My office and kitchen are littered with stones.

On the sill behind my desk is the heaviest of them: a 20-pound lump of palagonite from the Deep Creek ravine west of Spokane. It is a dense, crystalized and discolored chunk of basalt—the result of the Grande Ronde lava flow interacting with water some 16 million years ago. The palagonite ranges in color from the glassy black of obsidian to a rough, yellowish-orange crust. Continue reading Songs from the Range →