Hello!

Welcome to my monthly newsletter. This is a space for thoughts on art, ecology, and the process of cultivating curiosity in the everyday. If you’d like to follow along you can subscribe for free to receive emails in your inbox, or view posts in blog-format on the Substack webpage or app.

Now let’s talk about rocks…

I am, unequivocally, a big fan of rocks. Touching rocks, photographing rocks, collecting rocks. My warmest childhood memories all seem to be rock related, anchored to my personal narrative with a thick sensory thumbprint : hot slabs of granite radiating the afternoon sun, lichen-clad boulders smelling of bay leaves, the chatter of beach pebbles tumbling in the ebbing tide.

My rock of choice is the beach stone which, for better or worse, inhabits every surface of my home. They adorn my shelves and line my sills. Cherished art objects, striped with veins of quartz and flecked with ghosts of invertebrates past. Totems of places that have shaped me.

As someone who is not a geologist and, regrettably, has no rock-based accolades to boast of, my rock-love is that of an amateur naturalist. Part poetic-reverence, part fan-girl-nature-crush, I love them with a voracity that others seem to reserve for crystals (hi dad). An affinity for which I don’t share but can certainly respect as the flashy queen cousin of the humble beach stone.

I’ve recently become a docent at an intertidal reef in Northern California, which means that I volunteer to educate people about tide pool ecology. And it’s become clear that I’ve indulged my undying love of rocks a little too much. As the coastline experiences more and more traffic, it’s bending under the pressure. The go-to phrase seems to be “it’s the place we’re loving to death,” as is the case with so many coastal environments. One of the goals as a docent is to ensure that the reef stays intact in order for marine life to flourish and repopulate. Which, in part, means discouraging people like me from taking the beach away, stone by stone. A perspective I’m remiss to admit is a good one.

Whether you choose to adopt this principle as your own, I’ll leave up to you. But I do think it’s important to reflect on…

What does it mean to take something that isn’t ours (rocks, unceded land, etc). What does it mean to “own” a thing that has outlived us by millions of years, and will continue to live on well beyond us? In some sense, aren't the rocks sort of possessing us? Aren’t we just minor players in their lives? Soft human bodies passing through in a momentary blip of time and space.

I think this perspective is worthy of pause.  Remembering that in the scale of time, us humans are the toddlers and the earth we walk on is the elder. Toddlers, with their tumbling, destructive energy. A spill of trial and error and lessons yet to be learned.

The geologist Marcia Bjornerud talks about rocks as a pathway to expanding our perception of time in her book Timefulness. She writes, “rocks are not nouns but verbs- visible evidence of processes: a volcanic eruption, the accretion of a coral reef, the growth of a mountain belt.” This geologic time or Deep Time can help reframe what she refers to as our “temporal illiteracy.” Our inability as humans to conceptualize the vast durations of time in Earth’s history.

How strange to reflect on the way that rocks have become backdrops to our lives, stripped of their context in time and space. That granite countertop that may be feeling a little passé in your kitchen was formed over millions of years through slowly cooling magma beneath the earth’s surface. It’s hard to conceptualize how something can simultaneously be a passing trend and a primordial process that’s anchored to the oldest rhythms of the earth.

So what can we learn from the things we take, and the things we take for granted? What can we learn from rocks? 

I like the funny tension of talking about rocks on the internet. Examining this solid, ancient, physical thing in a place that couldn’t be more nebulous and ever-changing. But then again, rocks change too. Shaped by wind and sea and sand. Tunneled into by clams and various invertebrates. Tumbled through space and time, softening across billions of years. Crushed, melted, reconstituted, and transformed through heat and pressure. They exist in the depths of our oceans and the craggy summits of our tallest peaks. The base of our earth, the hearth of our homes. 

To hold a rock, cupped in my palm, is a humbling experience. Like staring up at an ancient redwood or gazing into the night sky… an opportunity to revel in my insignificance. My problems are snapped into perspective, as is my reverence for all the things I don’t understand and, delightfully, never will.

I began drawing rocks a long time ago, but it didn’t become a practice until more recently. Noticing their form, their peaks and valleys, a tiny landscape to hold up to the light. As I follow the shape with my pencil, it becomes a meditation. Rounding out my marks, applying the slightest variances in pressure and value. Employing patience, curiosity, and most of all, a willingness to learn from something that’s easy to assume I know at a glance.

I’ve found that drawing rocks allows me to notice them more deeply. But it also allows me to hold onto a piece of something that maybe doesn’t need to be physically taken as my own. In a sense, a true act of love: a way to cherish without needing to possess.

With that in mind, here’s a collection of my rock drawings. I could keep them tucked away, but the thought of my dearly-beloveds adorning your walls and fridges makes my heart swell. 

I hope you’re all finding moments of reverence and curiosity in your own lives, in whatever form that takes.

Viva la rocks!

xoxo Tess

Rock Recs:

-Going outside and looking at rocks

-ROCK SHOP

-Timefulness by Marcia Bjornerud

-This Ollogies podcast, a two part interview with Geologist Schmitty Thompson

-Would anyone be interested in an online rock drawing workshop? Let me know!

-Here’s more info about Marine Protected Areas and the Duxbury Reef Docent Program

Upcoming Events:

-I’m teaching a nature drawing class this Saturday May 6th through the Point Reyes National Seashore Association. Click here to learn more and sign up.

-I’m hosting a Nature-Art Summer Camp for teens with my friend Erin of High Noon Crafts. It will take place in West Marin this August. Visit our webpage here to learn more.