Carolina Rocks
by Neil Caudle
Get the hang of thinking in rock time.
Exploring the Geology of the Carolinas: A Field Guide to Favorite Places from Chimney Rock to Charleston. By Kevin G. Stewart and Mary-Russell Roberson. UNC Press, 298 pages. $39.95 cloth, $19.95 paper.
Get out of the house and go roaming. Take this book with you. If you carry a camera, keep a shiny dime in your pocket, in case you want to photograph the sinuous undulations of schist. You will need the dime for scale. If you don’t have a camera, don’t worry. Just get your hands on the rock of a ledge or the sand of a dune or the mud of a swamp. Learn where you live, and learn it right down to its bones.
If you can get the hang of thinking in rock time, geology is where the action is. In Chapel Hill, imagine the sinister seething of giant volcanoes. A few miles south and east, cross the old mudstone where Triassic monsters are buried. To the west, where continents butted and shoved the raw edges of crust to the sky, look for the paper-thin strata that sparkle with mica. Read there a record of terrible pressure and super-hot stone.
If you tire of these violent forces, sit on the bank of the Eno, at Penny’s Bend, where smooth coneflower and wild indigo bloom. Or find a barrier island and wander barefoot on wind shadows sculpted in sand. At Flanner Beach near Havelock, skim your fingertip across the craggy surface of a cypress stump 125,000 years old. In rock time, you’ll feel like a youngster again.
But the point is, get out of the house. And take this book with you.
Kevin G. Stewart
is an associate professor of geological sciences in the College of Arts and Sciences. Mary-Russell Roberson is a freelance writer living in Durham.
