Do You Have a Rock

rock check

do you know where your rock is do you

have a rock

when was the last time you had a rock

i love rocks i thought this was a quirk

a particular passion shared by

geoscientists and maybe a few others

then i had a very bad day far from home

lonely and homesick in a big city on

unfamiliar ground

where i didn’t know how to read the

history of the few rocks i could find

so i reached out and i asked friends on

the internet to show me their rocks

my friends indulged me and then their

friends did

and then their friends and then several

thousand strangers on the internet were

showing me

photographs and stories of their rocks

i was overwhelmed and thrilled

not just to be surrounded by comforting

geology

but to discover so many others shared

this passion of mine

my third favorite part of rock checks is

getting dragged along

with strangers cooing over each other’s

rocks

my second favorite part of rock checks

is how many people

treat them as inspiration to go out and

acquire a new stone

especially after laments of an abandoned

childhood

rock collection but my favorite part of

rock checks

is finding out the stories of people’s

rocks

every rock has a story rocks are

relentless time

keepers tracking everything from ice

ages to magnetic field orientations to

how fast a river flowed

rocks are also horrendous gossips eager

to share their stories of deep time if

we just learn how to listen

sediments build up in the bottoms of

lakes in annual layers called varves the

geological equivalent of a tree ring

that tracks

how much rain carried debris down the

hills each year

the type and size of crystals in an

igneous rock whisper secrets

of milk composition and temperature

history growing larger

the longer they stay nestled in

subterranean warmth

every fault and fold tells a story

of either a brittle failure or ductile

deformation

in unintuitive evidence that under

pressure

rocks are far more fluid than any solid

has the right to be

rocks are a bizarre blend of beloved and

disregarded

they play everything from hero to

background rock 4221 in the stories we

tell

they dominate our lexicon of metaphors

for worthless items

yet like penguins we trade shiny rocks

during our courtship rituals

we eat rocks every day in the form of

salt

and we create synthetic minerals in our

freezer every time we chill water

pretty yet durable rocks are used as

status symbols for decorating everything

from our ears to our kitchens

through countless mundane interactions

rocks are

integral to the stories of our lives

but these stories aren’t just what

happened before or even what happened to

us

there are also lessons in what could

happen next

rocks are a fable made solid a

cautionary tale told in ice cords or

landscapes

awaiting our interpretation

i have a favorite rock i have a lot of

favorite rocks really

both wild rocks that i go and visit and

domesticated rocks that i tuck away at

home

and trade out depending on whose story i

need to hear

i have a bumblebee jasper that’s my

geological equivalent

of walking softly while carrying a big

stick

the spider’s name is made of neither

bumblebees nor the opaque cord of jasper

instead it’s made out of blackened

fool’s gold

acid sensitive calcite and deceptively

cheerful yellow arsenic blended with

sulfur

it’s a quiet rock but one that tells the

story

of staggering violence chaos and

eruptions

tamed into beauty formed on the shores

of a stratovolcano in indonesia

capable of producing the most violent

eruptions on earth

i adore turbidites sheets of ocean floor

sediment curling like a cinnamon roll

in a hidden underwater landslide

normally they’re only centimeters big

but in british columbia we have one

that’s bigger than i am

it was captured green by grain on a

sheet of plastic like a fossil cast but

with

a landslide instead of a footprint

it’s in a museum preserved decades

longer than the original hillside washed

away in our endless rain

i go visit it anytime i need a reminder

that even little things can be big under

the right circumstances

but the rock that brings me the most

hope when i’m feeling too overwhelmed

is this rather ordinary piece with red

and black stripes

called a banded iron formation it’s an

extinct rock

a rock whose formation conditions are

over and will never occur again

it’s that moment of transition that keep

them beloved in my collection

banded iron formations tell the story of

the most dramatic and traumatic moment

in earth’s climate history the

transition from when we went

from a rock with primordial seas and a

wispy atmosphere of

thin toxic volcanic gases into a living

world rich in oxygen

these delicate layers of shiny black and

matte bread

tell the story that’s both a cautionary

tale

and a glimmer of hope as we face our own

climate crisis

understanding the story of banded iron

formations requires backing up to

understand stromatolites

blue-green algae that grew as mats in

that primordial ocean

wrapping themselves in calcium carbonate

equivalent to how

modern coral polyps build out reefs in

our modern oceans

3.5 billion years ago through

photosynthesis stromatolites took over

those early oceans

they breathed in that early atmosphere

more akin to a damp mars than anything

we know today

they not only survived the traces of

hydrochloric acid methane and ammonia

they thrived more and more and more

stromatolites took over those early

shallow bathtub warm waters

but they weren’t just breathing in they

were breathing

out the early oceans were full of

stromatolites

pumping out oxygen saturating those

early seas

that’s where my beloved bended iron

formations come in

just like rain falls from the sky

sediment and precipitated minerals rain

down inside the ocean

falling and creating layers of mud and

sludge that capture the history of a

particular place and time

during the reign of the stromatolites

that sludge told a history of

oxygen reacting with iron to create

black layers of iron oxides like

magnetites and

hematites switching to red layers of

rich muddy jaspers when the iron levels

were too low

unlike my beloved bumblebee jasper this

time as true jasper’s opaque quartz

grains hardened into rock

moisture metallized producing more

oxygen made these layers of black and

red and black and red

and black and red building up into the

ocean floor

until the iron was all precipitated the

oceans were saturated with oxygen

and this era of rock creation was done

like everything interesting this tidy

ending holds a little eye of

simplification

we found pockets of younger banded iron

formations

that whisper tantalizing hints of a time

when our planet was briefly wrapped in

ice stripping some seeds of their oxygen

but these are the exceptions that prove

the rule

the epilogue to our story

but the stromatolites didn’t stop

producing oxygen just because the oceans

were saturated

soon that oxygen started building up in

the atmosphere

triggering the great oxygenation event

which led to the cambrian explosion of

life

countless creatures took advantage of

new oxygen-rich metabolic pathways

it even changed what minerals could form

and how they weathered when exposed at

the surface

creating rocks that can’t exist anywhere

else in our solar system

it was a fundamental shift in our

planet’s atmosphere

a climate feedback loop of geology

biology chemistry and atmospheric

science that forever

altered the earth at least we call it

the great oxygenation event

from the stromatolite view is the great

oxygenation

catastrophe these same changes

that created opportunities for new more

complicated life

were dramatically different from the

circumstances under which stromatolites

evolved

a billion years ago at the end of the

banded iron formations and the start of

the trilobites

stromatolized nearly vanished from the

fossil record

like before the exception is what proves

the rule

we can still find some modern living

stromatolites tucked away in

shallow isolated bays like shark bay

australia

or the beaches of the bahamas they look

like stone

mushrooms an innocuous appearance

camouflaging their dramatic role in the

shifting of the very nature of life on

earth

but most dramatics died poisoned by the

very environment they created

leaving behind fossils that are both

tribute and warning

i visited the eastern madelites once

going on a road trip through a blizzard

to hunt for them on the side of a

country road

through a winding forest as the sun set

lower on the horizon

i found them in what looked like a road

pull-off except for a solitary

understated plaque describing their

scientific significance

they were nearly flat rocks remnants of

a puddle that couldn’t have been more

than ankle deep now buried so deeply in

snow i had to dig to find them

when i brushed the snow off i could

trace my fingers along the countless

lines of each mat of algae

growing on top of the one before towards

the sun under a sky

so foreign were not even certain it had

clouds

that’s the story i think of every time i

run my chain through my banded iron

formation pendant and adorn myself with

a piece of earth’s history

that’s the story i tell every time

someone argues with me about climate

change

that the planet will survive yes the

planet has undergone

more dramatic changes before but just

like stromatolites

just because life finds a way to thrive

doesn’t mean we will

but this is a story that also brings me

hope when i feel bombarded by climate

nihilism

and when the skies are so thick with

smoke that i’m living under a perpetual

golden hour

and everything feels hopeless bend on

iron formations are a story of calamity

but also one of transition they tell me

stories of what went wrong before

begging me to learn the lessons that

they’re holding so that maybe this time

we can do better unlike stromatolites

humans have the ability to strategize

through science we can look at the world

around us and

understand what will happen next so we

can create

any future we want

where stromatolites endlessly pumped

oxygen into the oceans and then to the

skies

until they created an atmosphere so

toxic that they could no longer survive

their own environment

we have the ability to look around

and do better and that’s the power

and the fascination of rocks

people are creatures of stories we learn

everything about the world around us

from stories we are born

knowing nothing and learn more through

stories than we ever could

through experience and exploration first

hand one of the things we learn

is how to listen to the stories of rocks

from rocks we can learn the stories of

continents dancing of oceans splitting

even how our planet was formed

from rocks we can learn stories of

change and understand how to do better

or at least do less harm rocks are

silent storytellers

but that doesn’t make their connection

any less deep

rocks are linked to our curiosity to our

wonder to our sense of connection to the

world around us

rocks are everywhere lurking in the

building stones in the sidewalk gravel

of even the densest cities

there’s storytellers with billions of

years of history to share in every

pebble

and they’re infinitely patient listeners

willing to absorb our worries when we

fiddle with a beach stone worn smooth by

countless waves

no matter where you are or how long it’s

been since you last had a rock

another pebble is waiting for you to

discover it and listen to its story

i asked before if you had a rock

if not maybe it’s time to pick one up