Stories in Stone

This morning H and I got ourselves out early to get the bus to Pioneer Square to do a "Stories in Stone" walk with 7 other Seattle souls in the rain (our biggest mistake was to go off without warm gloves on April 7! and I hate umbrellas but had to try to balence it so my big camera wasn't so wet.) with David Williams, a writer/geologist. It was wet, but fabulous! He insists we are not only surrounded by the natural world in the city but one can tell a lot about the building and it's owners from the choice of stone. We saw a 3.5-billion- year-old rock on a building downtown in Seattle, lots of fossils, and heard about where the rocks were from in the world and what else in the world is made of them (The Travertine in the Rainier tower is the same stone that the Colosseum in Rome is made of!) The blip is of a fragment of an 1825 building (the Burke) made of Washington State sandstone. Buildings made with this stone do not need another structure. It was very fun and interesting and of course we bought the book. (but NO, I'm not going to add geology to my list of stuff to learn :-) but I will pay more attention to the stones in the buildings!) )He also has written The Seattle Street Smart Naturalist. He is a very enthusiastic fellow full of good stories...David William's website.

I did post some rock (and a few other city) photos on flickr for a few friends that I know might be interested. Not all are labeled well however. I needed to then spend the day trying to catch up with stuff, mainly on the computer and not going anywhere!