Across Thurston County, massive stones rest where they do not belong—giant travelers carried hundreds of miles by ice, water, and time. These “glacial erratics” are the silent witnesses of an age when walls of ice miles thick shaped the land, when torrents from prehistoric Lake Missoula scoured valleys into scablands, and when the Pacific shoreline stood far from where it does today.
 
In this fascinating work, Delbert Parkinson brings the Ice Age into sharp focus, blending personal discovery with geologic history. From boulders the size of houses embedded in Washington’s prairies to the cataclysmic floods that tore through the Columbia Gorge, he traces the paths of ice and water that transformed the Northwest. The book uncovers:
 
How the Cordilleran ice sheet reshaped Washington’s landscapes.
Why Thurston County holds the largest collection of erratics in America.
The extraordinary power of the Missoula Floods, which moved rocks, reshaped rivers, and left scars visible to this day.
 
 
Part memoir, part field guide, and part geologic detective story, this book is a vivid journey into forces far older and larger than human history. It reveals the deep past beneath our feet—and invites readers to see ordinary rocks as markers of extraordinary events.
 
For naturalists, historians, and anyone curious about the hidden stories of the land, this is a window into the Northwest’s most powerful and enduring legacy: a landscape carved by ice and flood.