Stones are persons

Shaped by time

Time gives stones smooth contours 

and simple integrated form 

because all the parts of a stone 

share a common history and 

have been shaped by the same forces.

Rocks

are still raw fragments of 

their parent material, 

with rough contours and ragged form. 

Time will make them stones.

But some rocks

 never become stones; 

they are too incohesive, 

too weakly unified. 

Erosion shatters them. 

True stones cohere 

and weather together.

Individuality

Stones vary in being 

dense or light, dark or bright,

mottled or monotone, rough or smooth, 

hard or soft, and simple or complex 

in form and composition.

Even from the same parent material

with very similar histories, 

no two stones are alike. 

Biography

Stones are storytellers.

They narrate their histories 

through their form and composition. 

Bras d'Or granite 

originated about the same time

in another island arc of volcanoes 

off the shore of Amazonia,

forming what is now Cape Breton.

Like dancers, 

the Miramichi-Bra d'Or and Avalon terrains 

slipped sideways and moved toward 

the Laurentian shield 

as the Iapetus Ocean closed.

Erratics 

are immigrants carried by glaciers.

This one was silt,  then buried, 

then siltstone, then fractured, 

and the faults filled with quartz. 

 Quartz is harder than siltstone, 

wears more slowly, 

and leaves a ridge around the stone.

Some erratics are very hard.

Tumbling in the surf 

gives them a shiny polish. 

They are delightful to hold and rub 

between thumb and forefinger.

Pumice

is flash-frozen stone foam, 

molten rock bubbling with gas

cooling suddenly.

This is from Mount Erebus, 

on the edge of the Ross Ice Shelf 

in Antarctica.

This pumice is from south-western Iceland,

where the earth recreates itself.

Upwelling lava pushes 

the African plate east

and the North American plate west 

forming the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. 

Sometimes stone records what is happening 

at the moment it is formed, 

more like a journalist 

than an autobiographer. 

This late Carboniferous sandstone is

from a beach near Joggins, Nova Scotia. 

It reports the action of the waves 

on a sandy beach 300 million years ago.

A prototypical stone has integrity; 

has a form that is distinct, smooth, and simple; 

and derives the coherence of the whole 

from the shared history of the parts.

It helps if the parent material is hard 

with consistent internal structure; 

igneous rock make better stones 

than sedimentary rock.

Firing Clay

Potters take shapeless clay 

and give it form. 

Firing clay in a kiln 

is a weak substitute 

for the pressure and heat 

that form true stones. 

The heat does not last long enough 

to thoroughly melt the clay and

allow its elements to self-organize.

The clay becomes more stone-like; 

it gains integrity; a distinct form; and coherence.  

But it lacks the cohesiveness of natural stone

and is as brittle as glass.

Fine China.

Potters prize 

the white kaolin clay of China 

for its smooth, fine texture and 

the strength and hardness 

it achieves when fired. 

It is an honor to be stone-like; 

the best ceramics are called stoneware.

Quartz

Quartz is a nation-state among minerals, a single ethnicity of SiO2. It is homogenously composed of silicon atoms surrounded by tetrahedra of oxygen atoms linked together; each oxygen atom is shared with an adjacent tetrahedron. Quartz strives to achieve an ideal crystal shape of a six-sided prism terminating with six-sided pyramids at each end. Usually, randomness frustrates its striving and produces sprouts of twinned crystals instead.