This Stone Wants To Go Home started when I found a 38-pound (17 kg) granite glacial erratic in the middle of a limestone quarry in Ohio. There is no surface granite in Ohio. During the last ice age, the Laurentide Ice Sheet moved this stone to Ohio from Canada and left it behind when the ice melted. Thousands of years have passed, and now this stone wants to go home. If all goes as planned, I’ll walk this stone 1,000 miles (1609 km) north from Ohio into Canada to repatriate this boulder and throw it into the Hudson Bay where it will sit in wait for the next ice age (estimated now to take place in ~100,000 years thanks to climate change).

Part of my practice is to empathize with geologic forces, to understand them by replicating their actions at human scale. This stone moved 1,000 miles over thousands of years which is fast for a stone, and much father than a stone would move on its own in any natural sort of way. I could fly this stone north, but then I would miss out on the slowness and the overwhelming landscapes that this stone already once encountered. To approximate the glacial speed and to fathom the scale, I will carry, push, and pull this stone (three actions glaciers use to move erratics) as slowly as I can in a custom fabricated cart as I move on foot northward to the Hudson Bay over three months at a rate of 10 miles per day.

Every 100 miles I’ll stop for community events to advocate for ice, invite communities to touch this stone, and discuss perceived local effects of climate change with residents. I’ll document these events, community conversations, texts, images, film from the journey, and objects of the expedition to produce a book and an exhibition to call attention to this moment humans occupy between two distant ice ages, past and to come.

I’ll use this blog to share the project as it progresses from idea to memory, contextualizing the connections between humans, landscapes, and climate, while also documenting the design process and expedition planning process.

- RYAN DEWEY