More geology

Another excerpt from Mementoliths, first printed in 2005, this one from the Kindle edition, Mementoloiths2, available from Amazon. Again, there's a description of the rock, followed by a poem which I associated with it. The association here is with the ancient nature of the rock, and with James Hutton, the man who first realised the enormity of geological time - 'no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end.'

Granulite, Scourie

This rock is granular in texture (hence the name), grey in colour, made from mixed black and white grains. This is the oldest rock in Scotland – 2.9 Ga old, and that’s a major part of the age of the planet. One man who appreciated the enormous scale of geological time was James Hutton, author of The Theory of the Earth (1795). He wrote of finding in the cyclical processes of the Earth “no vestige of a beginning and no prospect of an end”. It’s very tempting to suggest that some of Robert Burns’ lines in ‘My luv is like a red, red rose’ owe a debt to Hutton, and to his friend Sir James Hall, of Dunglass – Burns certainly met them both in Edinburgh. Earlier, Hutton had farmed at Slighhouses in the Berwickshire hinterland, where he wrote an enormous unpublished manuscript on agriculture, preserved in the National Library of Scotland.

The Elements of Agriculture

It’s cool here on Monynut Edge,

strafed by the wind,

grubbing for enlightenment

among the scabby half-chewed neeps

and scunnered sheep.

Another page done - two candles-worth -

yet more scrawled remembrances

and admonitions

on the improvement of pasture,

the winterage of beasts

and the beneficiation of soils.

This book will treasure me

in times to come, enough

to forego farming

and fund my hammering

in the hame hills, and furth,

through the echoing halls

of uncountable time,

and the rocks of eternity.

Copyright  @ Colin Will 2005, 2016