The Storied Stone

Sometime during Thanksgiving, I started thinking about traditions, and about the things that last well after we're long gone. I started thinking about the materials we use to build our homes.

Growing up close to a swamp, the only stones I ever saw were rocks dredged from local rivers, used as gravel. I had a hard time imagining the stone walls, compiled of stacked loaves of granite, that line the countryside of New England. As a young rock hound, with only a gravel bed as my quarry, granite was a rare find indeed. I stumbled upon smooth pebbles of quartz, which is an ingredient of granite, every once in a while. But by and large the most plentiful stones were sedimentary rocks that had been smoothed over by centuries of lying in a riverbed. 

A good number of those rocks contained fossils. The pieces I found were much too small to contain dinosaur bones, but I marveled just the same at the tiny screws of vertebrae and other prehistoric remains that had been turned, as if by magic, over long expanses of time, to solid rock. The first time I saw a piece of limestone tile patterned with fossilized ferns, I couldn’t help but feel like a kid again. Here were the remains of prehistoric life, and you could tile your bathroom floor with them if you wished. Each natural stone evokes a sense of timelessness in its own way. Granite reminds us of prehistoric volcanos erupting constantly. White marble reminds, perhaps, of Michelangelo’s David. We look at travertine and remember that this is the stuff of the coliseum in Rome. But gazing at the fronds and other bits of life forever locked in a piece of limestone can create a unique feeling of connection with the beginning of life on the planet.

If you’re choosing natural stone for your project, there must be an aesthetic reason for your choice—certain colors evoke warm and comforting feelings, the stone’s finish is pleasant to the touch, and you like the idea of building with a material that has been in constant use for thousands of years, that will never go out of style. Part of the aesthetic and charm of any material or object, though, is in its story. Whether it’s a slab of granite glittering with quartz crystals formed in the hot, violent infancy of Earth, or a piece of limestone that chronicles a short stretch of the beginnings of life, every stone has a story. Including stone in your own home, among the mementos and curios that you treasure, can only enhance the emotional investment of your building project.