At any location on earth, as the rock record goes down into time and out into earlier geographies it touches upon tens of hundreds of stories, wherein the face of the earth often changed, changed utterly, and changed again, like the face of a crackling fire. The rock beside the road exposes one or two levels of the column of time and generally implies what went on immediately below and what occurred (or never occurred) above. I wish to make no attempt to speak for all geology or to sweep in every fact that came along. I want to choose some things that interested me and through them to suggest the general history of the continent by describing events and landscapes that geologists see written in rocks.
In my research, I want to suggest, as McPhee does, something about the nature of places by describing the the events and landscapes — both natural and human — recorded in the rocks, climate, soil, flora, fire, fauna, and suburbia found in the Puente Hills of Southern California.