A cold front passed through. No eighty degree weather today. A high in the lower sixties. The wind laid down by dark though, so it wasn’t too cold to sit out on the deck by the fire and have a visit with new friends. A good day. A good evening. Countdown:Birds: 1CPE hours: 2
Thinking about anniversaries
The most obvious one is our wedding anniversary, but there are others. There are birthdays. We just reached 69 and 72 respectively. We bought the house in Louisville in 1974. After a few years we thought we would spend the rest of our lives there. We lived there so long, we paid off the 30 year mortgage! But plans change. November 1, 2004, 13 years ago, we left home. We had packed up the bus (2002 Bounder) in the weeks prior. The morning of November 1st we took down the Halloween yard decorations, put them away, and drove off. After 30 years of living in Louisville, we just left and never looked back. August 5th, 2005, twelve years ago, we bought the Beaver coach, brand new. We continued our full-time journey. There wasn’t an end-game plan. We didn’t know how long we were going to travel or what we would do when it seemed like time to stop. We bought the Gulf Waters lot in 2004. That was a good winter home base on the beach, but it wasn’t a house. We sold the Gulf Waters lot in 2014. Sometime in 2010 we decided to pick a place and settle down; buy a house somewhere for a home-base when we weren’t on trips. We didn’t know where that was going to be. We kept traveling, waiting and watching, then Sandpipers picked us. We realized that’s where we wanted to be, where we were the most comfortable, and February 2011, bought the Sandpipers house (mobile home). 16 feet wide and 78 feet long, the house is almost exactly 4 times the square footage of the bus. After 7 years of living solely in the motorhome, and now 6 years of living in the house, it still feels almost cavernous. Next year we will have been in the house as long as we were full-time in the motorhome. Time flies. Countdown:Birds: 1CPE hours: 2
The Great Unconformity
We were watching a program on the Grand Canyon. It surprised us with a reference to, and brief description of, the Great Unconformity. We hadn’t heard of it before. There is this possibly related problem of the Cambrian Explosion, a time when complex life seemed to suddenly develop from the simplest organisms like bacteria. Suddenly there were complicated creatures, a sudden explosion of diversity that didn’t exist before. A challenge to our understanding of evolution. In several places on earth where the geologic record is exposed, one being the Grand Canyon, there is a puzzle. There is a billion year gap. The geologic strata are arranged in ages. The newer ages are close to the surface. Penetrate ever deeper and there is a progression back in time. What they realized in the Grand Canyon is that there is a gap in our evidence. There are two layers lying directly in contact with each other that are a billion years apart in their age. We have no record of that billion years between the Pre-Cambrian and the Cambrian period. (It’s greater than a billion years in some places, some places less.) Maybe there was no explosion of life at all. Maybe there was a continuous gradual evolution from the single-celled organisms for a billion years, into the more complex organisms we see today. We don’t know. We have no record of that part. What happened to that billion years of geology all over the planet? Don’t know. Somehow that entire layer got washed away, or otherwise eroded. It’s the Great Unconformity. Is the Great Unconformity related to the Cambrian Explosion? Maybe. Another mystery. Happy Holidays.
Countdown:Birds: 1CPE hours: 3
Countdown:Birds: 1CPE hours: 3 Got a lot of work done
Got a little bit of CPE done. A scat mystery from our last hike. Who pooped here?
Consulting Dr. Google, I come up with examples of: Javelina.
Raccoon.
Coyote.
I don’t think it was coyote because there was no fur in it. But I suppose it could have been a coyote snacking on nuts and berries. Maybe a vegan coyote. Raccoon works. Javelina works. I find scat like that on the steps of, or at the top of, remote birding towers. That makes me think more raccoon than javelina climbing stairs. But this sample was on the ground. If the scat was on dirt instead of cement, I could have tried to make the call based on the tracks around it. Don’t know. Countdown:Birds: 1CPE hours: 5
Consulting Dr. Google, I come up with examples of: Javelina. Raccoon. Coyote. I don’t think it was coyote because there was no fur in it. But I suppose it could have been a coyote snacking on nuts and berries. Maybe a vegan coyote. Raccoon works. Javelina works. I find scat like that on the steps of, or at the top of, remote birding towers. That makes me think more raccoon than javelina climbing stairs. But this sample was on the ground. If the scat was on dirt instead of cement, I could have tried to make the call based on the tracks around it. Don’t know. Countdown:Birds: 1CPE hours: 5 We saw queen butterflies
And something sneaking around by that truck.
A bobcat.
Judy was even closer. She was behind the truck. He walked within 20 feet of her! But no parula. No new birds. Countdown:Birds: 1CPE hours: 6 Back to work tomorrow.