Earth Dynamics, part one: Magma Dearest
A fiction about creation, family, earthquakes, and volcanoes
I recently spent time cleaning out the basement of the house my dad grew up in. We found many treasures, one of which was a slim but lavishly illustrated children’s science book called The Universe, Earth and Man. Dated 1962, it was published by Hammond Incorporated as some sort of giveaway for the non-profit Disabled American Veterans. Copies of it are pretty easy to come by, but I can find very little information about it online.
I live for this kind of mid-century science illustration, so I had a blast poring over all of the maps, charts, and timelines. One illustration particularly enchanted me - a diagram titled “EARTH DYNAMICS: Mountain Building.” It features all manner of geological formations - from explosion pit to hogback to laccolith to fault scarp - gathered together in a geographically impossible landscape as if they were posing for a photo at a family reunion.
As I sat in bed staring at this picture one night, I had to wonder - what would it be like to read a story set across this extravagant didactic panorama? Well, since Italo Calvino is dead and most living writers have better things to do, I’ve decided to take a crack at it myself. This is the first of three parts, and it’s my premier outing for my few but mighty paid subscribers - if any of it sounds interesting to you, please consider joining them!
EARTH DYNAMICS
Part 1: Magma Dearest
Billions of years ago, when the rains finally stopped, the land decided it had been underwater long enough. Tired of doing nothing but boiling the ocean all day, a gigantic blob of molten matter pulled itself free from its mother core and floated up through the ocean to look at the sky for the first time.
The blob’s emergence into the air caused massive tsunamis that would have wiped out everything in their path if there had been anything around to wipe out. Bobbing up and down atop the currents, it contemplated the featureless liquid dome that stretched in all directions. It had never seen a surface before, so that was pretty neat. But up above was even better - a thick slab of cosmos, stuffed silly with bright, swirling objects. These youthful fireballs didn’t know they had an entire universe to expand into, so their pyrotechnic jockeying was the source of great entertainment.
But after a few hundred million years, the land felt another strange sensation: cold. Mother core had nursed her child on the leftover heat from creation itself; if her embrace was uneventful, it at least provided comfort. The atmosphere was too busy pulling itself together to offer much shelter, so the land spent several eons exposed to the vast chill of the infinite. Maybe it’s time to head home, it thought. But when it tried to duck underwater, it found with a start that it had hardened into solid rock.
Down below, mother core couldn’t help wondering what had happened to her child. She had plenty of mantle to keep her company, but her thoughts kept turning to her prodigal child. Was it staying out of trouble? Did it think about her from time to time? What if it needed a coat? After a while, the not-knowing became unbearable, so she extended a molten finger up through the waters to investigate.
The budding winds, rowdy with the joy of their manifestation, amused themselves by buffeting the land back and forth, making a big mess of the ocean and disturbing whatever progress the atmosphere could manage. The land, more rigid than ever, was seasick, homesick, and bitten with frost. But when it felt the warm touch of magma beneath its surface, it beamed with joy for the first time in millennia - mother core was calling it home!
Unfortunately, mother core had little experience on the outer ambit of gravity’s crucible, and in her excitement she overdid it. Her loving conduit not only succeeded in refreshing her child’s spirit - before she could stop herself, she bored right through and burst out the other side in a fiery explosion.
After the initial jolt, the land settled into the solace of mother core’s touch. It had grown too unwieldy for her to pull back down, but the lava she sent up from home tasted of pure nostalgia. The land now enjoyed the best of two worlds: reunited with the heat of its progenitor, yet still stretched out beneath the dizzying spectacle of the stars. The occasional eruption was too small enough inconvenience to question.
It didn’t take long, though, for word of the land’s contentment to ripple through the rest of the mantle. Various blobs began to tremble with envy. Why not us? they wailed, until, in their fever, they began to pull themselves apart. First one, then three more, then dozens of blobs popped free and emerged, gasping, into the nascent air that surrounded the earth. Some hated it instantly and begged to return home, while others pledged to tough it out and best their older sibling.
Mother core, pleased to be needed, sent up channels of warmth to keep tabs on all of her children, gladly pulling back the ones who couldn’t make it while fueling the persistence of the those that remained. Now there was no longer one land but many, and the winds and the oceans murmured to each other that the neighborhood was getting a bit crowded.
But the original land was no longer happy. Surrounded by upstarts, it longed for the peace and magic of its earlier years. What was worse, it no longer enjoyed the special attention of mother core. Resentful at her distraction, it sent angry pulses through the magma that connected him to her primordial mass. These expressions hurt her feelings - after all she’d done for him! - so she sent back her own torrent of roiling disappointment.
After many centuries of bickering - a stormy afternoon in geological time - the primal land looked across its span and realized that it could hardly recognize itself. When it was still magma, such a spat would barely have caused a gurgle. But now, its stony substance bore the mark of every salvo. It was pockmarked with rifts, punctured with pores, riddled with the detritus of their shared fury. Where everything was once flat and windswept, it was now surprised to feel newfound heights and depths.
Far from being upset, the land took great pride in its freshly scarred appearance. Not only was it a testament to the continuing concern of mother core, it was also a point of distinction among its younger, smoother siblings. It would take another million years for any of them to look this distinguished.
There was much mumbling and seething among the other masses, many of whom did their best to rouse mother core’s affectionate ire for themselves. Their elder paid them no mind, until one morning, as it gazed admiringly at its own reflection in the ocean, it felt a jarring thud against its backside. A younger relation, groaning with spite, was trying to initiate a brawl.
Shifting its bulk to look behind, the land discovered that it could no longer see past its own horizon. The impact had smashed a rocky ridge miles up into the air. Once again, anger quickly transformed into awe - it had mountains now! The highs had grown higher and the lows lower. Some water began to spill into a fresh valley across the small of its back - a pet sea all its own. How incredible it was to keep becoming!
Of course, the other lands didn’t take this sitting down. They began to clash and sneer like the stars of earlier times, knocking each other to smaller pieces or merging into jagged new unions. Mother core tried to keep them apart, but pulling one away only served to slam it against another. The oceans hadn’t been so distraught since their solitude was first pierced, but the winds were the happiest they’d ever been, whipping up as much ancillary chaos as the melee could afford.
Instead of railing against the havoc, the seniormost land threw its weight into the fray. It was no longer the largest mass, but it had the experience to make the best of every blow. If at times its strategy seemed to attract more punishment than it dealt out, this was only because its fellows didn’t understand its goals. The end wasn’t to triumph, but to gather the most interesting marks. Whether they came from mother core’s rough devotion or the jostling of its kin mattered little - the proof was in the picturesque patterns of mineral that formed, reformed, and deformed in a crescendo of baroque crenellations.
Tempers cooled in time, as they tend to do. The accumulated masses had been mashed and split so many times that they no longer knew where they began or ended. Several colossal bodies floated on the seas, surrounded by splintered remnants of battles long gone, all soothed into slowness by mother core’s forgiving ministrations.
But the original blob of magma, the first to make the break, stubbornly maintained its sense of self. It had cleverly cultivated every shape it was possible to hold, and it protected its idiosyncrasies with jealous attention. Mother core continued to send it regular flows of lava to keep its appearance fresh - it was her first and favorite, after all. And so, as the rest of the continents settled into complacency, this patch of land still burned with the creative fires that had first given it life.
Its story, it was sure, had only just begun.
Part 2 coming soon!