Chasing Meteors

The sky is dark and clear. There are plenty of stars visible, including some reasonably faint ones. But, after 45 minutes of watching, there are no meteors. I check the time on my phone one last time to find that it’s about 3:30, before heading back to the tent. Little Guy is sound asleep.
It’s the best weather and the best sleep I’ve had on a camping trip in 20 years.
In the thin morning light, a gray catbird picks at the leaf litter beside the trail. They’re small birds, but they migrate over a large range. Some of them reach southern Mexico. It’s possible that this little fellow spent the winter on the Yucatan Peninsula. Maybe, he even spent time in Chichen Itza, a sprawling campus of Mayan temples and other ritual structures.
 There’s a building there, or most of one that 1,000 years ago contained reflecting pools around a small tower, used by astronomer-priests for watching the heavens. Another, the Pyramid of Kukulkan, marks the spring and fall equinoxes.
Suddenly, I’m less disappointed about the meteor shower that wasn’t. The gray catbird came all the way from his observatory in Mexico to watch it. I, on the other hand, got to spend the night camping with my son, on an expedition to chase after something elusive.
Photo credit: The author.

On the Persistence of Creation

My sweet girl asks me what kind of bird that is, hopping down the tree toward the seed feeder. “That’s a white-breasted nuthatch,” I tell her. “He’s funny, because he always goes head-first, whether he’s going up or down.” She agrees that he’s funny.

The bird picks at something in the bark, and abruptly flies off. “Why’s he leaving,” she asks. “He may have found a juicy bug to eat. Or, he may be taking it back to a nest for his babies. You know, there are new baby birds every spring.” Sweet Girl looks back outside and thinks about this.

Genesis 2 begins with a statement that the heavens and the Earth had been “completed,” before giving the reader a modified account of the beginning of things. But, it’s curious that we generally perceive that means that it’s done for good. The story is set over the span of a week. Up to now, every week has ended with the beginning of another, a human cycle, divinely inspired and repeated over and over within a similarly unbroken arc of natural cycles.

In those weeks among springs, summers, falls, winters, life and the physical universe go on making things: An endearing but generally mediocre star fuses some hydrogen and sends light careening toward the Earth. Autotrophs catch a bit of that light and combine simple elements together into syncopated organic molecules. A web of herbivores, omnivores, carnivores, and detritivores duke it out for that stuff. All of the latter acts are mediated by inherently creative genetic molecules, incrementally improving the sum of these things along the way.

The Creation is not history. It’s ongoing, everywhere, all the time. It’s full of living things. It’s full of biogeochemical cycles. It’s full of people. And, they’re all miracles.

Image source: Texas A&M University