Violent Beauty

There is a spot on State Highway 101 northwest of Fort Worth where the road runs like a spine between two quarries. I love driving along that road between the deep pits, a place where late at night you can almost smell the sweat of a thousand men. The history of the place is palpable, it's almost as if Dallas and Fort Worth were pulled whole out of the ground and plopped down 30 miles to the south and east.

A rock quarry is a violent place, the rock is blown to pieces which are then crushed in a large rotating drum, run along a belt according to size, dumped in a pile and then scooped up and dropped in a dump truck for delivery to a construction site somewhere. All of this activity creates a lot of noise, dust, and movement; non-stop movement. Dump trucks the size of houses run in perpetual motion, the belts never stop spitting out rock, and the front end loaders dance and spin (smash into the pile, reverse half circle, forward, dump, reverse, half circle forward, grab your partner do-si-do) to the chorus and hum of hungry lines of trucks and trains waiting to be filled.

But a rock quarry is also an incredibly beautiful place full of color and impressive geometry. The clean lines of the white limestone walls, the veins running at angles through the rock, the shapes of the piles, the deep blues and greens of the water in flooded pits. Then there are the deer, cattle, wild boar, goats, vultures, snakes, herons and various other crittters that make their home in hidden and long forgotten corners of the property. And all of this as sun and shadow paint their constantly evolving work across the towering rock faces. Finally, there is something timelessly beautiful about rock and when I grab a handful of it and run my thumb over the smooth surfaces I am reminded of the line from St. Patrick's Breastplate:

"I arise today
Through the strength of heaven:
Light of sun,
Radiance of moon,
Splendor of fire,
Speed of lightning,
Swiftness of wind,
Depth of sea,
Stability of earth,
Firmness of rock."

Here are some pictures that will give you a glimpse into this wonderful and violent world that we get to watch unfold through the eyepiece of our lasers. Notice the deep veins running through the rock in photo #3. Photo #4 taken by Bobby Forehand.