My Fault, by Jude Gassaway

You can see my fault from outer space.

Of the two big islands in the Gulf of California, Tiburon is the one closest to the Mexican mainland. Seen from above, the northeastern lobe shows a sharp line heading northwest, delineating lighter ground to the north. That straight line is my fault.

Air photo, Tiburon Island (Google Maps)

     In the winter of 1972, just as the subject of plate tectonics was getting started, another student and I were assigned to map the northeast end of Tiburon Island for our Graduate Field Geology class at San Diego State University.
     
     The week before, while mapping on the mainland, we met a pair of Wycliffe Bible translators, whose mission was to bring the word of God to native people. The Religious’ approach was to identify, define, and transcribe the local vernacular, and then translate the Bible into the new language. Here, they focused on the Seri Tribe.

     In Punta Chueca, I met a Seri man who wanted to demonstrate his new reading skills. He had a lesson pamphlet with everyday words in English, Spanish, and Seri. I remember two of the words because of their similarity.
     

A few Seri place names on our base map included oddities like Sierra “Kunkaak” and the multi-hyphenated Punta “Ast-Ho-Ben-O-Glap”.

Our professor, in the course of drafting the geologic map and interpreting the history, had to name and describe the geologic observations. The fault in my field area was just a bit off-kilter to the then-known regional picture. It needed a name so that its geologic significance could be discussed in the text. There were no place names in the fault valley.

I was unaware of the professor’s solution until the map was published several years later. The professor told me that he had noticed that I thought differently and that I often veered off to a little bit away from the others, just as this fault wandered. (As the only woman in the class, sometimes I moved away just to relieve myself.) Then, he thought, “yawassag” –that sounded kind of like a Seri word. And thus, Yawassag Fault was named. Jude Gassaway.

Gastil. R.G., and Krummenacher, Daniel, 1975, Reconnaissance geologic map of coastal of coastal Sonora between Puerto Lobos and Bahia Kino, Geological Society of America, map and Chart Series, MC-16.

  © 2017

About the Author

Retired USGS Field Geologist.
Founding member, Denver Womens Chorus. 

Jude Gassaway is the figure on the left.