaming mud, dead trees, and giant boulders quickly reach locations surprisingly far from their originating eruptions without obvious warning signs (such as gigantic columns of ash).

After a few million years of eruptions, allow underlying magma chambers to cool, and then uplift bedrock gradually. More shaking will occur. Sit back and enjoy the ride. Simultaneous with uplift, erode surface features until cooled magma chambers become exposed to weather. Glaciate for additional scenic topographical features and gravelly soil. Capture runoff in impermeable lake basins and subterranean aquifers. Sprinkle ponderosa pine, cedar, fir, maple, oak, and other varieties liberally onto surrounding landscapes for additional flavoring.

Congratulations!

A new granite wonderland awaits. First things first: gold.

A whole lot of shaking in the ground cracks an awful lot of rock. Hot water flowing through cracks grows crystals the same way old showers do. In the case of hot water flowing through fractured solidified magma, the crystals are quartz and opal, while the minerals bottled up inside include all manner of ba-da-bling from deep within the Earth. And while a fever for cowbell might bring indy label cred, one for gold brings demand for hotels, motels, flophouses, saloons, adult entertainment, fine restaurants, affordable restaurants, banks, and gardening tools.

It is true that gold flecks do still twinkle in riverbeds for anyone patient enough to look, but Gold Rush country has become more about an idealized archaic lifestyle than shiny alternatives to fiat currencies. If there’s one rustic timber frame restaurant with a cedar deck overlapping the shore of some a dark blue lake surrounded by cold, eroded magma chambers - then there’s a thousand. Come summertime, each one of those thousand has a thousand customers of its own line up every day for the next available seat.

Reservations are rarely taken, but that’s not so bad.

The air smells like pine trees. The pine trees smell like the water rising through their roots. It took ten million years for the mountains around that lake to get where they are today. One drop of melted snow takes its own eternity to flow from cracks at the top of those mountains to the bottom of a well. The flavor of that water is nothing less than continents grinding over oceans, caverns filled with hardened magma, volcanoes blowing themselves apart, relentless erosion, remorseless glaciers, and a good measure of ba-da-bling.

Sitting on a cedar deck in air that smells like pine, listening to waves break on a rocky beach beside a bottomless lake, the flavor of summer is best appreciated as a bowl of ice cream made on site with water taken from a deep well. Don’t reach for chocolate sauce! Top this wonder instead with honey from hives kept on mountain slopes and thimbleberries from nearby riverbanks. Grown ups can pair this treat, ten million years in the making, with a hearty glass of local Zin.