We went on a family trip to Cheddar Gorge and Caves and I was, like most visitors who have been in the show caves over the past 187 years I’m sure, very impressed by the rock formations. What I was particularly impressed by was their semblance to other things in nature I would usually think of as alive.
I know, and knew before I stepped inside the caves, that over a long enough timescale rock is dynamic. In terms of visualising this, I would have thought of lava, or rocks being eroded over time, or even water dripping over rock to form stalactites and stalagmites. But seeing the organic forms of the rocks within the caves made me think more about rock as a living thing.
Continue reading “The living rock: dispatches from a cave”