Bello created this series of photographs by crushing the soft pastels she uses for her large drawings, rubbing the crushed pigment into gauze, and photographing the volcanic rock in the Taos Plateau with the gauze covering her phone camera lens. The basalt volcanic rock brought back memories of similar rocks she found as a child on the island in the Philippine archipelago within the Pacific Ring of Fire. Constantly traveling for art residencies across the country, seeing the same rock in Utah and Oregon made Bello consider the geologic chaos that serves as a shared history among these different places: the volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, fissures, and collisions that shaped these places.

The word “basalt” for the black stone used to test the purity of gold or silver originates from the Greek word "basanos," meaning “touchstone.” "Haplos" is the Filipino word for gentle touch. A phrase used for the impact of natural phenomena such as wildfire on predator-prey dynamics was a line from Emily Jungmin Yoon’s poem, “Related Matters,” which ran through Bello’s mind as she conceptualized this series: "touching a land laying prey to fire."