On the Virtue of Unfinished Drafts

I remember the first small piece of petrified wood that I held in my hand at a young age. It was the color of sand, dull, and rough with deep linear striations on the outside. It wasn’t pretty and it was heavy, like a rock. I had picked up driftwood that was lighter than I thought it should be, but this piece of wood was heavy. That fascinated me. I was amazed that a big, beautiful tree whose roots once grew deeply into the ground, whose leaves spoke as the wind tickled their edges was stopped in time and turned to stone like looking into Medusa’s eyes. My imagination flourished with the idea of a petrified forest where wizards and dragons might live.

The magical world of petrified forests happened in areas all over the earth as early as the Devonian period, about 390 million years ago through the Permian period around 47 million years ago and even more recently. Colors vary based on the chemicals and conditions that occurred to mineralize the wood over time. Fossilized wood is a snapshot of prehistoric time representing the biology, heat, force, minerals and chemistry that are still part of our life today.

Always looking deeper through the macro lens, these polished prisms into the past resonate with the beginning of our time on earth and even the beginning of the universe. This series of three macro photographs of petrified wood captures the otherworldliness of petrified wood while representing the real world around us. Just as walking through a forest inspires us to appreciate the wonder of our life on earth, these ancient, fossilized remnants of early time remind of us our connectedness to the universe, especially when we look up at the stars from our time capsule here on earth.