Traveling Meditations II - Earth

Concerning 10-11 August



The Pre-Socratic Greek philosophers argued persistently about the elementary substance, the fundamental material that composed the world. Most Ancient Greeks acknowledged a sort of elemental physics, that the world was principally constructed by combinations of wind, water, earth, and fire. Many of these philosophers argued that three of the elements were derived from the fourth, through some process of chemical or environmental mutation. If one were to argue that water were the primary element, fire might be the result of exceedingly perturbed water. After all, when one watches a flame, it looks very much like a current rising upward rather than streaming outward or downward.



In a certain way, this is comparable to one of the great issues in contemporary physics. Most physicists recognize that the four fundamental forces in the universe—the strong and weak nuclear forces, electro-magnetism, and gravity—are highly related. Originally electricity and magnetism were thought to be different forces, one having an effect on the flow of electrons, the other having to do with the organization of molecules; but when you run an electric current (an odd choice of term) through most metals, you create an electromagnet. This experiment elucidates a deep connection between electricity and magnetism that leads, in turn, to the realization that they are part of the same force. Not only that, but theoretical physics points to the likely synthesis of the four forces into one under extreme conditions, conditions that were likely present in the early universe. (Gravity's inclusion depends on the incorporation on many-dimensional space, a confusing but important characteristic of contemporary physics I will not here explore.)



Most of our travels and our destinations emphasized earth; not as a fundamental so much as indispensable element of the locales. Earth provides a setting, a sense of place, and the basis to build. Many world origin myths begin with a never-ending ocean, a pre-world in which nothing material exists, it all comes and goes with the slight perturbations of waves, swallowed again by the ocean itself. (This, I might add, shares somewhat with the curious depictions of quantum foam, the inconceivably minuscule realm below subatomic particles like quarks.) The creation of land, of earth is the first breach in mythical narrative, the singularity that makes the world itself possible. Endless ocean represents not an unknown, the way later explorers might see the ocean, but the cosmic, non-human unknowable. Water, here, does not represent a beginning, but a vast, chaotic void. (Enlightenment philosophers would later argue fervently about the seemingly impossible notion of the void in which no substance existed.) It is the climbing, jutting, solid explosion of earth that makes the world something other than insusbstantial and unknowable.



Climbing in the preserves and parks around Great Sand Dunes National Park, it was easy to make that connection between earth and being. The dunes themselves are formed by streams' slow decay of the landscape and carrying the sand, silt, and soil downstream. (Downstream, mind you, is always to the ocean.) Winds carry the soil back uphill to the flats and to the Dunes where the surrounding hills curtail the wind, creating a large vortex that results in the sands' deposition. At the very edge of the sands the elevation changes and with it the ecological conditions; just uphill the presence of water and more tenable soils provide strong footing for plant and animal life. (Like all healthy natural deserts, the dunes are lively and active in their unyielding way, full of tenacious, spindly plants and quick desert creatures; but the distinction between the two is profound.)



Here, we can see life in much grander design, much finer detail than the sparsity of the dunes supports. Coniferous trees, well-suited for the dry, thin air climb to the sky and fall to the ground, many with roots holding stolid to geometrically carved boulders. In clearings, thick scrubby grasses stretch and soak in the brilliant open sky. (I believe that the soil thickness plays a strong part in whether trees or grasses grow at the same altitude in these locations.) Birds sing in the morning and various insects call at night. Even here, one sees a strange symmetry between the elements: fallen trees, stripped of bark grow in tidal formations; fungi use chemical fires to digest cellulose in the wood; stone circles depict where previous hikers have made their fires; the sun heavy rocky stretches are particularly air thin in the heat. All around one senses a balancing, an equilibrium between the elements in its subtle and suggestive metamorphoses.



Dustin built a fire and we cooked with his jet engine-like camping stove. I fell asleep long before him, but woke many times due to the hard ground and the cold. It hovered in the thirties at that altitude with so little moisture in the air. I was painfully ill-prepared for the night. My face numbed because I could not slide deeply enough into my sleeping bag despite its 30 degree threshold. All through the trip I dreamed strangely, aggressively in my fitful sleep.



I woke early but could not manage a fire because dew had saturated most of the kindling. I felt markedly unhappy, a slow, creeping headache lined most of the day. It was beautiful out, clear and kind to us, but sleeplessness and frustration made me stubborn. During the late morning I witnessed parents refusing their children the joy of exploring the dunes and the landscape, while I wondered what they had expected from the park.