The Ground We Live On

Put your hand on the ground and feel it: solid, cold, not moving. Now know this: you are touching the top of a very big round stone that is flying around the sun, turning as it goes, with hot liquid stone inside it. The ground feels like the end of the story. It is the first sentence.

What is below you

Go down through the ground, and things change quickly. First there is the ground you know — the brown ground that plants grow in — very small stone pieces mixed with very small dead plant pieces. Below this: hard stone, and more hard stone. And far, far down, the stone is not solid. Down there it is very, very hot, and the stone is liquid, and it turns and moves like heavy water. At the centre sits a big round piece of metal, hotter than the sun's surface.

The ground moves

The stone top of the ground is not one piece. It is several big pieces, and they move — about as quickly as your hair grows. They push into each other, or pull from each other, or rub their sides on each other.

Where two pieces push into each other, the ground has no place to go but up. After a thousand thousand years, this makes the highest ground there is, sharp and white-topped, higher than most birds fly.

Where two pieces rub their sides on each other, at times they hold, and push, and hold — and then move all at one time. When this happens, the ground below the people moves like water, and buildings fall. No one can stop this, and no one can say when it will happen. People can only choose carefully where they put their buildings, and make buildings that do not fall easily.

The holes where hot stone goes up

In some places a hole goes down to the hot liquid stone, and at times the liquid stone pushes up through the hole and out. It goes down the sides, burning all it touches, and then it becomes cold, solid, and black. Some ground was made like this: hot stone from inside, now cold, with plants growing on it as if no thing happened. The ground near these holes is very good for plants — which is why people often live near them, and why this often ends in a very bad day.

The kinds of stone

Not all ground is the same. There is clay, which holds water, and which people burn to make hard containers. There is coal, which is black and burns: coal was plants, long before now, pressed below the ground for a thousand thousand years. When you burn coal, you are burning the sun's light — light that plants took in before there were people. And in some places there are flat white salt floors below the ground, left behind where big waters dried, long before now.

The time it holds

Stone holds time. Year after year, a thin floor — small stone pieces and dead things — falls to the bottom of waters and is pressed into stone. Look at the cut side of high ground and you can see the floors, one on top of another, each floor from its own time. Far down, people find the hard parts of animals that no one has seen alive — kinds that ended long before people started. The ground has been here for more than four thousand thousand thousand years. Make all its years into one day, and people have been here for less than one moment.

Put your hand on the ground another time. Solid, cold, not moving. But now you know: far below your hand, hot liquid stone turns; the piece you sit on moves as quickly as your hair grows; and the big round stone flies around the sun, carrying you, the waters, the animals, and all of us with it.