THE DOOR TO TIME

Millions of years of Earth time and Earth water create a natural arch, rib bone of Earth - red sandstone, pale limestone, dark basalt - by flaking small pieces of rock off a slender wall until a hole finally forms. Water, the agent of erosion, dissolves the rock and gathers in its small cracks and fractures, freezing and expanding, loosening rock grains sometimes too small to see … Sea arches occur in coastal bluffs, where the constant pounding of ocean waves wears a hole through the promontory wall … Arches are Earth clean to the bone. A person walking through one walks through Time.

~ Linda Hogan, Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape