Marcia Bjornerud on the Persistence of Past Worlds on Earth
Emergence Magazine is an online publication with annual print edition exploring the threads connecting ecology, culture, and spirituality. As we experience the desecration of our lands and waters, the extinguishing of species, and a loss of sacred connection to the Earth, we look to emerging stories. Our podcast features exclusive interviews, narrated essays, stories and more.
The Earth has a story that far precedes ours. Before we arrived on the scene, the Earth was already ancient beyond belief, shaped and reshaped by tectonic upheavals, climate changes, and mass extinctions—an evolution She has meticulously archived in the strata and sediment beneath our feet. In this narrated essay, author and geologist Marcia Bjornerud orients us to read these many-volume memoirs of our planet. Celebrating the deep time-fulness of Earth—the four billion years of dynamism that have made this moment possible—she wonders what might happen to our understanding of the past and the present if we remembered the stories that came before our humancentric one.
Discover more stories from our latest print edition, Volume 5: Time.
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Marcia Bjornerud is a professor of environmental studies and geosciences at Lawrence University. She is a contributing writer to The New Yorker, Wired, The Wall Street Journal, and The Los Angeles Times and the author of Timefulness: How Thinking Like a Geologist Can Help Save the World. A Geological Society of America fellow and Fulbright alumna, Marcia has been named Outstanding Educator by the Association of Women Geoscientists. Her latest book is Turning to Stone: Discovering the Subtle Wisdom of Rocks.
