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Turning to Stone: Discovering the Subtle Wisdom of Rocks
Rocks are the record of our creative planet reinventing itself for four billion years. Nothing is ever lost, just transformed.
Marcia Bjornerud’s life as a geologist has coincided with an extraordinary period of discovery. From an insular girlhood in rural Wisconsin, she found her way to an unlikely career studying mountains in remote parts of the world. As one of few women in her field, she witnessed the shift in our understanding of the Earth, from solid object to an entity in a constant state of transformation. In the most tumultous times of her own life, a deep understanding of our rocky planet imbued her life with meaning.
The lives of rocks are long and complex, spanning billions of years and yet shaping our own human lives in powerful, invisible ways. Sandstone that filters out pathogens creating underground oases in aquifers of clean water. Ecologite is “the chosen rock” whose formation keeps the planet running. Earth is not just a passive backdrop, or a source of resources to be mined, extracted, and carved out. Rocks are full of wisdom, but somewhere along the way many of us have forgotten how to hear it.
When we are uncertain about where to find truth, a geocentric worldview reminds us that we are Earthlings, part of a planetary community where we can wisdom in the most unlikely places.
Marcia Bjornerud’s life as a geologist has coincided with an extraordinary period of discovery. From an insular girlhood in rural Wisconsin, she found her way to an unlikely career studying mountains in remote parts of the world. As one of few women in her field, she witnessed the shift in our understanding of the Earth, from solid object to an entity in a constant state of transformation. In the most tumultous times of her own life, a deep understanding of our rocky planet imbued her life with meaning.
The lives of rocks are long and complex, spanning billions of years and yet shaping our own human lives in powerful, invisible ways. Sandstone that filters out pathogens creating underground oases in aquifers of clean water. Ecologite is “the chosen rock” whose formation keeps the planet running. Earth is not just a passive backdrop, or a source of resources to be mined, extracted, and carved out. Rocks are full of wisdom, but somewhere along the way many of us have forgotten how to hear it.
When we are uncertain about where to find truth, a geocentric worldview reminds us that we are Earthlings, part of a planetary community where we can wisdom in the most unlikely places.
320 pages, Hardcover
First published August 13, 2024
200 people are currently reading
2251 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 123 reviews
November 19, 2024
I was immediately intrigued to read this memoir by Marcia Bjornerud, currently a Professor at Lawrence University with degrees in Geophysics and Structural Geology. I don’t get many chances to read memoirs from people in my general field of academic study much less a woman. I enjoyed reading about her travels and the various research projects she has undertaken in other countries including Norway and Canada.
I immediately loved the structure of this book with each chapter labeled with a type of rock and relating her studies, research and life experiences back to the meaning and setting of each. And since she started off in chapter one with sandstones, a rock I studied for both my undergraduate and graduate theses, I felt a quickly growing affinity for her storytelling. I really enjoyed the journey.
It amazes me that even though there is only a decade between our times of study how different our experiences were although some of that was probably a factor of location. Having worked in industry rather than academia through my almost twenty-year career, I know I’m a little behind in keeping up with the latest geological research and theories but am a little overwhelmed with just how much information I have missed. This memoir introduced me to several new concepts that I am eager to learn more about in the future.
I switched between the ebook and audiobook while reading this one. The book was narrated by Rebecca Stern. This was my first audiobook listen by this narrator, and I found her voice to be pleasant, propelling me along the narrative in a smooth and easy manner.
Thank you to Netgalley, Flatiron Books, and Macmillan Audio for a copy provided for an honest review.
I immediately loved the structure of this book with each chapter labeled with a type of rock and relating her studies, research and life experiences back to the meaning and setting of each. And since she started off in chapter one with sandstones, a rock I studied for both my undergraduate and graduate theses, I felt a quickly growing affinity for her storytelling. I really enjoyed the journey.
It amazes me that even though there is only a decade between our times of study how different our experiences were although some of that was probably a factor of location. Having worked in industry rather than academia through my almost twenty-year career, I know I’m a little behind in keeping up with the latest geological research and theories but am a little overwhelmed with just how much information I have missed. This memoir introduced me to several new concepts that I am eager to learn more about in the future.
I switched between the ebook and audiobook while reading this one. The book was narrated by Rebecca Stern. This was my first audiobook listen by this narrator, and I found her voice to be pleasant, propelling me along the narrative in a smooth and easy manner.
Thank you to Netgalley, Flatiron Books, and Macmillan Audio for a copy provided for an honest review.
June 8, 2024
I absolutely loved this book. It was part memoir, part science and each part kept me turning pages. I think the author did a really amazing job at using time as a theme to tell both the story of her life / career path and also to give context to her discussions of different rocks and rock formations throughout the book. In addition to learning some new things about geology, I also learned a lot about what it is like to be a geologist. Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an advance copy of this book in return for my opinion. It was a great weekend read!
June 23, 2025
This book was more interesting than I expected. At first, I thought a book about rocks could be a bit boring, but Marcia Bjørnerud knows how to keep your attention—even if you are not so much into geology. What I liked very much is how she mixes her personal life with her work. Each chapter talks about a different rock, and at the same time, about a moment in her life. From the sandstone in Wisconsin to the stones on Spitsbergen, she tells stories that are not only scientific but also very human.
May 18, 2024
The Good: Modern geology and ancient rocks!
The Bad: Not entry level
The Literary: Structured through the lens of the author’s life
Geologist Marcia Bjornerud shares her love of rocks, both from an academic perspective through the lens of her life and through lessons the life-cycle of rocks can teach us.
While reading this, it dawned on me that there aren’t very many pop-geology books. I can name quite a few general interest science books, and there are loads of books specific to physics, astronomy, and psychology. More recently, there’s an increasing interest in biology and chemistry, but still very few geology books for the layperson.
Unfortunately, this book doesn’t quite meet that criterion. Even to a chemist like myself, the geology terms are thrown around quite casually, which can be confusing and off-putting for the average reader. Perhaps a reader with at least an intro semester in geology in college would fare better. But if you’re patient and looks up terms often, it’ll pay off.
I really like the structure of the book, which is half autobiography and half science. Bjornerud divides her own life story into chapters, then associates each period in time with a type of rock, usually because that rock featured heavily in her location or her studies, but she then extends the correlation into metaphor.
For example, in Chapter 1, as a girl growing up in rural Wisconsin Bjornerud would get sand in her shoes walking to the bus stop, and this kicks off the chapter on Sandstone. She reflects on the legacy of rural America, both the good and the bad, including environmental abuse and racism. Their farmland used to be an expanse of old-growth white pine in the Menominee Nation. The tribe selectively harvested the trees, whereas settlers cut them all down for agriculture before becoming interested in the oil beneath. Bjornerud traces the history of the sand, from its early days as granite in the Proterozoic mountains, then a sandy Cambrian beach, then hardening into sandstone. Without all the tree roots, Wisconsin’s sandstone eroded away with every rain, so the 1930s saw the concept of soil preservation arise. Hydrogeologists became interested in its role in groundwater, determining that the sandstone filters pathogens from rainwater and creates clean water oases underground. Bjornerud also compares the increase in environmental change by humans with the social upheaval in her childhood in the 1970s, from politics to technology.
Bjornerud’s life in itself has some interesting parts, but it’s not nearly sensational enough to make a standalone autobiography. In fact, some parts are quite dull, in the sense that they are normal. Raising kids as a single mom, or feeling out of touch with the local community, moving for a new job, or even grieving, these are all events that make up a normal life. I admit I wondered several times if I even liked the structure of the book, because there’s little to make the reader care deeply for the author.
However, in hindsight I understand the structure. I realize now that Bjornerud’s life is not meant to be unique. Take any one of our lives, sensational or normal, and set it against the backdrop of the life of a rock, against billions of years, and we’re all quite small and humbled against the span of deep time. Our lives are microcosms of an even bigger story that we forget we’re a part of. Our own tumultuous life events are small fries against the transformation going on in the depths of the Earth.
My favorite part of each chapter is when she finally dives into the rocks themselves. There’s an entire world of knowledge to uncover, both with the science and the history of rocks and our understanding of them. Some of my top take-away’s include:
Geology is a relatively new science. The age of the Earth and plate tectonics wasn’t determined until the 1950s and 60s, respectively.
Deep sea sediments suggest that ice sheets in the northern hemisphere melted and reformed at least 30 times over 2 million years
Turbidite rock forms a famous outcrop of rock at Siccar Point, Scotland, considered the birthplace of modern geology. In 1778, James Hutton surmised that the deformed rocks had once been in the heart of an ancient mountain range, 150 years before the concept of plate tectonics.
The granite problem, which essentially asked, “when and how did all the Earth’s granite form,” was not solved until very recently. Multiple competing theories divided the geology community for decades.
The extremely rare ecologite is the motive force behind tectonics, in which basalt turns into garnet-rich ecologite, which sinks slabs of ocean crust deep into the mantle.
I think Bjornerud’s primary message is to inspire us to see that the Earth is not a passive backdrop against which we live our lives. Environmentalist themes emerge — not just for the sake of our children — with the knowledge that we live in a greater ecosystem bigger in space and time than we can imagine.
Highly recommended for those with a basic knowledge in geology!
The Bad: Not entry level
The Literary: Structured through the lens of the author’s life
Geologist Marcia Bjornerud shares her love of rocks, both from an academic perspective through the lens of her life and through lessons the life-cycle of rocks can teach us.
While reading this, it dawned on me that there aren’t very many pop-geology books. I can name quite a few general interest science books, and there are loads of books specific to physics, astronomy, and psychology. More recently, there’s an increasing interest in biology and chemistry, but still very few geology books for the layperson.
Unfortunately, this book doesn’t quite meet that criterion. Even to a chemist like myself, the geology terms are thrown around quite casually, which can be confusing and off-putting for the average reader. Perhaps a reader with at least an intro semester in geology in college would fare better. But if you’re patient and looks up terms often, it’ll pay off.
I really like the structure of the book, which is half autobiography and half science. Bjornerud divides her own life story into chapters, then associates each period in time with a type of rock, usually because that rock featured heavily in her location or her studies, but she then extends the correlation into metaphor.
For example, in Chapter 1, as a girl growing up in rural Wisconsin Bjornerud would get sand in her shoes walking to the bus stop, and this kicks off the chapter on Sandstone. She reflects on the legacy of rural America, both the good and the bad, including environmental abuse and racism. Their farmland used to be an expanse of old-growth white pine in the Menominee Nation. The tribe selectively harvested the trees, whereas settlers cut them all down for agriculture before becoming interested in the oil beneath. Bjornerud traces the history of the sand, from its early days as granite in the Proterozoic mountains, then a sandy Cambrian beach, then hardening into sandstone. Without all the tree roots, Wisconsin’s sandstone eroded away with every rain, so the 1930s saw the concept of soil preservation arise. Hydrogeologists became interested in its role in groundwater, determining that the sandstone filters pathogens from rainwater and creates clean water oases underground. Bjornerud also compares the increase in environmental change by humans with the social upheaval in her childhood in the 1970s, from politics to technology.
Bjornerud’s life in itself has some interesting parts, but it’s not nearly sensational enough to make a standalone autobiography. In fact, some parts are quite dull, in the sense that they are normal. Raising kids as a single mom, or feeling out of touch with the local community, moving for a new job, or even grieving, these are all events that make up a normal life. I admit I wondered several times if I even liked the structure of the book, because there’s little to make the reader care deeply for the author.
However, in hindsight I understand the structure. I realize now that Bjornerud’s life is not meant to be unique. Take any one of our lives, sensational or normal, and set it against the backdrop of the life of a rock, against billions of years, and we’re all quite small and humbled against the span of deep time. Our lives are microcosms of an even bigger story that we forget we’re a part of. Our own tumultuous life events are small fries against the transformation going on in the depths of the Earth.
My favorite part of each chapter is when she finally dives into the rocks themselves. There’s an entire world of knowledge to uncover, both with the science and the history of rocks and our understanding of them. Some of my top take-away’s include:
Geology is a relatively new science. The age of the Earth and plate tectonics wasn’t determined until the 1950s and 60s, respectively.
Deep sea sediments suggest that ice sheets in the northern hemisphere melted and reformed at least 30 times over 2 million years
Turbidite rock forms a famous outcrop of rock at Siccar Point, Scotland, considered the birthplace of modern geology. In 1778, James Hutton surmised that the deformed rocks had once been in the heart of an ancient mountain range, 150 years before the concept of plate tectonics.
The granite problem, which essentially asked, “when and how did all the Earth’s granite form,” was not solved until very recently. Multiple competing theories divided the geology community for decades.
The extremely rare ecologite is the motive force behind tectonics, in which basalt turns into garnet-rich ecologite, which sinks slabs of ocean crust deep into the mantle.
I think Bjornerud’s primary message is to inspire us to see that the Earth is not a passive backdrop against which we live our lives. Environmentalist themes emerge — not just for the sake of our children — with the knowledge that we live in a greater ecosystem bigger in space and time than we can imagine.
Highly recommended for those with a basic knowledge in geology!
August 31, 2024
A book that is part autobiography and partly science in the geology field. The book is organized rock types, each rock type being the focus of a chapter and the author fits this into that portion of her life. Such as, beginning with being a child running to the bus with sand in her shoe leads to sandstone rocks. I liked the format. I found myself connecting more with her life than the science as I'm not that adept with geology. Some of it was too scientific, while other parts were not. A bit of a mix.
There are discussions of some of the controversies over the years, such as the asteroid hit that killed the dinosaurs. The field of geology, such as understanding of earthquakes and volcanoes, is relatively new. It comes with disagreements when new knowledge doesn’t support the current theory.
There were a few points where I glossed over the areas that got too deep in geologic terms, but a more determined reader would likely glean more if pausing and turning towards other resources to understand the terminology better. Possibly the book would work best for those with some understanding of geology, or a strong interest.
Thanks to Flatiron Books, Macmillan Audio and NetGalley for an advance review copy of this book.
There are discussions of some of the controversies over the years, such as the asteroid hit that killed the dinosaurs. The field of geology, such as understanding of earthquakes and volcanoes, is relatively new. It comes with disagreements when new knowledge doesn’t support the current theory.
There were a few points where I glossed over the areas that got too deep in geologic terms, but a more determined reader would likely glean more if pausing and turning towards other resources to understand the terminology better. Possibly the book would work best for those with some understanding of geology, or a strong interest.
Thanks to Flatiron Books, Macmillan Audio and NetGalley for an advance review copy of this book.
May 12, 2025
Marcia Bjornerud (b. 1962) is a professor of geosciences at Lawrence University in Wisconsin. Her 2024 book Turning to Stone weaves her life story and insights with interesting factoids about geology that are accessible to scientists and laypeople alike.
As a fellow female scientist, I love career retrospective books by other women in science who've helped forge a path for people in my generation. I though the memoir elements of this book were particularly strong, as Dr. Bjornerud demonstrates a lot of growth and grace in talking about difficult parts of her career and personal life.
Further reading: career retrospectives by female scientists and academics
A Lab of One's Own: One Woman's Personal Journey Through Sexism in Science by Rita Colwell
A Portrait of the Scientist as a Young Woman by Lindy-Elkins Tantin
Lab Girl by Hope Jahren
Green World: A Tragicomic Memoir of Love & Shakespeare by Michelle Ephraim
Not a memoir, but also relevant:
The Exceptions: Nancy Hopkins, MIT, and the Fight for Women in Science by Kate Zernike
My statistics:
Book 144 for 2025
Book 2070 cumulatively
As a fellow female scientist, I love career retrospective books by other women in science who've helped forge a path for people in my generation. I though the memoir elements of this book were particularly strong, as Dr. Bjornerud demonstrates a lot of growth and grace in talking about difficult parts of her career and personal life.
Further reading: career retrospectives by female scientists and academics
A Lab of One's Own: One Woman's Personal Journey Through Sexism in Science by Rita Colwell
A Portrait of the Scientist as a Young Woman by Lindy-Elkins Tantin
Lab Girl by Hope Jahren
Green World: A Tragicomic Memoir of Love & Shakespeare by Michelle Ephraim
Not a memoir, but also relevant:
The Exceptions: Nancy Hopkins, MIT, and the Fight for Women in Science by Kate Zernike
My statistics:
Book 144 for 2025
Book 2070 cumulatively
November 21, 2024
I’m in love. I want to read everything from this author now. I’m sure that, as a geology major with a passion for social justice and metaphor, I am biased. But that feels fine to me. I’m happy to be biased towards this book, this author. It’s unclear to me just how accessible this book would be to someone with little to no geology knowledge - I’m inclined to say that it would still be good, but, as previously stated, I am biased. But either way, this book has such a beautiful way of weaving the stories of the earth into the stories of herself and humanity. It absolutely brings to life much of the complex love I have for geology.
“Rocks have taught me…to perceive animacy in stillness and messages in silence; to respect the power of the incremental and accept the potential for the catastrophic; to be comfortable with unresolved mystery and unrequited affection.”
“Rocks have taught me…to perceive animacy in stillness and messages in silence; to respect the power of the incremental and accept the potential for the catastrophic; to be comfortable with unresolved mystery and unrequited affection.”
Read
March 10, 2025a vividly written, educational memoir that entwines the stories of specific rocks with the author's life journey of an academic geologist.
July 27, 2025
This book, for me, makes a really great companion to braiding sweetgrass. Bjonerud explains things clearly, and it’s cool how the autobiographical stories shed a more human light on the geographical principles and vice versa. I think this book does a great job at increasing care and admiration for Earth, without needing to resort to the anthropomorphism of the planet.
Read
April 30, 2025DNF I really wanted to like this book. I liked the parts about her life, but the geology parts I just couldn't read. And there are a lot of them. My brain just went off to another place every time a geological explanation came up. I tried to go back and reread and it just happened every time. This is no one's fault (ha, ha) but my own.
November 16, 2024
Poetic and science nerdy - a rare combo. I really loved learning to zoom out to broader scales of time through this enchanting read.
There are some sections where the geology science was above my knowledge and understanding but that didn't detract from the overall enjoyment of this book.
There are some sections where the geology science was above my knowledge and understanding but that didn't detract from the overall enjoyment of this book.
March 6, 2025
4.5 stars. Finding good books on geology topics for the general public is not easy. There just aren’t as many as there are for astronomy. Turning to Stone is just the sort of book I was hoping for. The author has so much passion for geological processes and explains them really well. In this book, she also weaves in quite expertly her upbringing in Wisconsin and Minnesota, here Scandinavian heritage, her challenges in getting educated and working in the field of geology because she is a woman, as well as her personal struggles as a mother.
I really enjoyed reading about her adventures in remote places like Ellesmere, Norway, and other areas that would be too cold, too rough for most of us. I admired how she embraced the physical challenges, as well as pushed through academic stresses. The geology information was fascinating and I learned a lot. Some, though, was too technical for me, but this book was sooo full of information, it’s one I will put on my reread shelf.
The only reason I didn’t give her 5 stars was that there was too much personal information woven throughout for me. But that’s just me. Others may find that a plus. I did find it really interesting how the world of academia works, the disgusting sexism in the field of geology, and how she pushed through barriers people tried to place for her. It’s definitely a book you want to read if you are at all interesting in rocks, minerals and geological processes.
I really enjoyed reading about her adventures in remote places like Ellesmere, Norway, and other areas that would be too cold, too rough for most of us. I admired how she embraced the physical challenges, as well as pushed through academic stresses. The geology information was fascinating and I learned a lot. Some, though, was too technical for me, but this book was sooo full of information, it’s one I will put on my reread shelf.
The only reason I didn’t give her 5 stars was that there was too much personal information woven throughout for me. But that’s just me. Others may find that a plus. I did find it really interesting how the world of academia works, the disgusting sexism in the field of geology, and how she pushed through barriers people tried to place for her. It’s definitely a book you want to read if you are at all interesting in rocks, minerals and geological processes.
September 15, 2024
iets over de helft toch maar gestopt
de geologie ging me af en toe boven de pet en de autobiografie werd eigenlijk steeds vervelender
de geologie ging me af en toe boven de pet en de autobiografie werd eigenlijk steeds vervelender
July 6, 2025
A frankly masterful memoir with an adept professorial voice. Reads like the perfect introductory college textbook, with a compelling survey of the science and an even more compelling and timely point-of-view.
To wit, our planet's geology is an eco-system like anything else—it demands our care and attention even more urgently than ever before.
Turning to Stone never talks down to the reader but does, I think, tacitly acknowledge that most people's exposure to the science is essentially zero. While Bjornerud's scientific summarizations are unsparing, they remain accessible. The categorization, the "stamp-collecting," that defines the American high-school geology experience is not present. Instead, this book is a prodding challenge, an opening to a new paradigm or mind-shift. Every page, we are encouraged to stop and meditate.
There's no easy way to talk about billion-year processes. Bjornerud approaches these epic time-spans by contextualizing them within her own life. Through patient study, rocks proved a source of wisdom. In the trials and tribulations of academic politics, tumultuous relationships, and loss (and the all-to ever-threatening specter of its inevitability) the tectonic-shiftings of our planet were never absent.
Memoirs can be an over-used haven for sentimentalism and truisms. Turning to Stone is a manifesto. As a vibrant interlocking system and not a neat, orderly display of inert labels, life mirrors the sublime complexity of nature.
To wit, our planet's geology is an eco-system like anything else—it demands our care and attention even more urgently than ever before.
Turning to Stone never talks down to the reader but does, I think, tacitly acknowledge that most people's exposure to the science is essentially zero. While Bjornerud's scientific summarizations are unsparing, they remain accessible. The categorization, the "stamp-collecting," that defines the American high-school geology experience is not present. Instead, this book is a prodding challenge, an opening to a new paradigm or mind-shift. Every page, we are encouraged to stop and meditate.
There's no easy way to talk about billion-year processes. Bjornerud approaches these epic time-spans by contextualizing them within her own life. Through patient study, rocks proved a source of wisdom. In the trials and tribulations of academic politics, tumultuous relationships, and loss (and the all-to ever-threatening specter of its inevitability) the tectonic-shiftings of our planet were never absent.
Memoirs can be an over-used haven for sentimentalism and truisms. Turning to Stone is a manifesto. As a vibrant interlocking system and not a neat, orderly display of inert labels, life mirrors the sublime complexity of nature.
April 6, 2025
This was on someone’s best of 2024 book list so I ordered it from the library. I’ve always been fascinated with rocks although I guess not enough to bother taking geology courses or educating myself about them. This book does that and so much more. The author takes what is a very complicated subject and manages to put it in layman’s term that you can actually understand and seamlessly, without odd starts and stops, inserts her own personal story. What I wasn’t expecting was the spiritual insight and connections between humans and our beautiful planet earth. She says, “Ritual is what distinguishes Earth from its other lifeless siblings. I want students to perceive of themselves as Earthlings, wholly dependent on the planet’s sacraments and to realize that any rational society would align its practices with those of the system that sustains it.” And in another note, “In the Western world, our shared rituals are no longer sacred but merely transactional—buying, selling, influencing, tweeting, endorsing, sponsoring, lobbying and above all, consuming. At this point, it is hard to find our way back; our worship of novelty is in fundamental opposition to the ‘eternal return.’” Fascinating read.
May 25, 2025
Loved the science, the joy of learning and discovery, and the sense of being an earthling. I haven’t done this many internet searches while reading a nonfiction book in a while.
Some of the autobiographical material I did not connect with; coy like a successful grant application, making the connection to the geological material clever, not profound. There is exceptionalism, it’s not of the Lab Girl variety, thankfully.
Some of the autobiographical material I did not connect with; coy like a successful grant application, making the connection to the geological material clever, not profound. There is exceptionalism, it’s not of the Lab Girl variety, thankfully.
October 5, 2024
4.5 - honestly, a pretty great read.
From the perspective of a geologist and what the rocks have taught her throughout her life. Definitely puts the presence and formation of rocks into a different perspective. Also, notes how the rocks are changing due to increases in the climate temperature.
From the perspective of a geologist and what the rocks have taught her throughout her life. Definitely puts the presence and formation of rocks into a different perspective. Also, notes how the rocks are changing due to increases in the climate temperature.
January 23, 2025
When the geological details got to be too much, I just let them flow by. Beautiful language, wonderful storytelling, and deep mastery and intimacy with rocks and teaching!
That having been said, 4 because sometimes it WAS too dense geologically. But only a few times.
Happen to be reading this after Serviceberry and before Life On Other Planets - nature and science through these women authors and scientists is helping me a lot nowadays.
That having been said, 4 because sometimes it WAS too dense geologically. But only a few times.
Happen to be reading this after Serviceberry and before Life On Other Planets - nature and science through these women authors and scientists is helping me a lot nowadays.
May 10, 2025
I didn't understand all the rock stuff, but I appreciate her love of her field and the understanding of the world through it. Fascinating and human.
May 24, 2025
This book transported me thirty years back in time to my days as a geology student.
December 24, 2024
The geosciences will always be a special muse of mine
January 9, 2025
In Svalbard it was undeniable that the austere landscape was alive, its rocks and water, ice and air in constant conversation. The terrain was animate, sentient, and creative. It would just take me thirty years to say that out loud.
Learning from rocks- understanding the plots and protagonists that shaped the places where we live- can help to provide a feeling of "embeddedness" in the cosmos, a sense of continuity and kinship with past and future. Perhaps the most distinctive characteristic of geologic thinking is the practice of roaming freely across many scales in space and time. In doing so, we can see ourselves in miniature, part of a long lineage of creatures on a creative planet that has renewed itself for more than four billion years while keeping an idiosyncratic diary of its activities over time in the form of rocks.
I love this writing, and I am hoping it starts a trend of more geologists opening up their knowledge to us. John McPhee did it for them in Annals of a Former World masterpiece, and I have tried here and there, but now it is up to them to wipe away some of the cobwebs and inscrutability around jargon and reveal the magic. I liked this better than Timefulness; that one had some condescension that could have been improved. This was more relatable in some ways, her life amidst the geological work she was doing over her lifetime.
While not everyone can or should become a geologist, geologic habits of mind-an instinct for Earth's rhythms, a feeling for our place in its story-are essential to the physical and psychic well-being of humankind. Around the time of the Industrial Revolution, Western society stopped seeing the Earth as imbued with wisdom-offering, in Shakespeare's words, "books in running brooks, sermons in stone" —and demoted it to dumb matter that we could outwit and exploit. This view of Earth as inert and unresponsive has led not only to environmental catastrophe but also to cultural anomie: We don't remember who we really are.
Science writer at the University of Utah wrote about a site near Moab: “At about the same rate that your heart beats, a Utah rock formation called Castleton Tower gently vibrates, keeping time and keeping watch over the sandstone desert. Swaying like a skyscraper, the red rock tower taps into the deep vibrations in the earth -- wind, waves and far-off earthquakes. New research from University of Utah geologists details the natural vibration of the tower, measured with the help of two skilled rock climbers. Understanding how this and other natural rock forms vibrate, they say, helps us keep an eye (or ear) on their structural health and helps us understand how human-made vibrations affect seemingly unmovable rocks.”
I know that it sounds woo woo to say the landscape or a rock is alive or animate or sentient; I just think we don’t have the right words for what it is, so we have to flail for the closest equivalent. I have been to the Castleton Tower area many times, and I have never felt these vibrations or anything like it, but I am not surprised. If you spend time in a natural setting, your body gets in tune, just like it can with people, that synchronization of thoughts and bodily processes; although there might need to be research to see if that is all humans, or just some, but I know it isn’t rare. There is something that we respond to there and it opens our heart and minds, I swear.
Contrary to their reputation, rocks are alert, responsive, communicative. They are the force field in which we live, the infrastructure of our existence, playing central roles in the “economy" of the world, as aquifers, architects of topography, managers of ocean chemistry, regulators of climate. They are also shape-shifters and fortune tellers. Once one becomes attuned to the language of rocks, it is obvious that Earth is vibrantly alive—-and speaking to us all the time. Although we have sickened ourselves and vandalized our own home through ignorance and hubris, we may be restored by turning to stone and heeding its lessons in durability. Let me introduce you to some of the rocks that have helped me understand what it means to be an Earthling.
The author approaches the topic by starting with sandstone from her childhood in Wisconsin, which is the scenery maker in Utah, remnants of both beach and Saharan-like sand dunes. I am always enthralled by the idea of the seas retreating to the shoreline of Colorado, withdrawing, then advancing again. The Rio Grande Rift from New Mexico to Wyoming could split the continent, and with sea level rise, another sea could advance. I love her new take on it as, “These cycles reveal a restless global ocean that waxes and wanes, retreating in ice ages and advancing in warmer times, in an endless on-again, off-again relationship with the continents.”
I have sand in my socks. Although I'm was not yet ready to understand its story, the irksome sand has its own Wisconsin memories. The tiny spheres of quartz dimly recall their youth deep inside Proterozoic mountains, when they were part of a tight-knit community in granite. They attest to how erosion dismantled the mountains, how rain dissolved their neighboring minerals, how they alone survived. They remember tumbling in the surf on a tropical Cambrian beach, then lying still beneath a heavy blanket of other strata, hardening slowly into sandstone. The sand recalls how, eons later, it was excavated by rivers, then rasped by glaciers that disbanded the grains and scattered them in a meltwater diaspora.
Something I have discovered in looking closer and deeper is the beauty that can be hidden and not in plain sight. A drab, overcast day on the Colorado plains can be almost ugly, but I found bokeh photography that reveals lights in the blurred background behind a subject, or patterns in grasses. The author writes about one of the calls to geology she heard when she first saw a thinly cut section of rock under a microscope and the beauty they reveal.
In the late eighteenth century, a prevailing school found that when rocks are cut into very thin slices (about 1/1000 of an inch), they will transmit light, but the light that passes through them is refracted and polarized according to the crystal structures of the minerals within them. When various filters are placed between a back-illuminated thin section and the lenses of a microscope, different mineral species will appear to stand at different "heights" —and will display varied, vivid colors that change kaleidoscopically as one turns the microscope stage. This is mesmerizing and trippy-like a psychedelic, cinematic stained glass window.
Both in outcrops and under the microscope, the Sauk sandstones— also called quartz arenites (from the Latin word for sand, arena)—are things of beauty, causing geologists to abandon the normal constraints of scientific writing and wax lyrical. In roadcuts where highways slice through sandstone hills, the fresh rock ranges from the creamy color of vanilla pudding through a spectrum from honey to caramel. At high magnification, the round, smooth grains resemble white beluga caviar. One of my own mentors, the eminent sedimentologist Robert Dott at the University of Wisconsin, spent much of his life studying the Sauk sequence sands. Late in his career, in an article published in a normally somber professional journal, Professor Dott allowed himself to express his true feeling about these rocks: "I have come to regard supermature quartz arenites as nature's finest distillate— almost as remarkable as a pure single malt Scotch whiskey."
Moving on to a college era bike trip around Lake Superior, the author writes about the time it may take for it to be filled or replaced: 192 years. Something like that is a scientific measurement that could be lost in all the other measurements and numbers and facts and angles and percentages of their work, so it is precious to tease it out and make a story. This is how we help people care more and time in a “timefulness” way that I agree could make a difference someday.
Some of the water drifted down as snow on old-growth white pine forests of northern Wisconsin before the clear-cutting of the 1880s and 1890s, and some water still in the lake today flowed in via tributary rivers even before Ojibwe tribes were forced to sign the 1837 treaty that displaced them from ancestral lands. Lake Superior has a long memory, but soon it will forget the times before sawmills, mines, and cities…The modern outline of Lake Superior is of course older than the water it contains, platted several thousand years ago after glaciers had radically remodeled earlier river systems.”
I read in an ocean atlas that gravity has a different power depending where you are, and the author reports it here as well, “The basalts of the Lake Superior region are so dense and thick that their extra mass causes the pull of gravity to be a little greater than in surrounding areas. That is, you actually weigh a little more near the lake! The difference in gravity's tug is small-measured in thousandths of the average value of & but enough to be detected with sensitive geophysical instruments (and to make our overloaded bicycles incrementally heavier on our trip around the lake).” Wonder and awe, and an ingredient in the idea that landscape is more than what we have thought it to be, if not animate then powerful, if not alive, then vibrating? What words work here? It is a passion of mine, and this author does a beautiful job of describing things. And she appropriately adds some science and measurements for those so inclined:
Most people think of the pull of gravity on Earth, 32 ft second/second g, as a fixed value, but in fact it varies by tiny amounts over the course of the day because of the changing pull of the moon and sun, and by slightly larger amounts from place to place depending on elevation and rock type. Basalt is an especially heavy rock, rich in iron. Its specific gravity-its density relative to that of water— is around 3.0, compared, for example, with 2.7 for granite and 2.4 for typical sedimentary rocks.
A compilation of gravity measurements from the upper Great Lakes region to the Great Plains reveals a prominent stripe of elevated gravity stretching from the northeastern tip of Minnesota seven hundred miles southwestward into central Kansas, where placid limestones at the surface convey no hint of volcanic unrest. At the time that I was picking up basalts on my first field trip, this swath of anomalous gravity was still being called the "Midcontinent Gravity High".
This area could have become a midcontinent rift and subsequent ocean as volcanism seeped and burst through a thinned Canadian Shield (the 20 mile thick basement rock of the continent) creating the basalt rocks that create the basin of Lake Superior and are revealed on the Keeweenaw Peninsula and Isle Royale, but for unknown reasons, the volcanic activity stopped. The philosophy behind the way geologic processes affect evolution is amazing and just being linked and sketched out. If the continent was ripped apart, would part of it continued to drift away, and what indigenous difference would there have been in animals, plants, people?
She continues with stories of time in Italy and California, and the relatively young rock of tuff from calderas and flows of superheated water. In California’s Bishop Caldera in the Sierra, geologists , “estimate that a total of 145 cubic miles of magma was erupted in a single sustained eruption. This is thirty times more than Krakatoa in 1883, 180 times more than Vesuvius in 79 CE, and 2,400 times more than Mount Saint Helens in 1980.” She writes about Mt. St. Helens, a place I have visited several times and been awed and humbled by, and the new developments over time in understanding such eruptions.
And more. I really encourage everyone to try this book, it really is a wonderful piece of writing, and geology holds so many stories of how our planet has changed, which helps us rise above the daily grind even for a few minutes in wonder, and then we are changed and our minds opened forever.
Learning from rocks- understanding the plots and protagonists that shaped the places where we live- can help to provide a feeling of "embeddedness" in the cosmos, a sense of continuity and kinship with past and future. Perhaps the most distinctive characteristic of geologic thinking is the practice of roaming freely across many scales in space and time. In doing so, we can see ourselves in miniature, part of a long lineage of creatures on a creative planet that has renewed itself for more than four billion years while keeping an idiosyncratic diary of its activities over time in the form of rocks.
I love this writing, and I am hoping it starts a trend of more geologists opening up their knowledge to us. John McPhee did it for them in Annals of a Former World masterpiece, and I have tried here and there, but now it is up to them to wipe away some of the cobwebs and inscrutability around jargon and reveal the magic. I liked this better than Timefulness; that one had some condescension that could have been improved. This was more relatable in some ways, her life amidst the geological work she was doing over her lifetime.
While not everyone can or should become a geologist, geologic habits of mind-an instinct for Earth's rhythms, a feeling for our place in its story-are essential to the physical and psychic well-being of humankind. Around the time of the Industrial Revolution, Western society stopped seeing the Earth as imbued with wisdom-offering, in Shakespeare's words, "books in running brooks, sermons in stone" —and demoted it to dumb matter that we could outwit and exploit. This view of Earth as inert and unresponsive has led not only to environmental catastrophe but also to cultural anomie: We don't remember who we really are.
Science writer at the University of Utah wrote about a site near Moab: “At about the same rate that your heart beats, a Utah rock formation called Castleton Tower gently vibrates, keeping time and keeping watch over the sandstone desert. Swaying like a skyscraper, the red rock tower taps into the deep vibrations in the earth -- wind, waves and far-off earthquakes. New research from University of Utah geologists details the natural vibration of the tower, measured with the help of two skilled rock climbers. Understanding how this and other natural rock forms vibrate, they say, helps us keep an eye (or ear) on their structural health and helps us understand how human-made vibrations affect seemingly unmovable rocks.”
I know that it sounds woo woo to say the landscape or a rock is alive or animate or sentient; I just think we don’t have the right words for what it is, so we have to flail for the closest equivalent. I have been to the Castleton Tower area many times, and I have never felt these vibrations or anything like it, but I am not surprised. If you spend time in a natural setting, your body gets in tune, just like it can with people, that synchronization of thoughts and bodily processes; although there might need to be research to see if that is all humans, or just some, but I know it isn’t rare. There is something that we respond to there and it opens our heart and minds, I swear.
Contrary to their reputation, rocks are alert, responsive, communicative. They are the force field in which we live, the infrastructure of our existence, playing central roles in the “economy" of the world, as aquifers, architects of topography, managers of ocean chemistry, regulators of climate. They are also shape-shifters and fortune tellers. Once one becomes attuned to the language of rocks, it is obvious that Earth is vibrantly alive—-and speaking to us all the time. Although we have sickened ourselves and vandalized our own home through ignorance and hubris, we may be restored by turning to stone and heeding its lessons in durability. Let me introduce you to some of the rocks that have helped me understand what it means to be an Earthling.
The author approaches the topic by starting with sandstone from her childhood in Wisconsin, which is the scenery maker in Utah, remnants of both beach and Saharan-like sand dunes. I am always enthralled by the idea of the seas retreating to the shoreline of Colorado, withdrawing, then advancing again. The Rio Grande Rift from New Mexico to Wyoming could split the continent, and with sea level rise, another sea could advance. I love her new take on it as, “These cycles reveal a restless global ocean that waxes and wanes, retreating in ice ages and advancing in warmer times, in an endless on-again, off-again relationship with the continents.”
I have sand in my socks. Although I'm was not yet ready to understand its story, the irksome sand has its own Wisconsin memories. The tiny spheres of quartz dimly recall their youth deep inside Proterozoic mountains, when they were part of a tight-knit community in granite. They attest to how erosion dismantled the mountains, how rain dissolved their neighboring minerals, how they alone survived. They remember tumbling in the surf on a tropical Cambrian beach, then lying still beneath a heavy blanket of other strata, hardening slowly into sandstone. The sand recalls how, eons later, it was excavated by rivers, then rasped by glaciers that disbanded the grains and scattered them in a meltwater diaspora.
Something I have discovered in looking closer and deeper is the beauty that can be hidden and not in plain sight. A drab, overcast day on the Colorado plains can be almost ugly, but I found bokeh photography that reveals lights in the blurred background behind a subject, or patterns in grasses. The author writes about one of the calls to geology she heard when she first saw a thinly cut section of rock under a microscope and the beauty they reveal.
In the late eighteenth century, a prevailing school found that when rocks are cut into very thin slices (about 1/1000 of an inch), they will transmit light, but the light that passes through them is refracted and polarized according to the crystal structures of the minerals within them. When various filters are placed between a back-illuminated thin section and the lenses of a microscope, different mineral species will appear to stand at different "heights" —and will display varied, vivid colors that change kaleidoscopically as one turns the microscope stage. This is mesmerizing and trippy-like a psychedelic, cinematic stained glass window.
Both in outcrops and under the microscope, the Sauk sandstones— also called quartz arenites (from the Latin word for sand, arena)—are things of beauty, causing geologists to abandon the normal constraints of scientific writing and wax lyrical. In roadcuts where highways slice through sandstone hills, the fresh rock ranges from the creamy color of vanilla pudding through a spectrum from honey to caramel. At high magnification, the round, smooth grains resemble white beluga caviar. One of my own mentors, the eminent sedimentologist Robert Dott at the University of Wisconsin, spent much of his life studying the Sauk sequence sands. Late in his career, in an article published in a normally somber professional journal, Professor Dott allowed himself to express his true feeling about these rocks: "I have come to regard supermature quartz arenites as nature's finest distillate— almost as remarkable as a pure single malt Scotch whiskey."
Moving on to a college era bike trip around Lake Superior, the author writes about the time it may take for it to be filled or replaced: 192 years. Something like that is a scientific measurement that could be lost in all the other measurements and numbers and facts and angles and percentages of their work, so it is precious to tease it out and make a story. This is how we help people care more and time in a “timefulness” way that I agree could make a difference someday.
Some of the water drifted down as snow on old-growth white pine forests of northern Wisconsin before the clear-cutting of the 1880s and 1890s, and some water still in the lake today flowed in via tributary rivers even before Ojibwe tribes were forced to sign the 1837 treaty that displaced them from ancestral lands. Lake Superior has a long memory, but soon it will forget the times before sawmills, mines, and cities…The modern outline of Lake Superior is of course older than the water it contains, platted several thousand years ago after glaciers had radically remodeled earlier river systems.”
I read in an ocean atlas that gravity has a different power depending where you are, and the author reports it here as well, “The basalts of the Lake Superior region are so dense and thick that their extra mass causes the pull of gravity to be a little greater than in surrounding areas. That is, you actually weigh a little more near the lake! The difference in gravity's tug is small-measured in thousandths of the average value of & but enough to be detected with sensitive geophysical instruments (and to make our overloaded bicycles incrementally heavier on our trip around the lake).” Wonder and awe, and an ingredient in the idea that landscape is more than what we have thought it to be, if not animate then powerful, if not alive, then vibrating? What words work here? It is a passion of mine, and this author does a beautiful job of describing things. And she appropriately adds some science and measurements for those so inclined:
Most people think of the pull of gravity on Earth, 32 ft second/second g, as a fixed value, but in fact it varies by tiny amounts over the course of the day because of the changing pull of the moon and sun, and by slightly larger amounts from place to place depending on elevation and rock type. Basalt is an especially heavy rock, rich in iron. Its specific gravity-its density relative to that of water— is around 3.0, compared, for example, with 2.7 for granite and 2.4 for typical sedimentary rocks.
A compilation of gravity measurements from the upper Great Lakes region to the Great Plains reveals a prominent stripe of elevated gravity stretching from the northeastern tip of Minnesota seven hundred miles southwestward into central Kansas, where placid limestones at the surface convey no hint of volcanic unrest. At the time that I was picking up basalts on my first field trip, this swath of anomalous gravity was still being called the "Midcontinent Gravity High".
This area could have become a midcontinent rift and subsequent ocean as volcanism seeped and burst through a thinned Canadian Shield (the 20 mile thick basement rock of the continent) creating the basalt rocks that create the basin of Lake Superior and are revealed on the Keeweenaw Peninsula and Isle Royale, but for unknown reasons, the volcanic activity stopped. The philosophy behind the way geologic processes affect evolution is amazing and just being linked and sketched out. If the continent was ripped apart, would part of it continued to drift away, and what indigenous difference would there have been in animals, plants, people?
She continues with stories of time in Italy and California, and the relatively young rock of tuff from calderas and flows of superheated water. In California’s Bishop Caldera in the Sierra, geologists , “estimate that a total of 145 cubic miles of magma was erupted in a single sustained eruption. This is thirty times more than Krakatoa in 1883, 180 times more than Vesuvius in 79 CE, and 2,400 times more than Mount Saint Helens in 1980.” She writes about Mt. St. Helens, a place I have visited several times and been awed and humbled by, and the new developments over time in understanding such eruptions.
And more. I really encourage everyone to try this book, it really is a wonderful piece of writing, and geology holds so many stories of how our planet has changed, which helps us rise above the daily grind even for a few minutes in wonder, and then we are changed and our minds opened forever.
April 4, 2025
clifford geertz jumpscare in chapter 10 gave me whiplash
May 31, 2025
Een leuk boek over wat gesteenten aan informatie kunnen geven.
July 19, 2025
Geologist and professor Marcia Bjornerud’s latest book is a masterpiece! Part memoir, part science, part philosophy and so much more. With the wisdom that comes from a lifetime of studying, teaching, and deep thinking, Bjornerud beautifully introduces us to “some of the rocks that helped [her] understand what it means to be an Earthling.”
— “As I have experienced different life roles … and faced inevitable change and loss, the company of rocks has been a constant. Their gravitas is deeply comforting. Their stories are mythic in scope but undistorted by euphemism, delusion, or self-promotion: a bracing counterpoint to the deceptions, intentional and otherwise, that permeate everyday life. I believe that developing a collective sense of ourselves as Earthlings — native inhabitants of an old, durable planet — may bring reassurance in a time when so many human systems that once seemed robust are showing signs of fragility.”
— “Although Earth, among the rocky planets, had certain advantages from the start — size, distance from the Sun — these practices of endless re-creation are the true secret of its longterm habitability. Ritual is what distinguishes Earth from its lifeless siblings. I want students to perceive of themselves as Earthlings, wholly dependent on the planet’s sacraments — and to realize that any rational society would align its practices with those of the system that sustains it.”
By the time I got to the end of the book, I was just blown away by her passionate belief that the Earth is full of wisdom, if we learn to look and listen. It’s an absolute thrill to read her and feel that intensity of purpose. One of my favorite sections comes near the end of the book. It’s her utopian reverie:
“I sometimes wonder whether, at this point in the history of human civilization, it would be possible to create a fresh new kind of secular spirituality free from both the narrow orthodoxies of traditional religions and the venal dogmas of capitalism. The primary tests would be the rock record and the book of nature; lullabies would reassure infants that they were in the care of the wise old planet; children would grow up knowing about planetary superheroes like carbon-gobbling dolomite and plate-moving eclogite; holidays would celebrate sandstone aquifers and stable granitic continents; the central principles would be wonder, gratitude, connectivity, collectivity. After a few generations of such reacculturation, an egalitarian ethos would emerge as we came to think of ourselves as Earthlings with deep bonds of kinship with one another, and all components of nature. Humans would aspire simply to blend in. Within this worldview, amassing disproportionate wealth, oppressing other humans, or degrading the environment would be seen as both unnatural and immoral. My utopian reveries are interrupted by a cynical voice in my head: Yeah right, fat chance.”
But yet, what if?
Wonderful, awesome book, in the truest sense of the words!
— “As I have experienced different life roles … and faced inevitable change and loss, the company of rocks has been a constant. Their gravitas is deeply comforting. Their stories are mythic in scope but undistorted by euphemism, delusion, or self-promotion: a bracing counterpoint to the deceptions, intentional and otherwise, that permeate everyday life. I believe that developing a collective sense of ourselves as Earthlings — native inhabitants of an old, durable planet — may bring reassurance in a time when so many human systems that once seemed robust are showing signs of fragility.”
— “Although Earth, among the rocky planets, had certain advantages from the start — size, distance from the Sun — these practices of endless re-creation are the true secret of its longterm habitability. Ritual is what distinguishes Earth from its lifeless siblings. I want students to perceive of themselves as Earthlings, wholly dependent on the planet’s sacraments — and to realize that any rational society would align its practices with those of the system that sustains it.”
By the time I got to the end of the book, I was just blown away by her passionate belief that the Earth is full of wisdom, if we learn to look and listen. It’s an absolute thrill to read her and feel that intensity of purpose. One of my favorite sections comes near the end of the book. It’s her utopian reverie:
“I sometimes wonder whether, at this point in the history of human civilization, it would be possible to create a fresh new kind of secular spirituality free from both the narrow orthodoxies of traditional religions and the venal dogmas of capitalism. The primary tests would be the rock record and the book of nature; lullabies would reassure infants that they were in the care of the wise old planet; children would grow up knowing about planetary superheroes like carbon-gobbling dolomite and plate-moving eclogite; holidays would celebrate sandstone aquifers and stable granitic continents; the central principles would be wonder, gratitude, connectivity, collectivity. After a few generations of such reacculturation, an egalitarian ethos would emerge as we came to think of ourselves as Earthlings with deep bonds of kinship with one another, and all components of nature. Humans would aspire simply to blend in. Within this worldview, amassing disproportionate wealth, oppressing other humans, or degrading the environment would be seen as both unnatural and immoral. My utopian reveries are interrupted by a cynical voice in my head: Yeah right, fat chance.”
But yet, what if?
Wonderful, awesome book, in the truest sense of the words!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 14, 2025
While sometimes it did get a bit info-dumpy, Bjornerud maintained a very successful back and forth between rock facts and her own history
March 4, 2025
This was definitely a step outside my comfort zone and I had to keep a dictionary close to keep up with the vocabulary, but overall a great read.
January 4, 2025
This might just be my favorite book ever. Part memoir, part love letter to the wisdom and lessons to be learned from rocks, part history of geological sciences, part reflections on our place as humans on this planet Earth. I am a geologists, and most of the things Bjornerud writes about I knew already, and yet I learned so much. She writes so incredibly clear, makes connections that I had not made yet, and brings different field of geosciences together. Through it all, you can feel a deep love for the Earth, and all its complexity. I want to hug this book and never let it go.
April 4, 2025
And I realized that at any given time, rocks reveal to us only what we are ready to understand. Their meanings are always multiple, and our hypotheses usually naive. 121
Earth's basaltic oceanic crust is disposed of quite easily…. Continental crust, however, no matter how old, is too buoyant to be subducted. … Turbidity currents are the one way that continental material can reach the abyssal ocean floor and have a chance of being subducted. … [T]urbidites “colse the loop” for continental crust. Amazingly, this rather Rube Godbergian system has kept pace with the rate of creation of new continental crust through subduction-related volcanism, and the total volume of the continents has remained constant for almost 3 billion years. 146-147
[gradual changes of animals <46:00 Great Simplification Schmactenberger Authentic Progress]
[T]he residence time of carbon in carbonate rocks is tens of millions of years …. This “slow carbon cycle” is one of Earth’s most remarkable attributes, a steadying system of global checks and balances that involves the atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, and lithosphere. 157
(the famed green beach sands of Hawaii consist of grains of unmelted mantle olivine swept up with basaltic lavas and then weathered out of the rocks) 197
The scaffolding of shared beliefs that unites a community can be abruptly destabilized by a vocal dissenting group representing only 25 to 30 percent of the population. That is, a small but well-networked minority can radically change the way the whole society functions. 223
An underlying assumption in physics is that simpler is always better, that uncluttered models free of bothersome things like friction - or history - are necessarily closer to scientific truth. While this is a powerful approach that has led to great technological advances, it is not the optimal way to study complex natural systems, which are often very cluttered - but nonetheless beautiful - and cannot be extracted from their moment in time without losing some inherent part of their character. 239
To what extent has Earth had agency over its evolution versus simply reacting to externally imposed conditions? 251
Maybe Earth’s essence is simply its exuberant improvisation and continual reinvention, a never-ending jam session of rock, water, and life. 251
Even if we could homestead on a new planet, or wanted to live in a virtual world, we would still be us - the same flawed creatures expelled from the first Eden. We understand more about Earth than we did when I first became a geologist, yet we seem no closer to wisdom about ourselves. 267
It is likewise taboo in monotheistic traditions to speak of agency in the natural world; such a notion undermines the authority of God. But according to my youngest son … there are hints of rock veneration in the Old Testament. When the Isrealites were close to entering the Promised Land after forty years in the desert and nearly dying of thirst, Moses asked God for help. God told him to gather the people before a particular rock then: “Speak to that rock before their eyes and it will pour out its water.” Moses led the desperate group to the site and struck the rock with his staff. It yielded abundant water, saving them and their cattle. But God then informed Moses that he would be barred from the Promised Land because he failed to address the rock. This passage is usually interpreted as a stern lesson about obeying God, but I choose to think that God was also asking Moses to respect the rock as a sentient being. 271
Rocks assure us that the past is no less real than the present. 281
The stones are communicating with one another, with the waves and wind, with my feverish brain. A recent theory of consciousness posits that intelligent awareness can emerge when the components of a large system have a certain level of interconnectivity. Neurons in the human brain reach the critical threshold. In the presence of these chattering cobbles, it seems obvious to me that, according to that definition, Earth is hyperconscious. The connections among the many parts of Earth are like an elaborate neural network. 281
Earth's basaltic oceanic crust is disposed of quite easily…. Continental crust, however, no matter how old, is too buoyant to be subducted. … Turbidity currents are the one way that continental material can reach the abyssal ocean floor and have a chance of being subducted. … [T]urbidites “colse the loop” for continental crust. Amazingly, this rather Rube Godbergian system has kept pace with the rate of creation of new continental crust through subduction-related volcanism, and the total volume of the continents has remained constant for almost 3 billion years. 146-147
[gradual changes of animals <46:00 Great Simplification Schmactenberger Authentic Progress]
[T]he residence time of carbon in carbonate rocks is tens of millions of years …. This “slow carbon cycle” is one of Earth’s most remarkable attributes, a steadying system of global checks and balances that involves the atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, and lithosphere. 157
(the famed green beach sands of Hawaii consist of grains of unmelted mantle olivine swept up with basaltic lavas and then weathered out of the rocks) 197
The scaffolding of shared beliefs that unites a community can be abruptly destabilized by a vocal dissenting group representing only 25 to 30 percent of the population. That is, a small but well-networked minority can radically change the way the whole society functions. 223
An underlying assumption in physics is that simpler is always better, that uncluttered models free of bothersome things like friction - or history - are necessarily closer to scientific truth. While this is a powerful approach that has led to great technological advances, it is not the optimal way to study complex natural systems, which are often very cluttered - but nonetheless beautiful - and cannot be extracted from their moment in time without losing some inherent part of their character. 239
To what extent has Earth had agency over its evolution versus simply reacting to externally imposed conditions? 251
Maybe Earth’s essence is simply its exuberant improvisation and continual reinvention, a never-ending jam session of rock, water, and life. 251
Even if we could homestead on a new planet, or wanted to live in a virtual world, we would still be us - the same flawed creatures expelled from the first Eden. We understand more about Earth than we did when I first became a geologist, yet we seem no closer to wisdom about ourselves. 267
It is likewise taboo in monotheistic traditions to speak of agency in the natural world; such a notion undermines the authority of God. But according to my youngest son … there are hints of rock veneration in the Old Testament. When the Isrealites were close to entering the Promised Land after forty years in the desert and nearly dying of thirst, Moses asked God for help. God told him to gather the people before a particular rock then: “Speak to that rock before their eyes and it will pour out its water.” Moses led the desperate group to the site and struck the rock with his staff. It yielded abundant water, saving them and their cattle. But God then informed Moses that he would be barred from the Promised Land because he failed to address the rock. This passage is usually interpreted as a stern lesson about obeying God, but I choose to think that God was also asking Moses to respect the rock as a sentient being. 271
Rocks assure us that the past is no less real than the present. 281
The stones are communicating with one another, with the waves and wind, with my feverish brain. A recent theory of consciousness posits that intelligent awareness can emerge when the components of a large system have a certain level of interconnectivity. Neurons in the human brain reach the critical threshold. In the presence of these chattering cobbles, it seems obvious to me that, according to that definition, Earth is hyperconscious. The connections among the many parts of Earth are like an elaborate neural network. 281
August 5, 2025
With an underlying humor, Bjornerud presents us with wisdom about life and rocks. Her fluid, light writing provides solid information about rocks, geology, and the sustainable tectonic processes that keep Earth young. Through this vision she also presents us with the historical development of the sciences of geology, as well as the many developments in her life as a geologist and person.
As a geologist, Bjornerud had the opportunity to visit and live in many parts of the world, in many cultures. The wisdom gained from those experiences, the education from the sciences and cultures she opened herself to, her ability to reflect on time scales from that of a human life to geological eons, flows from this book in ways to provide thoughtful foundations for her reflections on many aspects of life and society.
Who should read this book? If you are interested in geology, this book provides a very clear explanation of rocks and geological processes. If you want to become a geologist, this book provides a good history of the science as well as insights into what you must learn and how to think about time and rocks. If you are a woman entering the sciences, of any field, this will give you insights into some of the special challenges that presents. If you enjoy good writing, read this book.
I find Bjornerud's insights into the current dysfunctioning society especially wise. These quotes stood out as especially apropos:
Quotes:
"… one scene in the tragedy in many acts that is now titled the Anthropocene. The stock characters are Ignorance and Avarice, the plot predictable: resource extraction briefly generates immense wealth for a small number of people but leaves an impoverished world for those who follow."
-- p. 14
"... made pariahs simply for listening to Earth and translating what we are learning ... for talking about things they would rather ignore, like climate change, or groundwater contamination, or evolution."
-- p. 77
"I worry at the dangerous delusion that nature is simple and mechanistic and is now under our control."
-- p. 93
"... the American pursuit of unalloyed happiness, which, ironically, engenders perpetual dissatisfaction (and fuels the engines of capitalism)."
-- p. 218
"The names of American suburban streets evoke idyllic natural settings---Forest Glen Court, Prairie Ridge Road---but these are typically memorials to ecosystems destroyed in their development. Over time, I believe, routine exposure to such half-truths corrodes the soul."
-- p. 219
"Our inaction on climate change is another manifestation of the same disregard for the power of the incremental."
-- p. 238
"... realize that any rational society would align its practices with those of the system that sustains it."
-- p. 266
"Free-market economics has permeated too deeply into Western habits of mind, making behaviors that are considered pathological at the individual level acceptable at the scale of society as a whole."
-- p. 268
As a geologist, Bjornerud had the opportunity to visit and live in many parts of the world, in many cultures. The wisdom gained from those experiences, the education from the sciences and cultures she opened herself to, her ability to reflect on time scales from that of a human life to geological eons, flows from this book in ways to provide thoughtful foundations for her reflections on many aspects of life and society.
Who should read this book? If you are interested in geology, this book provides a very clear explanation of rocks and geological processes. If you want to become a geologist, this book provides a good history of the science as well as insights into what you must learn and how to think about time and rocks. If you are a woman entering the sciences, of any field, this will give you insights into some of the special challenges that presents. If you enjoy good writing, read this book.
I find Bjornerud's insights into the current dysfunctioning society especially wise. These quotes stood out as especially apropos:
Quotes:
"… one scene in the tragedy in many acts that is now titled the Anthropocene. The stock characters are Ignorance and Avarice, the plot predictable: resource extraction briefly generates immense wealth for a small number of people but leaves an impoverished world for those who follow."
-- p. 14
"... made pariahs simply for listening to Earth and translating what we are learning ... for talking about things they would rather ignore, like climate change, or groundwater contamination, or evolution."
-- p. 77
"I worry at the dangerous delusion that nature is simple and mechanistic and is now under our control."
-- p. 93
"... the American pursuit of unalloyed happiness, which, ironically, engenders perpetual dissatisfaction (and fuels the engines of capitalism)."
-- p. 218
"The names of American suburban streets evoke idyllic natural settings---Forest Glen Court, Prairie Ridge Road---but these are typically memorials to ecosystems destroyed in their development. Over time, I believe, routine exposure to such half-truths corrodes the soul."
-- p. 219
"Our inaction on climate change is another manifestation of the same disregard for the power of the incremental."
-- p. 238
"... realize that any rational society would align its practices with those of the system that sustains it."
-- p. 266
"Free-market economics has permeated too deeply into Western habits of mind, making behaviors that are considered pathological at the individual level acceptable at the scale of society as a whole."
-- p. 268
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