Bedrock Writers on the Wonders of Geology

by Savoy, Lauret E.; Moores, Eldridge M.; Moores, Judith E.

• ISBN13: 9781595340221
• ISBN10: 159534022X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-03-20
• Publisher: Trinity University Press

Summary

Novelists, poets, artists, anthropologists, traditional elders, philosophers, and naturalists come together to create a geological portrait of the Earth — from the violence of earthquakes and erupting volcanoes to epochal patterns in stone and the sinuous flow of rivers. With insights from many cultures and across time, Bedrock wonderfully illuminates the geology of our home planet.

The book is organized into sections that deal with rock and stone; deep time; earthquakes and faults; volcanoes and eruptions; rivers to the sea; mountains and high¬lands; wind and desert; the flow of ice; and the life of the Earth. Insightful, penetrating, and provocative, the works are written from many positions — traditional and indigenous as well as Western scientific. Bedrock bridges specialized science and ordinary existence, providing a fascinating portrait of the forces that have shaped the Earth and giving readers a sense of the geologic experience encompassing their lives.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Foreword	xi
Gordon P. Eaton
Introduction	xv
Of Rock and Stone	1	(42)
from The Stones Cry Out	5	(8)
Hikaru Okuizumi
from ``The Innocence of Rock'' in A Sense of the Earth	13	(3)
David Leveson
from ``Ode to the Land: The Dine Perspective''	16	(6)
Luci Tapahonso
from ``Digression on Rocks, Soils and Men'' in A Land	22	(5)
Jacquetta Hawkes
from A Passage to India	27	(3)
E. M. Forster
from ``The Relic Men'' in The Night Country	30	(8)
Loren Eiseley
``A Question of Conglomerate''	38	(3)
Ann Zwinger
``Rock'' from Given Sugar, Given Salt	41	(2)
Jane Hirshfield
Deep Time	43	(28)
from Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man	46	(1)
James Joyce
from ``The Slit'' in The Immense Journey	47	(6)
Loren Eiseley
from Wind, Sand and Stars	53	(2)
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
``The Fish in the Stone'' from Museum	55	(1)
Rita Dove
from Theory of the Earth	56	(4)
James Hutton
from Man in the Landscape	60	(5)
Paul Shepard
from Letters from the Earth	65	(6)
Mark Twain
Faults, Earthquakes, and Tsunamis	71	(28)
from An Account of My Hut	75	(2)
Kamo no Chomei
from Roughing It	77	(3)
Mark Twain
from ``The Investigation of the California Earthquake of 1906''	80	(6)
Grove Karl Gilbert
``The Temblor: A Personal Narration''	86	(8)
Mary Austin
from ``Assembling California'' in Annals of the Former World	94	(2)
John McPhee
from ``The Recent Earthquake Wave on the Coast of Japan''	96	(3)
Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore
Volcanoes and Eruptions	99	(56)
from Rising Fire: Volcanoes and Our Inner Lives	103	(6)
John Calderazzo
from Volcano: A Memoir of Hawai'i	109	(6)
Garrett Hongo
from ``Cooling the Lava'' in The Control of Nature	115	(7)
John McPhee
``Account of the Death of Pliny the Elder''	122	(3)
from Voyage of the Beagle	125	(4)
Charles Darwin
from ``Life on the Rocks: The Galapagos'' in Teaching a Stone to Talk	129	(2)
Annie Dillard
``Not a Very Sensible Place for a Stroll'' in Craters of Fire	131	(9)
Haroun Tazieff
``Fire in the Night''	140	(6)
James D. Houston
``A Very Warm Mountain''	146	(9)
Ursula K. Le Guin
On Mountains and Highlands	155	(38)
from Modern Painters	160	(2)
John Ruskin
from ``Letter VII'' in A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains	162	(4)
Isabella Bird
from ``Basin and Range'' in Annals of the Former World	166	(5)
John McPhee
from ``Look to the Mountaintop''	171	(5)
Alfonso Ortiz
from Land of the Spotted Eagle	176	(2)
Luther Standing Bear
from This House of Sky	178	(4)
Ivan Doig
from The Sacred Theory of the Earth	182	(3)
Thomas Burnet
from Landscape in History and Other Essays	185	(4)
Sir Archibald Geikie
from My First Summer in the Sierra	189	(2)
John Muir
``Why''	191	(2)
Nanao Sakaki
Rivers to the Sea	193	(36)
``The Negro Speaks of Rivers''	197	(1)
Langston Hughes
from ``The Flow of the River'' in The Immense Journey	198	(4)
Loren Eiseley
from From Heaven Lake	202	(4)
Vikram Seth
from ``A Native Hill''	206	(2)
Wendell Berry
from ``The Bend'' in River Notes	208	(4)
Barry Lopez
from The Exploration of the Colorado River and Its Canyons (formerly Canyons of the Colorado)	212	(7)
John Wesley Powell
``the mississippi river empties into the gulf'' from The Terrible Stories	219	(1)
Lucille Clifton
from ``Atchafalaya'' in The Control of Nature	220	(4)
John McPhee
from ``The Marginal World'' in The Edge of the Sea	224	(5)
Rachel Carson
The Work of Ice	229	(26)
from Ice Ages: Solving the Mystery	232	(3)
John Imbrie
Katherine Palmer Imbrie
from An Account of the Arctic Regions, with a History and Description of the Northern Whale-Fishery	235	(3)
William Scoresby, Jr.
from The Ice: A Journey to Antarctica	238	(4)
Stephen J. Pyne
from ``The Great Scablands Debate'' in The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History	242	(4)
Stephen Jay Gould
from Arnold Heim and August Gassner's The Throne of the Gods	246	(5)
August Gansser
from Wolfsong	251	(1)
Louis Owens
from The Yosemite	252	(3)
John Muir
Wind and Desert	255	(34)
from Wind: How the Flow of Air Has Shaped Life, Myth, and the Land	260	(3)
Jan DeBlieu
from The English Patient	263	(2)
Michael Ondaatje
from Conversations with the Earth	265	(2)
Hans Cloos
from ``The Physics of Blown Sand'' in Sahara Unveiled	267	(4)
William Langewiesche
``Sahara'' from The Black Unicorn	271	(3)
Audre Lorde
``Desert Rain'' in The Sheltering Desert	274	(3)
Henno Martin
from The Land of Little Rain	277	(5)
Mary Austin
``Wind'' from Ocean Power	282	(3)
Ofelia Zepeda
from ``White Sands'' in Memory Fever	285	(4)
Ray Gonzalez
Living on Earth	289	(34)
from The Way to Rainy Mountain	292	(4)
N. Scott Momaday
from Out of the Earth	296	(3)
Daniel Hillel
from Report to Greco	299	(2)
Nikos Kazantzakis
from The Breast of the Earth	301	(2)
Kofi Awoonor
from The Grapes of Wrath	303	(4)
John Steinbeck
from ``Interior and Exterior Landscapes: The Pueblo Migration Stories''	307	(7)
Leslie Marmon Silko
from A Sense of the Earth	314	(3)
David Leveson
from ``An American Land Ethic'' in The Man Made of Words	317	(4)
N. Scott Momaday
``Earth Verse'' in Mountains and Rivers Without End	321	(2)
Gary Snyder
Contributors	323	(10)
Permissions	333	(6)
Photo credits	339