Something To Think About and Journal Notes

SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT

     He is richest who is content with the least, for content is the wealth of nature.  Socrates

     I have always loved the desert.  One sits down on a desert sand dune, sees nothing, hears nothing.  Yet through the silence something throbs and gleams.    Antoine de Saint - Exupery

                                                                                                             

JOURNAL NOTES

      We planted a Blue Spruce in our backyard, Roger and I.  A tree brings a special feeling of life wherever it grows.  The first time today I saw birds landing on its branches and going to the interior of the tree; I am sure they were planning a family there.  Life exists and life goes on.  

     Climbing the side of a mesa a couple days ago, we found the bones of life long past.  What a gift to be able to touch them and feel the shapes imagining where the ligaments attached the muscles.  These bones I believe to be Jurassic and early Cretaceous.   We were on our way to the top of the mesa where we had seen worm trails in the now fossilized mud; pre-Cambrian.  Then we headed down the opposite mesa wall where we had encountered  mud balls of entrapped sea shells, mostly clams, I think, Cambrian.  We have also discovered other trace fossils known as coprolite, aka poop.  One very small, no bigger than the size of a quarter, some midsize that I believe to be turtle, and then very large which probably belonged to a therapod.  Absolutely not a Saurapod.  

     The location we enjoy is rife with fossils from the beginning of life.  Now, we see new life, golden eagles, badgers, prairie dogs, coyotes, pronghorn, various lizards and ground squirrels all surviving in an environment I couldn’t last three days without packing in my own supplies.  What a vast and wonderful land wherein we have our home.  It’s a very unforgiving land and must be respected and preserved.

     There is beauty beyond the ability of other’s eyes to recognize, but mine have been gifted with the ability to see, not just look as a tourist, but intimately as a part of it, unable to imagine living without it.  To see a canyon and know it teems with life adjusting to the ebb and flow of existence and death.  Be thankful for everyday that we live, be more thankful for everyday that we live with the ability to truly see life and experience its vastness.