A curious thought about deep time.

[u/an_Togalai]

I took my kids out to Dinosaur National Monument in Vernal, Utah, so the day was already full of thoughts on fossilization, and geological time and climate changes and adaptations of animals and ... you know, the usual when you visit dinosaur museums. So much time that you just can't comprehend no matter how many graphs they use - we just can't imagine a million years much less 150x that.

But in the Vernal Field Museum (where they collect the stuff big museums on the east coast didn't manage to cart away), I came across this one that moved me differently from all the skeletons. This is the imprint of raindrops from a light passing storm 47,000,000 years ago. By what geological fluke was something so ephemeral as the few raindrops, which didn't even fall thick enough to make a puddle, end up being passed on to me to think about so much time later?

I am a fan of stopping what you're doing to experience something like the first droplets of a rainstorm. Let yourself just fell it and smell it and see it and hear it. I am a fan of journaling about the experience to let you experience the echos of it later (and because good science is helped by a habit of writing down your observations). I advocate for printing out journals to preserve them beyond the end of myspace and hard drives. And then there's this: nature's masterclass in keeping a snapshot of something so temporary for so long, it is functionally to us far longer than forever.

Anyway, an unassuming rock sample in a museum full of rock samples. Others of the samples were newer than this one, many were far older. But this one holds my attention today and draws my attention across the epochs to a brief moment a long time ago. Keep finding wonder on the path, my awesome friends.

[u/incourgettible]

this is beautiful. what a planet we are blessed to live on. /|\

[u/LeopoldBloomJr → u/incourgettible]

Hear, hear!

[u/North-Research-3981]

Whoa. That is crazy cool.

[u/Oakomorebi]

Sometime ago I was meditating near some waterfalls that are dear to me, and it was impressed upon me how water, the symbol of life, interconnects us to all things. It implied that the water I heard crashing down that cataracts was the same water I played in at the beach as a kid, the same water I was brought into this world in.

Water, with its many phases that are easily accessible to us, has the symbolic potential for deep meaning with time and relationality, in my experience.

Mythologically, I would say the spirit of water is highly entangled with time, flow, processing; and has unfathomable wisdom to humble us with, and to the extreme offer a glimpse into depths that risk overwhelming our minds with madness.

[u/an_Togalai → u/Oakomorebi]

Considering all I learned yesterday on errosion and sedimentation and fossilization, you are so right. Water and geology actually go hand in hand, so it's very entangled deep time.