I love rocks so much that for years I have indulged in a wholly pleasurable activity called rock therapy. This summertime ritual involves lying on my back on the hot flat granite of Georgian Bay and soaking up the heat and mystery grounded in the bedrock all around me.
Turning to Stone: Discovering the Subtle Wisdom of Rocks was hard for me to resist. But it was also written by a female scientist. I have been hooked on the tales and studies of women in science for the last couple of years. Although Suzanne Simard, Erin Zimmerman, Diana Beresford-Kroeger and Marcia Bjornerud have slightly different areas of study and passion, their journeys of being a female scientist are strewn with similar obstacles – especially if you have children. They are not afraid to talk about the pressures and injustices lurking in their professions.
Bjornerud, a professor of environmental studies and geosciences at Lawrence University uses individual rocks as an itinerary and each chapter delves into the swirling history of a place. I’m not sure why she has called her book Turning to Stone and not Turning to Rock. Stone is a piece of rock that has been cut, while rock is a mass of minerals formed by pressure. Perhaps to understate that the history of geology continues to be written with continual discoveries that fracture previous knowledge.
Over the years I have read some books on geology. After each reading, I think I understand the difference between sedimentary, igneous and metamorphic. But then knowledge slips away and I am left confused. What is feldspar? What is gneiss? What’s the difference between lava, magma and basalt?
Bjornerud succeeds for me where others have failed because she paints a mise-en-scene for each rock. It is much easier to remember her students’ amazement at the basalt of Lake Superior. And I won’t forget this incredible fact. Basalts in Lake Superior are so dense and thick that their extra mass causes the pull of gravity to be a little greater than in surrounding areas. We actually weigh slightly more near the lake. Not a good place to open a weight-loss clinic.
One of Bjornerud’s undertakings was to create a whole new course of study at her university – geosciences. She believes that covering the intellectual history of geology humanizes the field. She did all this after the death of her second husband. Left with three young sons, she was herself metamorphized. The intense pressure she was subject to, created a polished and passionate academic unafraid to meander through the annals of the history of the earth.
If you want to know how rocks draw CO2 out of the environment, why gneiss is banded, why the earth needs quakes and subduction, why things flow when they become unstable, or why the capricious nature of quakes still frustrates seismologists, Bjornerud is a valued guide.
