Florissant Photos

The Smiling Fossil

Scarred by Lightning

Science is Evolutionary. Time is Linear. Or is it?

Another tree fossil...

The Triplets

                Having the mindset of a scientist, I have always believed in the linearity of time. Any other explanation doesn’t quite seem to work for me. Attempting “discourse with nature”, as Abrams (1996) suggests, seems silly to say the least. However, I feel have been a willing participant in the study of these foreign concepts. The trek to the Florissant Fossil Beds was informative and enjoyable, from both a scientific point of view and also a “sensuous” point of view.

                When first approaching the giant redwood fossil, I was awe-struck. I’ve seen the redwood forests in California, but I had no idea that these trees ever existed in Colorado. The massive stump placed an imposing feeling in me, as though the gigantic tree was still there, looking down at my inconsequential 180 pound frame. It was at this time that I felt as though I had traveled through time and was engaged in a silent conversation with something that wasn’t even there. Not physically anyway.  I felt like a kid again, imagining myself in a world of mystery and wonder; a world I can never truly know. These trees existed long before homo-sapiens were a blip on nature’s radar, but here I was, a few feet away from touching that ancient world.

                The path that we traveled on the tour was a loop, much like the path from the Four Diamonds parking lot to the fossil beds and back. Perhaps time is linear in its truest sense, but the path of our lives are a seemingly endless series of loops from home to a destination, and back home again. My trip to Florissant resulted in me taking a brief, imaginary trip to the age of the giant redwoods and back home to the present, and finally back home to my apartment. Perhaps time is, in a sense, a loop.

Reference

Abrams, D. (1996). The Spell of the Sensuous. United States: Vintage Books.