Rocks...

Pretty much everything we do is somehow effected by rocks.  Right now, beneath your feet, there are rocks.  The planet we inhabit is made of rocks.  The power we take for granted, the thing that enables us to live the sort of lives we wish for is sourced from rocks.  Pick up a mug of tea and the mug is made from china clay which is, when all is said and done, rotted rock (the end product of the weathering of the feldspar in Granite to be exact).  You catch my drift.  Yet many people would struggle to make the connection between rocks and their lives.

Rocks (along with minerals and fossils) have been intimately connected with my life for as long as I can remember.  I the first rock I ever got was an exotic green lump of Amazonite which I was given as a small child,  and the fascination has never really left me since that time.  In more recent times it has become important for me to learn the fine details of geoscience because of my career ambitions, but once I did it purely for the joy of collecting.  The idea that by hammering a pebble on Charmouth beach, I could be the first person in the world to see something was (and still is) quite intoxicating.

Nowadays, it is all far more serious and erudite, as I learn the principles that govern why geological structures are what they are, but sometimes it is nice to just experience the joy of collecting, and when some one I know goes abroad and asks me if I want anything bringing back, I say yes, bring me back a rock.   The rock below is a piece of Himalayan Leucogranite brought back from Everest Base camp by Maria.    

Himalayan Leucogranite