Circus Conglomerate
A host of colors.
A visual circus of concentric circles.
A long-ago river bank that turned to stone.
It must have been a most colorful river to walk.
A shame no human did.
Our species was not yet then a gleam in the Father’s eye.
No species of anything walked on land during the Silurian epoch, 420 million years
ago.
All life was in the sea.
Some of the pebbles that make up the conglomerate are limestone.
This limestone contains fossilized corals and other sea forms from an even earlier epoch of
geologic time.
Some of the pebbles within the conglomerate are “granitoids” -
granite and its kin.
The word “granitoid” is a gift of geology to the English language.
The most brilliantly colored pebbles are chert, chalcedony, and quartz
- all varieties of silica.
Colored cherts or chalcedonies may be called “Jasper.”
Because siliceous stones are so hard, this material requires
diamond abrasives and much time to polish.
Circus Conglomerate
is an excellent outdoor stone -- its colors beam in both the sun and the rain.
It
is ideal for “garden sculpture” - garden
seats, basins, fountains.
Circus
Conglomerate comes from an island of Southeast Alaska’s
Alexander
Archipelago.
