Though it doesn’t occur beneath my feet unless I climb long and hard and high (as I did here), it’s my bedrock. The Madera Limestone crowns the rift-flank Sandia Mountains whose shadow I live in. [...]

In the San Juan Islands of Washington state, there are many lovely anchorages to drop a hook. Some would say Sucia Island is one of the loveliest. Part of a three-island marine state park, it has [...]

In my novel, Inundation, Will Ross, who is an engineering geologist beginning work in east central Turkey on a troubled dam, discovers a travertine deposit on his first day in the field. Kayakale [...]

Two granodiorite cobbles sit on my desk. This shouldn’t surprise you, seems my desk has almost as many rocks as papers on it. These cobbles are similar in size and shape and rock type. Each is [...]

This rock is very old, though new to me. I recently picked it up on one of my many desert walks. Having rained the day before, it was rinsed clean and sparkled in the sun. Its glistening was [...]

Sometimes I don’t hold the rock, it holds me. Some rocks don’t get stuffed into a pocket, then put on a shelf. Sometimes I nestle into a nook where I fit as well as a rock might fit in my hand, [...]

When I was a little kid, maybe five or six or seven (I was old enough to know what a fossil was), I found what I thought was a really cool one. It was gray, and had all sorts of convoluted ridges [...]

Most geologists I know have desks and shelves in their offices and homes littered with rocks and minerals. We’re perpetual kids who never give up our rock collections. One morning in the [...]