My good friend and professor of geology Pat Spencer is the inspiration for Pages of Stone. "Pages of Stone" was actually the name of a class he taught that was, essentially, writing about geology in different genres. We described a sunrise one week, wrote satire for another; we read excerpts of John McPhee and discussed portions of Mark Twain's Life on the Mississippi for guidance. Each week we could choose to read aloud our pieces, receiving feedback and encouragement from the six other people in the class. 

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Pat's inspiration for the class was his wife (and my friend), Kathy Ketcham. Kathy is a writer, and Pat says the class was actually her idea -- a challenge to communicate geology to non-geologists, an opportunity to think about geologic processes from a different perspective. 

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The piece written by Chloe Harvey is from this class. I remember listening to her read it aloud during one of those evening classes, and thinking it was one of the most beautiful pieces of writing I had ever encountered. ​​