Transcript: Earthly Reads: Marcia Bjornerud on Turning to Stone /S1:3
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Ayana Young Hello For The Wild community. Ayana here, welcome to the third episode of our new book study series, Earthly Reads, where we'll learn alongside some of our most beloved authors. After listening to the shorter conversation, head over to forthewild.world/bookstudy to learn more and to purchase access to the full course. We'll be offering significantly more content and access to live recorded conversations with the authors on our website. We hope to see you there.
Marcia Bjornerud If we could just take ourselves out of ourselves long enough to see humanity and proper proportion in space and time, we'd be happier. We'd treat each other better. We'd actually have much more joy. And so, I'm just trying to give people some glimpse of this great, wild world of rock that is out there just patiently waiting for us to be receptive to it again.
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Ayana Young Hello and welcome to For The Wild Podcast. I'm Ayana Young. Today we are speaking with returning guest Marcia Bjornerud. Well, Marcia, thank you so much for spending some deep time with us today.
Marcia Bjornerud Well, I'm happy to be back with you, Ayana.
Ayana Young As we begin, I'm wondering if you can give us a little background about yourself for our audience and maybe speak to the location you wrote Turning to Stone from and where you are now.
Marcia Bjornerud Well, I'm a Geologist, and specifically a Structural Geologist. I study how mountains grow and I'm in Wisconsin, which might not occur to people as the ideal place to study mountains, but in fact, we have some deeply eroded ancient mountain belts that afford windows into the process by which tectonics can construct great mountain belts. I came into the field of Geoscience almost accidentally, I think.
Actually, like many geologists, I didn't really have any exposure to the field in high school and when I was growing up, frankly, I never had any mentors — women who were scientists that I could look to. And, I did not consider myself a scientist, but I took an introductory course in Geoscience as a college freshman and realized what great explanatory power it had, and I was hooked. So it's a field that has continued to nurture me well into late middle age. And, I'm very grateful that I somehow accidentally stumbled into this remarkable field that is, in fact, in a golden age. My own career in geology has coincided with the blossoming of new methods and new conceptual frameworks that are allowing us to understand the earth in four dimensions, in ways we never have.
Ayana Young Oh, gosh. I'm just imagining what it is to slow down and really think about the history of growing mountains and I wonder if that was part of your desire to write this book, or what sparked you?
Marcia Bjornerud Yeah, so I've written several other books, and with this one, I really wanted to take readers deeper into the physiology of the solid earth — the idea that the earth is this strange, animate creature. The actual crust and lithosphere and mantle are in motion and are recycling themselves. And of course, they're interconnected with the atmosphere, hydrosphere and biosphere system, but I wanted to expose interested readers to the current scientific understanding of the way the planet works.
And, I made a couple of false starts. I did not set out to write a memoir, but I was struggling with finding a narrative framework for taking people into some fairly technical, scientific territory. And, my early attempts just turned out to be too textbooky and I realized probably no one would stick with me. And, an editor that I had been in contact with actually planted in my mind the possibility that I could write something like a memoir and, initially, I really had a viscerally negative reaction to that. I'm a fairly private person and I thought my own story is not the point. But slowly, as I continued to struggle with this book idea, I realized I could use my own story of development as a scientist as a way of welcoming people who are not familiar with the field in and showing how my deepening understanding of the planet has evolved at the same time that the field itself as I mentioned earlier, has become more sophisticated.
So that's how I kind of struck on this hybrid and it is a strange kind of genre-defying book, I have to admit, between my own story as a scientist and then deep dives through the lens of particular rock types that I was living on or obsessed with at different times as a way of telling the story of how the planet works.
Ayana Young Oh, gosh, I'm so happy you wrote this book. It gets me out of my personal way of thinking on a day-to-day basis, and I think the personal stories you weave throughout it make it that much more relatable and easy to flow into the stories that may not be as common for some of us as we're not thinking about rocks all the time.
Marcia Bjornerud Well, as I said, I came into science not thinking of myself as a science type. I think I actually had a kind of negative experience in middle school in science courses that had put me off. And so I really surprised myself as a first year college student even being attracted to a scientific field. And I think I had to from the start really find my own way of feeling safe in science classrooms. And part of it was observing the anthropology of the science as a kind of outsider who was also very fascinated by the content, but not feeling like I was completely one of the crowd in the classroom. So I think that has, ironically, that feeling of being an outsider has helped me later, as a writer. I can remember feeling not welcomed into the group and has helped me translate for people who don't have the technical background, some of the peculiar ways of seeing and thinking that are typical of the Geosciences in specific.
But, another thought I have is that I'm a mother. I've grown children now, but I think observing how children learn — it's quite possible to talk with children about very sophisticated things. You just have to really understand the framework of their perception at any given age. And I'm not condescending to readers in making this comparison. I just think that even very subtle, nuanced technical ideas can be conveyed in some way if we are empathetic to the people we're trying to convey them to that really understand that we have to abandon our technical vocabulary and certain shortcuts and unpack the ideas in a way that an a receptive, ordinary person can grasp.
So I've really held myself in my books to high scientific standards of rigor. I really think that that's important, and I don't think it's antithetical to also making it accessible. So, that's what I've tried to do and I think, you know, sometimes I'm more successful than other times.
Ayana Young The more that I have aged and the more time I've had on this Earth, I actually think that simple and accessible tellings of ideas and ways of being are beautiful and very deep, actually. And, I think when I was younger, I almost....It's not that I wanted to complicate things, but I think I clung on to an identity of intellectualism or big words or sounding a certain way. But I....As I've, you know, moved throughout the world in different places and trying to communicate with people and storytell about the Earth, I noticed that it's not about being smart or not smart, or being interested or not interested. It's that…How do we communicate with people? Like, what actually are the ways that people at this moment in time — and maybe that there's, you know...I'm sure there's threads that we could get into over history of how humans will attach themselves to stories. But, I'm just much more interested in simpler storytelling. I love when more people from different ways of thinking can all come together and agree or or disagree. But I guess really what it is is just engage with thought together. Like, that is just such an exciting thing for me. Yeah, I really appreciate that.
And, yeah. I guess I'm also really interested in the way you write about the land and the decisions throughout history. For instance, you write quote, "Struggling farmers in the sandstone terrain of western Wisconsin faced a [unknown] reality. The bedrock beneath the fields was worth more than the years of hard won harvests. Many of them chose to sell their land for sand mining. In some counties, the topography changed almost overnight. The rolling hills were deleted with ruthless efficiency as frac sand operations stripped away vegetation and gouged out the golden bedrock that rabbled on, just as the lumber barons had done a century earlier. An observer making long term ethnographic observations might discern a pattern. First, Native people of the forest were forced off the land so the sand loving white pines could be cut. Then, the sandy soil was lost to erosion. The sandstone aquifer was tainted, and when it seemed that nothing else could be subtracted or diminished further, the hills themselves were hauled away. The history of this place has always been dictated by sand," end quote. Oh yeah. So I'd just be really interested if you could describe this history more and the interplay of forces that are at work on the landscape.
Marcia Bjornerud Yes, that's from the first chapter, which describes the area Northwestern Wisconsin where I grew up on these beautiful, cambrian, golden honey-colored sandstones. And I use sandstone as this kind of stand in for my pregeologic self, too, that I was aware of the rocks but didn't really understand their semiotics at that time. But in retrospect, I see how the human history of that place and the abuses and uses of the land were completely dictated by the sandstone bedrock in so many ways. And so I use that as an exemplar. It's just one very specific place in the 20th century, but it's true of every place. You know, whether people think about the rocks beneath their feet or not, they are in charge of our destinies and our economies and our collective well being or not.
So for me, sandstone is a beautiful metaphor for the sort of blurred memories of childhood, too. It's made up of bits and pieces of largely indistinguishable quartz grains, just like it's hard to remember any particular days of childhood, but in aggregate, you do have impressionistic memories. But then, once every 10 or 20,000 grains in most quartz sandstones, there will be a tiny crystal of a mineral called zircon, which does have a very sharp memory. And I use that as those few moments that do remain somehow intact in the sea of blurred grains of memory of our childhoods. So I use sandstone both as this metaphor for what we recall of our childhood selves, but also as this kind of fable about how geology is destiny for almost any place on Earth.
Ayana Young Yeah, I know that well in the sense that I have been a part of many campaigns to stop mining projects. And then, one way, it's a really heartbreaking reality, and in the other way, it's just a reality. And it's...That doesn't mean that things can't be stopped, but it's that this is the machine that, in some ways, we all feed into, that wants to take the rock for various reasons. And in your book, you discuss the complicated relationship that many geologists and perhaps even the field of geology has with the oil and gas and mineral industry. And I wonder if you could speak a bit more about this.
Marcia Bjornerud Yeah, it is really a tension in our field. Many people go into the Geosciences because they're attracted to beautiful, wild, rocky places, and then find that their career options sometimes compromise those places. It's less true than it was in the past. Many of the students we have here are going on into conservation fields, being part of government agencies that protect natural places. But still, Geology is very much wrapped up with extractive industries, oil, gas, minerals. I don't know how to really reckon with this sometimes. Much of what we know about the evolution of life on Earth, the way to read the rock record, and even things about mountain building that I study have come from research that was done by oil and gas companies and mineral exploration companies. So we are deeply entangled in a problematic way with the extractive industries.
On the other hand, ironically, this research has led to this astonishing panoramic understanding of Earth through time that perhaps we would not have had if there wasn't a lot of money being put into the study of bedrock for economic reasons. So, it's a real irony that I do struggle with. I chose not to go into the commercial part of Geosciences. I've spent my career as an academic, but I have friends who have had very productive and satisfying careers working for mineral companies or oil and gas companies, and have felt that their scientific curiosity was actually fed by the astonishing resources they had around them to explore the crust of the Earth.
So it's...Yeah, I don't have an easy answer to that. We need to know how to find things we require and, you know, there's a real, hard truth about the green energy transition. It is going to require mining of new kinds of commodities that we've not previously mined in an intensive way. And, I think everyone needs to recognize that and we need to find some kind of rational approach to mining where it can be done with minimal impact. We can't be against every mine, but surely we can make judicious decisions about where not to mine when ecosystems that are very sensitive or close to extinction are threatened.
Ayana Young Mmmmhmmm. Yeah, I'm with you there. I mean, I wish that we didn't have to mine. I wish we didn't have to exploit the Earth for our needs and desires and addictions. But, we seem really far from being able to do that, and our desires only get stronger it seems — which I'm fascinated and horrified by. I also see what you're saying about the field of Geology. I studied in the field of Forestry for many years, and so much of what was taught was guided and shaped by the forestry industry, where a lot of the money came from. It's where a lot of the study and scientific knowledge had come from because it was funded.
So, yeah, it's an interesting telling of the forest when it's being taught through the lens of industry and extraction, even, quote, unquote sustainable forestry. Which, of course, I do think there probably is some. I know there is. I've seen it, but it's usually pretty small scale. I have seen small scale mining, and I think the biggest issue I see with even small scale mining, especially along clean necessary-to-life waterways is the cleanup humans can be really sloppy and messy and things spill — and not just tailings ponds, like, the gas barrels that are used to fill up machines spill. Like, even just changing the oil on an excavator spills like, there's just so much. There's just so much small and big overflow to being industrious at all.
Marcia Bjornerud And, companies have pretty short lifespans. And here in Wisconsin, with some of the frac sand mines, they just went out of business and they, you know, they left town. And you can have laws that are supposedly governing remediation, but if a company is bankrupt and has left the premises, there's very little recourse that can happen. So, that's the really sad irony that capitalism and geologic effects of it are, you know, on completely different time scales. Capitalism is about maximizing profits this year. And you know, the long term effects are not the concern of the companies that may not be around for more than a couple of years.
Ayana Young Oh, yeah. It's amazing how much the land changes hands of companies, and then, of course, with the switching of companies, there's no accountability. And then, even the way the laws are set up, there's no accountability. And then it falls back on either the country which really actually falls back on the tax paying people, and it's, yeah, the whole setup is just really horrifying. And, I'm sure you know very well of…That so many of these laws were written in the 1800s and they somehow still apply to today's mining practices which are obviously entirely different than they were a couple 100 years ago. We're in a pickle because we also — and I say we as, like, a global society in a sense — only have a stronger and stronger desire for minerals.
It's really hard, you know, the Green New Wave and we have green technology, but they need minerals, and they need fossil fuels to get those minerals. And it's, like, Oh gosh, I feel the anxiety. And, I don't necessarily feel confused, but I feel the confusion of what we're doing. I don't really think how we're moving forward makes sense. The hunger for minerals — the growing hunger for minerals.
Marcia Bjornerud Well, I think the only way we can sort of break the pattern of what we've been doing is if we very deliberately try to replicate biogeochemical cycles and make a circular economy — make sure things are fully recyclable, modular, reparable, and are designed for long lifespans. But that's...All of those things are challenging because they run counter to short term profits in most cases. But, if we can practice a little geomimicry in our mining practices. You know, Earth, too, excavates, erodes, cycles its mineral surface. But, everything is in a long term state of circular recycling. If we can mimic that in some way in our industrial processes, then there's hope for breaking out of the pattern that we established for ourselves in the 20th century.
Ayana Young That's an interesting way to think about it, and I'll have to sit with that more. And, I don't know if there's any real life examples of geomimicry, which is a new word for me.
Marcia Bjornerud Well, I don't know that I coined it, but I think it's a useful way of thinking. You've probably heard of biomimicry — looking to the natural world for you know, in plants and animals for design inspiration. There are plenty of ideas in the geologic realm as well, and one of the biggest is this concept of biogeochemical cycling. It's the way that Earth has maintained a reasonably habitable surface environment for at least 500 million years. And, if you go back further, a couple of billion, and it's absolutely central to being able to sustain ourselves in the long term.
People are employing some geo mimicry principles with different ideas about carbon sequestration. I'm sure you've heard of, maybe, Climeworks. It's, I think, a Swiss company, but they're doing their pilot project in Iceland. And, they're using Earth's long term carbon sequestration strategy, which is the formation of calcite, the main mineral in limestone, through the weathering of basalt, and trying to kind of accelerate this natural process so that we could store some of the CO2 emissions that we've done over the last century and a half in solid form over the long haul, as calcite. So they're injecting carbon dioxide from industrial operations directly into the hot basaltic rocks in the subsurface in Iceland and forming some calcite in real time, which is a solid mineral substance that can store CO2. It has CO2 in its formula. It's a mineral. So there are examples of geomimicry that people are trying on small scales. The question is, can we really scale these up? And, are they going to be attractive in a world that measures everything in terms of profitability?
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Ayana Young Yeah, wow, that's really fascinating and, yeah, our world measures things in profitability. But also, the companies that are quote, unquote making profits are completely subsidized and don't pay a lot of taxes.
Marcia Bjornerud Absolutely.
Ayana Young So it's like [laughter] what even is profitability? It's all hooey.
Marcia Bjornerud Socializing the cost, privatizing the profits.
Ayana Young Yeah, so I don't know. I think about that when you know we're in these moments where we're trying to create solutions, we're like, "Oh, but this solution doesn't make money." It's not as if a lot of these mines make money. It's not as if you know there's just so much that if it wasn't getting all the support of the government and taxpayer dollars through these back door ways wouldn't actually be making money either.
It's like we're trying to keep industries alive, because that keeps people fed, that keeps people employed, that keeps people busy. It makes sense, even on a psychological level, that we're in this pattern, that we have to keep feeding because we don't know how to get out of the pattern. And so, I think before I used to probably....Well, I not probably. I had a lot more rage and I was really angry, frustrated, and just so much heartbreak and confused over why we made...And I say we, as in, like all of us who are somehow implicated in this system that we would make decisions like this. But I also, from a human level, like, have a lot of compassion.
This conversation on rocks is really sparking a lot for me, but I'm gonna cap it because there's questions I really wanted to get to...(1) on the history of thought. And, I'm really interested in the way you discuss trends in scientific thinking and the growth in our knowledge. There's a quote that you write, "Can we ever revisit the past without seeing it through the lens of what happened later? Can we truly understand a bygone time in its own right, when other outcomes were still possible? Even when studying rocks, it's hard to avoid the bias of presentism. The Lake Superior basalts formed a billion years ago on an Earth when life was still entirely microbial. Trilobites were still 450 million years in the future. Another supercontinent had to form and break up again before Pangea would even begin to take shape. There was no reason to imagine that such things as dinosaurs or primates would inherit the Earth. None of these things, though now literally set in stone, were then preordained. Given the happenstances of planetary and biological evolution, Earth story could have unfolded quite differently," end quote.
Whew! That just puts so much in perspective and also so much out of perspective at the same time. And, how is our knowledge situated within history?
Marcia Bjornerud Yeah, I mean, I struggle with this question of how to tell Earth's story. Every year when I teach a course called “History of Earth and Life,” I'm gearing up to teach it starting in January again. It's the whole grand saga of Earth's history and evolution of life in ten weeks. We're on a trimester system, so it's a challenge to squeeze everything in, but I need to have some kind of narrative arc to it. And, I really do wonder sometimes, what is the story? Is it of resilience? And yes, it is, because the Earth has been through a lot of things and yet there's this unbroken chain of life from at least 3.8 billion years ago to the present. On the other hand, there's cataclysm and disaster and pathos. So there's so many threads to the story.
And, that quote that you read…I was trying to underscore that when we tell this Earth story, we tend to think of it as the march, the inevitable march, toward the way things are now. But if you take yourself back at different points in Earth's history, things really could have turned out very differently. A different path could have been taken and through this endless process of ramifying, branching, things could be very different here 4.5 million years after the planet formed. And, that is a dizzying kind of idea. There were these inflection points in Earth's history that were moments of uncertainty. We can see in retrospect where the story could have gone very, very differently.
Jackson Kroopf Thank you for listening to the third episode of For The Wild slow study series, Earthly Reads, with Marcia Bjornerud. To hear the full episode, join our book study where we will gather with authors like Marcia as well as adrienne maree brown, Tricia Hersey, Prentis Hemphill, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, and Céline Semaan for an even deeper dive into their recent writings. To learn more, please visit forthewild.world/bookstudy or join us on Patreon.
The music for this series is from the compilation Staying: Leaving Records Aid to Artists Impacted by the Los Angeles Wildfires. The musicians featured in this episode are Zyla, Mizu, Marine Eyes, David Moses, and Tristan de Liege.
For The Wild is made by Ayana Young, Erica Ekrem, Julia Jackson, Jackson Kroopf, Kailea Loften, and Zandashé Brown. Thanks for listening.
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Earthly Reads Book Study, I
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