Driving with Dad up Highway 395, along the imposing eastern face of the Sierra Nevada mountains, seeing their peaks piercing the sky, their almost plumb plummet from the crest to the valley floor, and exposed granite, intrigued me. Yeah, “God created it all,” but the how did more than puzzle—it astounded. Some decades later a good friend, Dick Markano, a UCLA geology grad, led a group from our church into the Sierra backcountry, and an unintended geology lesson emerged with my questioning. That tantalized me, and I yearned to take a night course on basic geology. Yet that desire was too far down the priority list to punch through into action.