Homebound

I have had an intercourse with the earth.  But I realize that reproducibility is an essential requirement of relationship with the natural and of science.  It differs profoundly from authoritarian ways of thinking.  The universe has stood these past three weeks continually open to my gaze.  From quarks to quasars, but more closely to rocks.

 

Painters make patterns with spots of paint    

poets make patterns with words

rocks make patterns with lichens and moss

mathematicians make patterns with ideas

and provide more accurate descriptions

no one knows why

they sit too close to the seat of secrets

These pages of an ancient seabed, now opened and turned on as a book, are presented to us for understanding of prehistoric history.  I have yet to understand their words, but I few insights come after a tramp in the woods.

Thin layers of rock, just enough harder than their peers to have survived and to show their words.  Bloyd Shale, Prairie Grove member of the Hale formation, Morrowan period, Pensylvanian era of the Carboniferous Period.  Derived from silt that settled in a warm ocean some 300 million years ago. This according to a geologist’s map. I wonder.

Three weeks I showed pictures of leaves just emerging from buds and I showed a hillside like this one that was brown near its top.  Now, the leaves of spring are fully emerged and the hills are no longer brown with bare branches, but green with summer leaves.

A tornado passed through here a few months ago, driving this broken tree deep into the ground.  We never hear about tornados unless they hit us.  How unkind is that?

Just an interesting scene along a country road.

Farewell until next time.