through the ages

During my last school term I took Evolutionary Biology and Geology of the Western National Parks. (Ohmagersh, it was like every day was my birthday! Nerd. Heaven.) One of the curious commonalities of these two classes is their shared time scale. Most of the processes we discussed are very, very slow. How long does it take for a new species to form? How long does it take to move a mountain? Long time. (Well, except for when it doesn't. But more on that another day.) Rocks at the bottom of the Grand Canyon are nearly two billion years old-- two billion! The earth was just a wee little thing then! It's only about 4.6 billion years old now (plus or minus a few million years) and we've got at least few billion more years before we smash into the sun. Anyway, it took the Colorado River only two million years to chisel down to those ancient rocks. A tenth of the time it took to make and cover 'em, then Bam! Done. As the river separated one side of desert plateau from the other, species began to differentiate. Now, after only two million years, there are unique plant and animal species whose closest genetic relatives live just across the river, only a mile or two away from each other. Wholly distinct. All it took was a little bitty river and two million years. Bam! Done.

Currently astrophysicists estimate the age of the universe to be 13-14 billion years old-- though there is some question as to whether or not that number is big enough. Some deeply intriguing questions about the Big Bang (or perhaps more accurately the Everywhere Stretch?) postulate that it might be lots, lots, lots older than that! But light can only travel so fast, and we can only measure so much. So the greatest minds on our tiny, blue, repeatable planet puzzle and postulate and factor away. And these minds, these huge brains of ours, they're brand-spanking new! Our earth is only 4.6 billion years old. Life on our blue marble is about 3.5 billion years old. And our big ol' calorie consuming brains have been here for about 200,000 years. We weren't even here to see the Grand Canyon start forming. It was mostly done by the time we got here! In fact, we've only been waltzing around growing crops and making baskets for 10,000 years, and building houses in cities for 6,000. The country I live in is about 240 years old, the house I live in is 60 years old, and this summer I'll look 37 years in the eye. Life has been on this blue marble for 3.5 billion years, and I've been here for just 37 of them. A blink. A little sneeze of a moment... and yet...

This term I'm taking Genetics. It's going to be serious business. My instructor is the kind of person I'd rather roll up in a rug and beat with a baseball bat than listen to him talk. He's pretty horrible. His idea of a good time means scaring and bullying people. If he can make them feel little, then he feels big. Classic bully. On Wednesday he was pretty horrible. I decided I'd drop his class and take genetics from someone else. Anyone else. But the school recently lost their other genetics instructor, so the bully is the only option for the foreseeable future. Fine, I decided. Fine. Nine weeks. I only have nine weeks left in the term. I can tolerate anything for nine weeks, I can even put up with this schlep. I haven't been very pleasant about it. In fact, I've used every swearword in the book to describe this guy, if only in my head. Yesterday, though, a funny thing happened: I remembered how old the universe is. Then how old the earth is. Then how old I am. I laughed to myself and thought, "I'm just too old to be bullied by this little mammal!" I mean, I came to be here, in this place, through all the ages of time... My ancestors survived and survived and survived until I came to be standing on a bit of coastal sediment, deposited by an ancient sea, looking into a photon-rich horizon that is older even than the dirt I'm standing on! The carbon of my body has been plucked from the air by organisms that turn air and light into solid matter, for crying out loud! My brain has been selected for through millions of generations of prototypes until the very tissues inside my own head were grown from a miraculously chancy gamete smaller than the head of a pin. No. I'm just too old, my existence too amazing, to let something as small as fear mongering alter my trajectory or disturb my peace.

Cloud Cult (that band I simply adore) wrote a song, "Through the Ages," which you should totally listen to. No. For reals. Here! I found it for you:

We were born on a lightning bolt, grew up in the ocean salt,

We've travelled through ten thousand lives.

So if ever I can't see the magic around me,

Please take my hands off my eyes.

I'm done being stupid, and worried, and dramatic, 

I lay down my every disguise.

If ever I can't see the magic around me, 

Please take my hands off my eyes.

I don't know where we're from, but we came here to be.

We came here to be courageous. 

So Monday I'll go to class, I'll sit for three tiny hours and listen to another old child describe what little we know about the chemical origins of life. Perhaps I'll even be patient enough to learn from him.