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