Opinion | An Earth Day Elegy for an Altered Planet - The New York Times

Geologists have a
term for boulders held
aloft by other boulders. Some are drawn to these formations and make pilgrimages to see them.

P.B.R. is the abbreviation, like Pabst Blue Ribbon.

Precariously
balanced rocks.

She has a four-
chambered heart,
like a human.
But she can stay underwater for
two hours, eight if
the water’s cold
enough.

Rarely, she ventures
into the ocean.

After the asteroid
killed off the dinosaurs,
a massive fungal
bloom emerged. Some
scientists believe
this favored mammals
over large reptiles.
So the giants came no
more, but mammals
proliferated. Evolving
from ratlike creatures
into mammoths and
sabertooths.

And the ape people, too.

Two hundred
million years ago,
a soaring conifer
was uprooted by
floods or lava.
Volcanoes erupted
and the tree was
covered by ash.
Bit by bit, minerals
replaced the wood.
Shot through
with purple, red,
pink and orange.

What remained
was the arrow
of a thunder god,
to the Paiute.
To the Navajo, a
giant’s bone.

He does not live,
but he remains.

In the dark we see
nothing and therefore
everything: witchcraft
and demons, the dead
and the undead, ill
omens and the horrible.
The unholy.

The word “strix,”
a genus to which many
owls belong, refers
to a monster of classical
antiquity that fed on
human blood. Their
cries haunt us in
the night air. Where
uncanny fears beset
us without the clarity
of sight.

This is only the play
of light on vapor.
Yet, without it, by day,
the sky would look
like nothing.

In the dentist’s
office, there’s a poster:
footprints in the sand.
Two sets of footprints
first, but then only
one. One guy got tired
after a while and
couldn’t walk anymore,
so the other guy
carried him.

Turns out to be
about Jesus.

Fierce, once, before
the glass house.
They say the females
eat the males after
the mating’s done. To protect their babies.

A not-uncommon story.

A coal fire has been
burning beneath
the town since 1962
in a dark seam down
below. It will likely
burn out of sight for hundreds of years
to come. The town
has largely been
erased; the highway,
too, buried beneath
trucked-in soil.

Trees will grow after a
while, they say. Even
through asphalt. Even
above the deep fire.

None of them had
known the animal
before it washed
up on their shore.

Still, flowers
were placed around
the body.

Over the hill, she said.
Keep going, honey.
Once we get to that hill,
we’ll have a better view.

They were looking
for somewhere to
have a picnic.

The caves were part of
a vast inland sea.

The seaway split
the continent in two
from the Gulf to the
Arctic. It was hundreds
of miles across.
For 40 million years
it sundered now-
Appalachia from
now- California.
Beneath the waves
swam plesiosaurs
and mosasaurs, shell-
crushing sharks,
torpedo-shaped fish
16 feet long.

They were youngsters
then. And some let
their branches touch.
But they never saw
their prime.

The fibers retain
their tensile strength
at extremely low
temperatures, and by
some metrics are
as strong as steel.
Also, there’s elasticity.
Some spider silk can
be stretched out to
four times its original
length before it breaks.

Depending on
the spider.

Charles Darwin
learned the craft of
taxidermy from
John Edmonstone, a
formerly enslaved
person who lived in
Edinburgh. “He
gave me lessons for payment,” Darwin
wrote in his
autobiography, “and
I used often to sit
with him, for he was
a very pleasant and
intelligent man.”

Try making fire
without matches or
a lighter. That will
humble you.

South Dakota was
the site of Wounded
Knee, where the
Seventh Cavalry
massacred hundreds
of Lakota in 1890,
two weeks after the
killing of Sitting
Bull, a great Sioux
leader. They were
trying to suppress
the Ghost Dance
movement, a spiritual
revival that had
recently spread among
the Native peoples
of the country.

And in that effort,
it must be said, they
succeeded.

You can see it as
sunning, the wing-
spreading — a
gathering of warmth.
A soaking-in of the
cosmic rays, a basking,
a pure delight. Or you
can see it as parasite
control. The heat kills
lice, apparently.

Pelicans go back some
30 million years.
The pouches store the
fish they’ve caught.
The stench inside can
be overpowering.
But who among us can
judge? Tooth-flossing,
even. It’s a minefield.

Coasting low along
the wave break on
a beach, they’re steady
and graceful.

Blue herons are very
large birds. In captivity
they exhibit signs of
stress. But if you paint
them very small you
can keep them. They fly,
but they never fly away.

On a manufactured
earth, even the peaks of
the Himalayas can be
felt with a fingertip.

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2023-04-21 08:59:54Z
CBMiWWh0dHBzOi8vd3d3Lm55dGltZXMuY29tL2ludGVyYWN0aXZlLzIwMjMvMDQvMjEvb3Bpbmlvbi9lYXJ0aC1kYXktY2xpbWF0ZS1jaGFuZ2UtcG9lbS5odG1s0gEA

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