Audio
Access Wayside: Fiery Foundation
Transcript
Near the road that passes through Schoodic Point, the angled sign entitled "Fiery Foundation" stands archored to a granite base on one side of a spruce tree.
The image rendered on the sign's panel reflects the actual view of the rocky landscape as seen from about 60 paces to the right of the sign.
The sign's title appears over the image of shoreline layered with different types of rock.
Introductory text reads: The colors and textures of the rocks around you tell a story of heat, pressure and time that formed this landscape. These rocks started as massive pools of molten magma deep below the earth’s surface. As this liquid rock cooled into granite, it cracked, allowing newer magma with a different mix of minerals to intrude along the fractures. As upper layers of bedrock eroded, pink granite striped with dark diabase dikes was exposed.
More text identifies different types of rock. Cracked pinkish rock forms rough uneven layers. Schoodic Point granite has smaller mineral crystals and more fractures than the Cadillac Mountain granite that makes up much of nearby Mount Desert Island.
A dark patch resembles an irregular hole in the granite surface. Diabase dikes are “softer” than granite and erode more quickly leaving nooks and crannies where water and soil collect.
A rough, gray-white boulder of Lucerne granite nestles in a crack that slices through the bedrock's flat pink layers. Glacial erratics were transported many miles by ice and often look different than the surrounding bedrock.
An inset illustrates a cross section of the rocky terrain. Thick dark diabase dikes branch upward like tree limbs through pink Schoodic Point granite.
Description
Recorded audio description of a wayside, "Fiery Foundation."
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