I am also a teacher. At least I was. As such, I have a perverse interest in relaying those kinds of stories to the unwary, the unsuspecting--and often the unwilling--and whenever I can, to coach them to do the same. My daughters can attest to the many road trips they have endured with their father at the wheel, wagging a free finger at the passing rocks and transforming an otherwise pleasant journey into a geological field trip.
So bear with me, My Friends. I am back at the wheel!
This trip was inspired by an event about 65 millions years ago. I was very young then.
A big rock fell out of the sky and hit the earth. The meteor was maybe 20 km in diameter, travelling at 20 km/second, and punched a big crater in the area of the present Yucatan peninsula. The impact pulverized and vapourized rock and filled the atmosphere with an opaque dust that must have blotted out the sun for a very long time. No sunlight, no photosynthesis. No photosynthesis, no plants. No plants, no groceries. The planet starved and a mass extinction ensued.The posterchild for this event was the hapless dinosaur but it took out a staggering number of plants and animals. It is estimated that about 75% of all the different species of plants and animals on earth became extinct in short order.
A terrible event to be sure.
But it changed life on earth. All of the critters that are wandering around today evolved from that select few survivors, and had that event not happened, life would be very different today. Certainly, we humans would not be here now to ponder it. We evolved from the relatively small niche of mammals that managed to avoid annihilation.
We know this because the fossil record changes quite abruptly as we examine layers of sedimentary rocks. I like to think of sedimentary strata as pages in the earth's diary which contain all the clues of earth history if we are clever enough to know how to read them. The page marker at the boundary between layers that marks this event is a thin layer of dusty ash representing all the crud that settled out of the air following the impact. There are fossils of dinosaurs and all their friends in the older Cretaceous sediments below this layer, but not in the younger Tertiary rocks which lie above. This is the clue that clever geologists use to construct the story.
So, you may well be wondering, what does this have to do with some grizzled old bugger on a motorcycle?
I have long considered this trip as "The K-T Boundary Tour". K for Cretaceous (Yes, I know, Latin geologists can't spell) and T for Tertiary. There are several places where this layer is exposed and one can actually stick a finger between the layers that marks this event. New Mexico, Colorado, Montana among them. I aim to do this. And this is a loose theme for my journey.
More generally, "meaning" is the theme that ties it all together. Unless a person knew what it was and what made it significant, a dusty layer of rock appears to be nothing more than a dusty layer of rock.
But if the significance is known, it has meaning.
And that is the theme for Journeys of all stripes, whether it is a motorcycle journey or a more ethereal journey through this veil of tears.
Be mindful. Dig for the significance behind the seemingly obscure, and construct your meanings. Pay attention and live with intention.
Otherwise, as Ian Tyson once said, "you're just gettin' up each day and walkin' around".
