You can imagine the shear joy for someone just finishing a book about cairns to see one honored on currency, especially when I discovered that the cairn was used on all of the Zimbabwe currency. Soon that initial tingling of pleasure was crushed. Turns out that those three rocks are not a cairn but a stack of three, large, naturally occurring balanced rocks.

The rocks are found near the town of Epworth about 9 miles south of Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital and largest city. Known locally as Domboremari, or “the money rock,” they are part of a larger area called the Chiremba Balancing Rocks, which also includes the “Flying Boat Formation.” All are made of granite boulders, eroded to a perfect balance.

Apparently in the 1960s, the Rhodesian Bank’s Board of Directors wanted a well-known natural feature of the country and chose the rocks as a symbol of strength and stability. The stacked stones did appear on the Rhodesian dollar, though much less prominently than they do on the Zimbabwean currency.

After a little sulking, a few tears, and a shot of whiskey (with Whiskey Rocks), I have gotten over my disappointment that the rocks are not a cairn. How could I complain that a country chose a rock formation a symbol? I do, however, think that a cairn would make a good emblem. After all, a cairn is a sign of aide, a guide and comfort to those who are lost, and a means of communication that has existed for thousands of years. Perhaps some day some country will see the light and use one.

The sheet, a standard printed form used by British expeditionary crews, was the first written record found from Franklin, after more than 20 expeditions had been sent out in search of them men. Written on May 28, 1847, the note told of how Franklin’s men had overwintered about 400 miles north on Beechey Island. All were well, FitzJames wrote, but 11 months later on April 25, 1848, FitzJames had updated the form.

For 19 months, since September 12, 1846, the Terror and Erebus had been trapped in ice, the addendum added. The crews had abandoned the boats just three days prior to writing the note. One hundred and five men were alive, under the command of Terror captain Francis R.M Crozier, who had signed the note along with James Fitzjames. They planned to venture south on the twenty-sixth in search of Back’s Fish River, a river that flowed from the south into the Arctic. By this time, nine officers and 15 men had died. This included Sir John Franklin, who had perished just 13 days after the original document had been signed.

The Victory Point cairn on King William Island, as it became known, was not the first cairn found by searchers. Throughout the Arctic, teams had found and dismantled many cairns, most of which had been built by previous explorers, including the one with the note, which had been erected in 1830 by James Ross.

My favorite cairn is one found on Beechey Island, that was made of 600 to 700 bright red, meat tins, made by Goldner’s in London. The company had supplied Franklin with more than 20,000 tins totaling 16 tons. (One of the long debated aspects of the Franklin Expedition is whether the lead used to solder the tins had addled the men’s’ brains and lead to poor decision making.) The cairn measured eight feet high by six feet wide. Curiously, limestone pebbles filled each soup can-sized tin.

Despite more than 160 years of searching, no other written evidence has ever been found from Franklin’s Expedition. People still continue to travel to the Arctic in search though. They are still building and still dismantling cairns.

I am quite happy with the look of the new book. The title font, which is used throughout for chapter titles and the first few words of each chapter is rather handsome and somewhat old fashioned and dignified. My wife thinks it looks a bit like an old typewriter face. Another friend thought it looked like a font used on tombstones, elegant and permanent. I agree!

Fortunately, I didn’t have any major changes to make in the text. I did pick up a few extraneous words, a June/July dating issue, a misplaced epigraph, some places where there should have been italics and some places where there shouldn’t, and an extra footnote, which could have been ugly. The major changes had to do with a complicated section on carbon dating, where I had omitted a crucial fact, and a sentence on lichen thalli, which you can imagine can be a troubling enterprise to address. I like to think that I worked out a solution that will please even the most opinionated lichenologist.

It is also strange how much the book changes from screen to hard copy to galleys. Each edition reveals something new. I am very happy, too, that I had a diligent copyeditor and am also having a proofreader for I know that I see what isn’t there and don’t see what I should. Plus, I know that I am not very good at punctuation.

So now the publisher will work their magic and incorporate my changes and the ones from the proofreader. They will then send back my final page proofs, with I hope no mistakes. Publication date is mid September.

As so often happens, the New York Times has cottoned on to this latest craze in geology. Yesterday, they had a short story about the rock cubes. Apparently, some, including a noted mixologist (isn’t that what we used to call a bartender?), scoff at the cubes. The only substance that should mingle with a fine scotch or bourbon, these purists say, is a splash of water. I suspect that if you are purity personified that you would use only bottled water.

I have tried the rocks and I was not terribly impressed. They did not cool my scotch, though I did enjoy having the small gray cubes in my peat-colored drink. Using them did get me thinking about soapstone. I wonder if the purveyors of these icy rocks know that one early name for soapstone is lardite, which comes from the French pierre de lard. The name refers to the marbled texture of some soapstones. Other names include steatite, pagodite, potstone, and soap earth.

Soapstone is a metamorphic rock (usually from a peridotite) rich in the mineral talc. Because of the talc, it is usually soft and easy to work. (When I teach rocks and minerals to student groups, I get them to notice the feel of talc and to realize that it’s the material in talcum powder, which they are most familiar with because of its use for diaper rash, yet another fact not mentioned by the seller of these fad stones.) Soapstone does not absorb water but does soak up heat slowly and then retain it for long periods. I have not read, except in advertising, that it retains cold as well. In Norway, soapstone is used as a building material. The best known example is the Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim, built between the 11th and 14th centuries.

The NYT articles says that the cubes are selling well. As I have long said, anytime you can connect people with geology it’s a good thing. So I will drink to these rocks.

Where else but in Canada would you see a squat pile of rocks labeled as Intriguing? Of course, the main reason for the rise of the rocks is the Vancouver Olympics of 2010. Its symbol was known as Ilanaaq, or “friend” in the Inuit language. More generally, the rock pile is a type of cairn called an inuksuk, which translates to “that which acts in the capacity of a human.” The people of the north have been building inuksuit for thousands of years but not until the Olympics did marketers firmly appropriate them as a new symbol of Canada.

This ad must be one of the few around that features only rocks: Stonehenge and an inuksuk. It clearly reveals that marketers are beginning to realize the power of rocks as a tool for attracting people. I mean who doesn’t get excited by seeing rocks carefully placed in an attractive setting. Someday soon, I suspect that such geology-themed ads will become the norm for all marketing worldwide.

But back to this ad. I also like the scales used in it. It looks as if the inuksuit could have built Stonehenge. (Just a quick aside to note the famous mini-Stonehenge used by the great band Spinal Tap.) Perhaps the Genuine Canadian Magazine marketers have inadvertently solved one of the great conundrums of English history. Who built Stonehenge? Was it an inuksuk? Certainly just as likely of answer as some that have been tossed out. Good job Canadians.

No one would discover the tent and the frozen bodies until November 12, when surgeon Edward Leicester Atkinson and a search party located the site. Atkinson wrote of their discovery “It was an object partially snowed up and looking like a cairn. Before it were the ski sticks and in front of them a bamboo which was probably the mast of the sledge.” The tent was a quarter of a mile from another cairn and about eleven miles from a food cache known as One Ton Depot.

After thoroughly searching the tent, the men, and the surroundings, during which Atkinson’s party located “35 lbs. of very important geological specimens,” the searchers built a “mighty cairn.” They finished the commemorative ice structure the next day. Atop it rose a rough cross, made from skis, and nearby stood two sledges. Within a metal cylinder, Atkinson left the following record:

‘November 12, 1912, Lat. 79 degrees, 50 mins. South. This cross and cairn are erected over the bodies of Captain Scott, C.V.O., R.N., Doctor E. A. Wilson, M.B. B.C., Cantab., and Lieutenant H. R. Bowers, Royal Indian Marine—a slight token to perpetuate their successful and gallant attempt to reach the Pole. This they did on January 17, 1912, after the Norwegian Expedition had already done so. Inclement weather with lack of fuel was the cause of their death. Also to commemorate their two gallant comrades, Captain L. E. G. Oates of the Inniskilling Dragoons, who walked to his death in a blizzard to save his comrades about eighteen miles south of this position; also of Seaman Edgar Evans, who died at the foot of the Beardmore Glacier. ‘”The Lord gave and the Lord taketh away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”‘

In the century since Scott, Wilson, and Bowers died, their bodies have slowly moved away from their point of death. According to an article by R.K. Headland in the July 2011 Polar Record, the tent was located on about 360 feet of ice on the Ross Ice Shelf. Based on ice movement measurements, the tent and ice cairn have traveled about 37 miles from their original location. They are also buried under 53 feet of ice. Headland further calculated that the bodies will reach the edge of the ice front in another 248 years or so, buried by more than 325 feet of ice, which will put them below sea level.

The bodies will not, however, then just pop out of the ice into the water. Headland writes that they most likely will be “carried off within an iceberg when they get close enough to the ice front.” Ice currents, the iceberg’s size and how it melts will ultimately determine the fate of the men and the cairn. I am guessing by that time, the cairn will be one of, if not, the best traveled cairn in history.

I would have thought in this modern age that the abundance and quality of concrete would have lead to much less granite use. Of course, I don’t have the statistic on how much concrete goes into curbing. I suspect there is far more concrete curbing than granite but the amount of granite curbing still surprises me. And, of note, this reflects only how domestic stone is used.  I couldn’t locate comparable statistics for international stone but the use of imported stone dwarfs the use of domestic stone in the building trade. (Brazil is the largest importer.)

I do know that the National Park Service uses granite curbing regularly. They do so for the reasons that others do, too. Granite lasts longer than concrete, is far better looking, and far more grand. If money was no object I am sure that most builders would use granite.

Granite is not the only stone used for curbs. I have seen marble curbs in Carrara, Italy; basalt curbs in Hilo, Hawaii; and gneiss curbs in Morton, Minnesota. These latter curbs are pretty nifty because the stone is 3.54 billion years old. And, with the basalt curbs probably no older than a few thousand years, if not much younger, that’s a pretty good age spread of stone.

In fact, it’s sort of a nifty way to age date one’s neighborhood in Seattle. Older ones still retain some granite. Younger have the steel railing and the youngest neither steel nor granite.

And one final use for granite curbing, from my pal Dave Tucker at NW Geology Field Trips. He sent me this great photo of adaptive reuse of an old granite curb in Bellingham. The title is “Days Go By” by Brian Goldbloom. He completed it in 1987 from curbstone removed in 1982 “to make way for modernization.” I like it!

I realized this recently on a vacation to Hawaii’s big island. This was the second time in less than a year that I spent time on an island of basalt. The first was last year on a trip to Iceland. In each place, basalt dominated the landscape. I don’t use dominated lightly. I mean it in the dictionary definition of “to bear rule over, control, sway; to have a commanding influence on.”

When you travel in Hawaii and Iceland, you quickly learn that basalt is what rules these islands. Drive down a road and you will discover how it weaves through lava flows, unless, of course, it simply disappears under the lava. Read stories about the islands’ histories and you will learn how basalt has shaped the actions of where and how people lived. Look at tourist brochures and you will see how promoters exploit the splendor of basalt to draw in visitors.

Because of the youth of the basalt—on Hawaii we saw flows less than a year or so old—both islands have a dynamic feel. On Iceland, we experienced the eruption of Grimsvötn, which shut down the airport and curtailed our travel plans. On Hawaii, the ongoing spewing of toxic gases from Halema’uma’u crater prevented us from hiking several trails. Where else would you see signs that read “Stay on trail. Dangerous earth cracks in park area”?

That dynamic also gives Iceland and Hawaii a raw and unformed feel. The islands are in a constant state of change, growing with new lava flows and disemboweling themselves with eruptions. Hiking around Iceland, I was struck by how moss was often the lone plant life, as if only primitive vegetation veneered a primitive land. Hawaii does have its tropical rainforests, which at times made the island seem far older, but I also saw huge areas devoid of any plant, or even any animal. When driving, I found you could not always trust a map, as some geologic disaster might have simply erased a road or bridge.

The story of basalt is one that stretches back to the earliest days of Earth and continues unabated to the present. It is a story that shapes our planet and our species. It is a story that shows that geology is alive and well, and often kicking some butt. What more could a basaltophile want?

He raises a good point that in the countertop trade rocks seem to come in just two varieties: marble and granite. If it looks granular or granitic, it is a granite. If it looks marbled or veiny, it is a marble. One of the few places that I have seen another type of stone mentioned was in Bloomington, Indiana, where I saw an add for apartments that included limestone countertops. This makes sense because of the location, in the heart of the Indiana stone belt.

Trying to choose one favorite countertop or other human-manipulated stone is a challenge. I have written about some of my favorites, the wonderful treestump gravestones of Indiana, but thought I would turn to another rather unusual stone structure. I have never seen it but have read about it. It is William Buckland’s Coprolite Table on display at the Lyme Regis Museum. That site contains a link to nifty, in-depth article about the table. Here’s a quick summary.

Both photographs from Richard Bull’s fine paper on the table.

Reverend William Buckland was an eccentric Oxford geologist who coined the term “coprolite,” meaning “dung-stone,” in 1829. The table was made from coprolites most likely collected at Wardie, Edinburgh, in 1834. It was on display in his drawing rooms he had a two homes. Making up the surface of the table are “64 sectioned oval coprolitic nodules,” which closely resemble beetles but are in fact fish poops. They come from a 330-million-year old shale deposited in a freshwater lake.

In 1836, Buckland wrote about the coprolites in his famous Bridgewater Treatise:

Mr W C Trevelyan recognised Coprolites in the centre of nodules of clay ironstone, that he found in a low cliff composed of shale, belonging to the coal formation at Newhaven, near Leith. I visited the spot, with this gentleman and Lord Greenock, in September 1834 and found these nodules stewed so thickly upon the shore, that a few minutes allowed me to collect more specimens than I could carry. Many of these contained a fossil fish, or a fragment of a plant, but the greater number had at their nucleus, a Coprolite, exhibiting an internal spiral structure: they were probably derived from voracious fishes, whose bones are found in the same stratum. These nodules take a beautiful polish, and have been applied by the lapidaries of Edinburgh to make tables, letter presses, and ladies ornaments under the name of Beetle stones from their supposed insect origin.

The Lyme Regis Museum acquired the table in 1928 as a gift from Buckland’s grandson.

But on Thursday, in a BBC documentary, Jonathan Powell, who in 2006 was Chief of Staff for Prime Minister Tony Blair, admitted that “they had us bang to rights.” (For those unfamiliar with this phrase, it means caught red-handed. There appears to be some dispute as to whether it is of British or American origin.) Powell added that “Clearly they had known about it for some time and had been saving it up for a political purpose.”

That purpose appears to be Putin’s clamping down on NGOs. Supposedly, the British were funding NGOs that sought to promote democracy and human rights. An article in yesterday’s Guardian newspaper quoted human rights activist Lev Ponomaryov. “For any thinking person this rock meant nothing – it was simply a provocation, a cheap trick used by a former KGB agent.” The British continue to deny that the had illegally funded any NGOs.

Sergeant Cassidy made one for me o–out of papier-mache. He
 showed me how it’s done. And it looks absolutely realistic. Then he
 would roll it in the dirt to–to look like a rock, to pick up some 
dirt. And it was kind of gray looking to begin with. And the inside 
would be completely hollow. And in there, he would have some
ti–ordinary tinfoil that you would buy at the supermarket.

And inside the tinfoil, he would wrap the film of the documents he had
secretly photographed on behalf of the Russians. All was under the
control of the FBI and the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon. The
 Russians would then pick up this–this–these films and they would 
develop them and they would think they had the secret documents.

In regard to the modern rock, my big question is whether it looked authentic or not. I think that it does. The rock looks like sandstone or limestone and Moscow is known to have subsurface karst limestone. So, I like to think that even if the Brits made what some call an embarrassing choice by using the rock and then denying it, they at least may have gone to the effort to choose a geologically appropriate rock.