Trek through the hills of the Northwest’s Sierra Nevada, and you will find red soils peppered with some smooth, waxy rocks called Serpentinite. Attractively streaked with greens and blues, serpentine, as it is locally known, is a type of metamorphic rock with quite the fascinating history. To begin, let’s take a glimpse into a chapter of geology known as Plate Tectonics.

Prelude
A single drop
Dances arabesque
In the wind -

The skies have announced their final warning.

Serpentine
Here in the reddish soils
Is a lump of green and blue:
A stone, here chiseled, here rolling
As if morphed from clay into
The form it now embodies.
Smooth to the touch, and yet
Here shows signs of shearing -
Its colors more brilliant when wet.