Announcing the publication of my book of geological photography, that is photography of the geological formations on our Earth, whose beauty I’ve been in love with since childhood. Rocks, landscapes, yes, and more. Attuned to geological surroundings, I’ve discovered amazing things that weren’t in the guidebooks, often underfoot, on a small scale, in a modest nature park, or on a deserted rocky beach in the rain. Of course, no one can gainsay the magnificent large-scale sites that attract plenty of visitors, and they’re in the book, too.

I hope that together they’ll offer  a more complete picture of just how varied and astonishing is the Planet we live on, that lives and changes, just as we do as living creatures, albeit on a much longer timescale. The semi-molten core of the Earth is still quite active, unlike that of the moon, a completely dead heavenly body. And the ensemble of life on the planet also effects changes, at first filling the atmosphere with enough oxygen to support higher forms of life (about 2 billion years ago), and now, sadly changing that atmosphere in dangerous ways.

I’ve dedicated this book to the struggle by one indigenous group of people to defend their land from commercial exploitation and thereby exacerbate the human damage being done to our viability on Earth. The Lakota People’s Law Project was organized to stand up for the Water Protectors of Standing Rock, North Dakota, who opposed the oil company installing an oil pipeline under the Missouri River, their source of fresh water. They were defeated in the first round of their opposition, but the fight goes on. I hope this book will raise people’s awareness of the wonders of the Earth that we must work to sustain and of the struggles of the Lakota People and other indigenous peoples around the world to preserve Earth’s viability for all of us.