Planetary Ride

Vibrations wavered into a metallic buzzing, becoming loud as a machine, a power saw, a hammer drill.  At first, I surmised it was the crew working on the Skyway, they've been doing repairs and even on a Sunday, Buffalo business pushes forward.

Then it got louder.  Cats ran, plants shrunk in their pots, spiders hung "Gone for the Day" signs and melted into crevices.  I'd better investigate before the floor shifts into a crazy slant and spills us forward into the trees.  The open kitchen window was the source of this incredibly loud cacophony; dishes were rattling, cracks into the wall widened, then something flew away from the sill.  A cicada. One of those immense chubs of bug that you hear singing and buzzing in summer, mostly up in trees. When right on your windowsill, it sounds like the army is sawing the brick building down with a toothed machine that chews up asphalt for repaving while grinding up Buicks.

I had been on my way to the exposed digging pits to get a few more brachiopods before this air raid siren scared a bag of fur off the cats.  The rock hammer, a trowel, and a metal bucket with a few paper towels for more fragile specimens: ready Freddy.  I was after the spiriferids, a species that has two pointed ends like wings, and a longitudinal groove in the middle of the shell.  These aren't molluscs, even though they look like it from the outside; they anchored themselves with a pedicule, so it looked like a shell growing from the top of a stem. I haven't studied it much, but apparently the gizzards were constructed completely opposite to current bivalves.

It was lovely out, overcast with a slight drizzle; a family with three or four boys was shoveling through mounds, it was hard to tell how many kids because they kept moving.  Fossils!  Here's a fossil!  LOOK A FOSSIL!  They came over to see what I was doing and approved, earning a specimen each for their enthusiasm.  LOOK WHAT THE LADY GAVE US!!  I told them it would bring good luck on their homework.

An hour later, I had about fifty in the bucket, with a few translucent shells wrapped carefully; this is amazing, that not all of them fossilize.  Some remain the same material, calcium carbonate, shut away from deterioration by the soft, muddy shale; frightfully delicate, but holding something 400 million years old is incredible, and causes your brain to grow twelve new synapses in trying to understand the immensity of time, life, and small critters scuttering around in mud under a tropical ocean.  These animals rode the tectonic plate from it's site below the dingdang equator, for heaven's sake, up to where it is now called Western New York State and next weekend is the Wing Fest.

Panthalassa, the "Universal Ocean",  covered the planet with most land masses hanging around the South Pole.  Things were moving, and over the millions of years, continents collided, joined, formed mountains, or disappeared.  We are still moving, I forget in what direction, but in the far future I believe the people of Los Angeles will be able to take a bus down the road to Shanghai, China.  This whole beast of North America will plod and swim it's way half across the Pacific Ocean, carrying with it the buildings, sunflower fields, trains, grocery markets, livestock, and people who have no idea that they are going for a ride.  Tell them, at least the Americas North and South, that they are moving at about one inch per year and you may get a look of indignation.  People resist change.  They like to think that they own their backyards.

Antarctica is fairly stationary at the axis, it moves very little; Africa and Australia go a bit faster at 2 - 4 cm per year, but the zoomiest continent is India, as it sits on a bubble of hot magma and furthermore, is half the thickness of the other pieces of Gondwana which broke apart.  It's like a stone skipping across the water, and 150 million years ago, was careening along at 20 cm per year.  7.87402 inches, folks.  It's still the fastest moving chunk, but has slowed down to between 5-9 cm from the pressure of the Himalayas, which are still rising.  By the by, that pretty in pink Himalayan salt that they scrape from the tops of the mountains was once a saline ocean, the Tethys Sea. What makes it pink is the sandstone layer of land that was periodically flooded by the Tethys, and it now sits in a glass jar on the fancy grocery shelf.  Just make sure you get your iodine, there's a rise in deficiencies from people using uniodized sea salt. Look up what it causes; you need iodine.  Need.

So, millions of years and cicada sirens, where does it put you?  Well, maybe it gives you a better grasp of where we are headed, a bit ahead of the analysis in the constant change, growth, and awareness conversation.  Something to think about; nothing ever stays the same, and while you can't deliberately put the brakes on an agile continent smashing into the Asian plate, you can offer your two cents in the next debate on future cities.  Build them at least five miles inland, so they don't end up in an embellished glass jar of salt in the gourmet section of Zaphod Beeblebrox's Milky Way Mart.  If you like your cicadas dipped in chocolate and served at Roman banquets, I will be more than happy to argue in favor of the turbulent noise they produce, as a necessary part of insect perseverance in jolting human sagacity.  It's all the same thing; enjoy the ride, be nice to your surrounding organisms.  Lend a hand.

Fossils are washed and drying, tools wiped, buckets rinsed.  Time for turning in on this whirling ball, so intricate in it's mysteries, so connected as we are to each other.  The night is cool, and several spiders have wriggled through the ragged screen in the bathroom, setting their nets in a bugless realm.  There is that cicada corpse in the bug museum; if I plopped that into the web, I am sure tiny screams of joy would echo no louder than a single drop of water. Plink!  We dine like kings!

Sleep on, sleep well.  Paddle through the curtains, there are stories on the other side.  Good night.