Nature Journal: Beyond Life
To be honest, our class trip to Goblin Valley and Little Horse Canyon began way too early after way too late of a night and I felt that I had to go. But after some nice chat, a good nap, and a long drive we found ourselves at our destination and I found myself in love with everything around me. The thing I love about Utah is how fantastically different one location is from another. And here in this land of sculpted stone and warm red sands I felt like I had left home but somehow was discovering another. I have been in similar landscapes hundreds of times. There was something different here though. It was my first time in a slot canyon and I could feel the forces that had carved this piece of artwork into the crust of the earth.
The whole day my mind was filled with erosion. I could see water flowing down the sharp curves and sudden drops but then quickly filling up the narrows. The wind whipped at my back kicking up the minute remains at what had once been this great canyon. It slashed the walls as it made its way up the canyon, eddied in small pools along the canyon vertices, and carried parts of us to who knows where. I felt this canyon was changing me too. This unseen water and these invisible winds were shaping me right here right now.
It made me think of the power of such natural forces. The movement of rock, air, and water more often than not fall short of our notice. Our gaze usually falls upon ourselves – we’re pretty selfish that way. But when we do look out beyond ourselves – beyond the human – we tend to focus on other organisms: trees swaying, fish swimming, moles digging. Almost as if the mediums they are engaging are somehow separated from us. It takes something drastic to get our attention. The earth has to seize and send tremors through rock and stone, great waves result to hurling themselves from their depths, while high and low pressure winds find each other to create monsters that tear through our cities. And then we finally notice. But in this quiet canyon, I was connected to these systems without headline or disaster. They were a part of me.
This earth is awesome by itself. Some of the most impressive scenes in this world are ones devoid entirely of life. Lightning flashes across the sky and waves crash all on their own. And everything in Goblin Valley seemed to be struggling for life. But they were the afterthoughts. It was the fantastic rock formations that took the center stage. I find it interesting that biocentrism – not ecocentrism – is the opposite of antropocentrism. It should really be somewhere in the middle. The raw elements of the earth are as much a part of our environment and our relationships to it as are the organisms we share them with.
I love the dynamism of this place. The world is full of mystery. The rocks we look at today didn’t always look like this. A great portion of Utah used to hide underwater. Glaciers carve homes and ecosystems into living hillsides. Erosion and formation battle each other in a never ending series of mountains, canyons and valleys. 99% of all living organisms are extinct. They came, they lived, and they vanished. They had their time leaving their marks for us in the rocks. We aren’t much different. We too are leaving our stories. And I hope they’re good ones. Hopefully we will stop leaving the marks we do now. Hopefully the stories we will leave will be ones full of heroism and responsibility, of virtue, conservation, and character – and I hope those are the ones that we can leave deep – etched forever in the stone for all to see.
0 comments