(give or take 50 million years)
I launched this site with the above title as a marketing campaign headline. Although it feels like this site has had a long gestation period, the headline refers to the rocks not the site. In fact, 4.5 billion refers to the age of our planet. 50 million years is supposed to be the margin of error, but who’s counting? I have arbitrarily set this date as the start of the journey these rocks have taken to arrive within my orbit. When the matter that makes up our planet coalesced and began to cool on the surface, our first rocks started to form. Many early ones where resubmersed into the magma but slowly a crust formed, and with it a land mass and early rocks.

One stone on this site, a glacial erratic originating from the north of Scotland, is composed of a formation called Gneiss. This is thought to be 3.5 billion years old. I like these time frames. They give a completely different perspective on humanity. This epic time scale and the size of the planet make the all organic nature appear akin to the fuzz on a mouldy orange and humans’ amount to complicated jellies that bumble around for an average of 1000 months before they break down. There is a comfort in knowing that the planet will survive our meddling; we may ruin the planet for ourselves and other biological entities, but the planet will slowly creep toward its inevitable end, regardless the culture of its rind.

Of course, I could have gone back to the Big Bang some 13 billion years ago but then I get all Buddhist and think you cannot put a beginning or an end to anything, there is only flow, only now.