Sands of Time
Photo by Chuck Hoffman © Genesis+Art
Peace River Wildlife Refuge
Punta Gorda, Florida
For as long as I can remember I’ve been intrigued by rocks. As a little girl I thought of them as magic and later in my life, Chuck and I have used them as color pallets for the paintings we do. I come home from most trips with 5 or 6 rocks or stones that capture the color and the feeling of the places we have visited.
Lately, I’ve been interested in them as the Earth’s timekeepers. Few of us have any conception of the enormous timescales in our planet’s long history. Rocks help us chart the planet’s past. The lifespan of Earth may seem unfathomable compared to the brevity of human existence, but understanding the rhythms of Earth’s deep past can give us the perspective we need for a more sustainable future.
Last year I began wrapping rocks so I might look at them in a new way. I wrapped a couple of small core samples from the old Holden Mine I found on the trail, as a way to show respect for the terrible and ingenious way the inside of Copper Mountain was carved out and left in the 50’s. Then I wrapped a large new core sample as a symbolic way to wrap the wounds of the valley as a modern day mining company used equal ingenuity and severity to repair the damage. I wrapped set of stones from Iona for Chuck for Christmas and several from my hike to Cloudy Pass as a way to celebrate the beauty and awe inspiring places we’ve been.
These days I wrap rocks to remind myself of time. The incredibly deep history of the earth is offered by the testimony of stones and rocks. In her profound and important book called, Timefulness, Marcia Bjornerud says, “The ignorance of planetary history undermines any claim we may make to modernity. We are navigating recklessly toward our future using conceptions of time as primitive as a world map from the fourteenth century.” May we all continue to listen and take counsel from earth and her politically neutral narrative.
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