‘Turning to Stone’: In Marcia Bjornerud’s memoir, the stories of rocks intertwine with her own life

There is one story that belongs to us all, no matter which part of the planet we may reside in or come from. A story that we share with every single ancestor and every more-than-human living being. It’s the story of our Earth. And in turn, the story of our universe. An epic thriller of a tale, an adventure unlike any other, one that began 13.8 billion years ago and still continues to unfold. It is also a tale that sadly few of us have had access to. In Marcia Bjornerud’s beautiful, brilliant Turning to Stone: Discovering the Subtle Wisdom of Rocks, this is acknowledged early on – “Few average Earth citizens have had access to the sweeping vision of the planet through time that modern geoscience now provides,” she writes,” and to those who have never been taught the language of the Earth, its story seems inaccessible and irrelevant.”

Perhaps this is why the stories we tell now about who we are mostly exclude Nature. The natural world is simply a passive backdrop against which the “real” human stories unfold. Bjornerud, a long-time professor at Lawrence University, a small liberal arts college in Wisconsin, US, has spent decades trying to convince her students...

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