My Life Story
By: Bobby Boulder
My name is Bobby and I was once a gigantic boulder that overlooked the most
wonderful valley. The valley had huge trees, abundant wildlife, and a huge clear
blue flowing river that caused a waterfall to cascade next to me. The waterfall
was constantly splashing me and water kept ending up in all the tiny cracks that
were on my body. That is where this story begins and how my life changed!
The water kept seeping into the tiny cracks and because I was sitting so high up
the temperatures would freeze at night. These freezing temperatures caused the
water in my cracks to freeze and force pieces of rock to break off of me. Year after
year pieces of rock were falling off me and being carried off down the river to
some unknown destination. I asked a chipmunk one time where the pieces of
rocks were going and he did not know but he did tell me that the movement of
those rocks was called “erosion”. He also told me that the breaking down of the
rocks is called “weathering.” Year after year I kept getting smaller and smaller
from weathering and erosion breaking me apart bit by bit. This process continued
for millions of years until one day a gust of wind blew me into the waterfall!
I felt myself falling and crashing into other falling rocks. Every time I hit one I felt
myself getting smaller and smaller when suddenly I hit a pool of water and landed
on the bottom. I rested there for several days until the current picked me up and
slowly carried me downstream. I finally came to rest on a sunny shore with many
small rocks that looked just like me! I wonder if some of these were once a part of
me when I was still a boulder. I remained here for hundreds of thousands of years
with snow, rain, floods, sunshine and wind moving me around on the shore. It
was after one of the floods that I found myself covered up with sediment. This
sediment contained sand, silt, and sticky yucky clay. It was an interesting
sensation being covered like this because I had spent my whole life out in the
fresh air. It felt like I was covered with a big thick blanket except this blanket was
stuck on me. I wondered if I would be here forever. Then I remembered what the
chipmunk had told me many thousands of years ago about weathering and
erosion. He told me that the Earth is always changing and as long as we had
weathering and erosion that my life would change with it. So who knows where I
will be in the next thousand years?