Rocks are for climbing, collecting, throwing, building. They're also full of information, if you can read a rock. Scientists who become fluent in rock — geologists — peruse these old, hard texts and interpret them. Rocks chronicle what lived and when, how long things've been around, what it all looked like millions of years ago, what creation is made of, how we got to be where we are: rocks are magnificent writers. The rocks in and around San Diego have composed amazing, fiery stories for a very long time. An ancient ocean once covered this county; volcanoes used to spew here; and more or less sudden mountains rose and fell in San Diego more than once.
Its a long article.
Deméré wanted to show me "samples of some of the oldest rock in the county." It's called Julian Schist. Geologists estimate the stuff to be as much as 400 million years old. Along Route 78, up Banner Grade, at an elusive spot, Deméré found what he was looking for. ...
.... "And finally, in the past 2 million years, the world has been enduring dramatic geological changes correlated to periods of global warming and global cooling and related periods of rising and falling sea levels."
Deméré was chatting dreamily, laying it all out, making the vast pathway of natural history seem humanly passable, perfectly negotiable.
And as we took our lunches there, by the side of State Route 78, up Banner Grade, with the earth changing slowly beneath us and Deméré talking and sitting half-comfortably on the jagged ancient schist and me leaning there scribbling these hasty notes, feeling somehow unified with these slow events and my newly expounded surroundings, I realized: it's only just a matter of time.