In Microcosm of Sand, the geologist and writer evokes the entire universe

The word “sand”, like the words “rock” and “dirt”, is a word one picks up very early in childhood. Sand, rock, and dirt are ubiquitous materials, the building blocks of our planet. We are faced with them early in life and life requires us to know what they are.

Perhaps the most interesting of the three for young people is sand because it is hard and yet it can flow like water, it is hard and soft, static but mobile. Sand, say the encyclopedias, is a “natural granular material composed of rock and finely divided mineral particles.” Even those who have not studied sand know that it comes in a variety of colors and initial degrees of granularity, ranging from the talcum powder fineness of orange Saharan sand to the much grittier varieties derived from crushed coral that They are so frequent on the beaches of the world.

And now at last comes a book devoted entirely to sand, an extraordinary and delightful exploration of this strange corner of the mineral world. Is Arena: The Neverending Story by British geologist Michael Welland, a masterful evocation of a long-forgotten and yet remarkable and ubiquitous basic substance of our world.

From individual grains seen in minute structural detail under a microscope to the vast desert dunes that form like ocean waves in stretches of the Sahara desert that can be seen from space, from the bottom of the world’s oceans to the landscapes of our neighboring Mars, from billions of years in the past to a future that stretches to infinity. Arena: The Neverending Story It is an amazing narrative that spans the entire universe in which we live, because virtually everywhere in that universe is this matter, this sand, one of nature’s humblest and yet most powerful and ubiquitous materials.

Although this is a book by a professional scientist with a PhD from Cambridge, the story is told with a dramatic sense of language and a narrative that is more reminiscent of fiction and film. Welland is a gifted writer. sand examines the science of sand, including the physics of granular materials in general, and yet the focus is always on the human context of sand, sand as a material we use every day. That, in the end, is what gives meaning to the arena in our human world. Interwoven with tales of scientists, sculptors, navigators, the story of the sand is at once a story of environmental construction and a story of environmental collapse, an adventure that goes back to the beginnings of our planet as a place of solid materials but a tale that also encompasses the mundane realities of a child’s backyard sandbox today. That’s because the sand is all around us. Sand is a component of almost everything: it has made possible our computers, buildings and window panes, toothpaste, cosmetics, and paper, and has played dramatic roles in human history, commerce, and the imagination. It is a component of concrete and is an artifact of the elements. Given enough time, the Rocky Mountains will turn to sand; in fact, the Alleghenies already have. Welland shows us that we can find the world in a grain of sand.

Although he is undoubtedly first and foremost a professional scientist, no one is more fun to listen to as a writer of narrative nonfiction than Michael Welland. he is born storyteller who could easily have become a pulp fiction writer (or British pub owner!) had he not chosen the higher calling of studying rock. His narrative flows with the ease and grace of the best creative nonfiction, adapting many of the storytelling techniques more typically associated with novels.

Your scientific colleagues have recognized the power of this book.. Arena: The Neverending Story he won the prestigious John Burroughs Medal in 2010 for that year’s best book on natural history (an honor Welland shares with Rachel Carson, Joseph Wood Krutch, John McPhee, and other natural history luminaries dating back to 1926).

Michael Welland has written an extraordinary book, perhaps even a timeless book that non-scientists can enjoy as much as professional geologists. Welland, who spent many years practicing geology in the United States, now lives in London with his wife and his family, where he is CEO of Orogen, a geological consulting firm he founded, and a member of the Geological Society. .

Arena: The Neverending Story360 pages, it is available in hardcover and paperback from The University of California Press.