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Touching Time: Floating

11.10.2020

I am happy to share one of my newest woodblock prints, Floating. It’s an image of a Canadian Shield granite cliff in Ontario, pink above water and clear green blue beneath the surface. My vantage point is from floating in a canoe.

A few hundred miles south in Michigan, we enjoy verdant cropland without cliffs or mountains. Although the farms in our area are productive and pretty, I find it a treat to be in the untilled, rocky wilderness north of our border.

I’ve always loved rocks. On my childhood family farm, the fields would burp them up each spring through the freezing and thawing process. We’d have to go stone pickin’ to prevent the farm implements from becoming damaged.

Sometimes I collected the ones that had interesting colors, patterns or shapes. On occasion I would smash one with a sledgehammer to see what was inside.

Rocks are all around us, a resource that’s used for a multitude of purposes we might not often consider. Buildings, dams, infrastructures, even our earthenware and cutlery have their beginnings in granite and ore.

Whether one shares my admiration for the usefulness and beauty of rocks or not, there is one thing for certain ­– rocks are old. Very old. The earth itself is a gargantuan, living, rocky ball that’s been floating and spinning for 4.6 billion years.

But the super old rocks on our lovely blue planet are somewhat rare to see. Through erosion, explosions and rift, they can change into newer forms or become buried over time. That’s what makes my experience with this wall of Precambrian rocks in the Canadian Shield so special – it is some of the oldest exposed rocks in the world.

I could actually reach out and touch something nearly as old as the moon.

PS  The oldest known rocks on earth are in the Canadian Shield. The Nuvvuagittuq Belt on the coast of the Hudson Bay, in Northern Quebec, has been around about 4.28 billion years. Wow!