Time and the way it bends

Recently, Corin has grown an interest in all things outer-space. The recipient of a closet cleaning, the dramatic play area of his classroom acquired several old computer screens, calculators and switch boards - enough to launch the boys' rocket ship fantasies (so to speak). As a result, along with a healthy dose of imaginary adventures to distant planets, Corin has a sudden and real interest in the workings of the solar system, the concept of living on a planet, the idea of the sun being one among billions of stars in a single galaxy among billions of galaxies. As someone with little knowledge of astronomy, I have turned to that ever-ready source of good information: youtube, in order to help my son (and me!) have a better appreciation of the universe and, as the Book of Common Prayer would call it, "this fragile Earth, our island home."

Here are two great videos to help put things into perspective. Or, if you are like me and rather prone to feel your sense of proportion and place go a bit wobbly when you start thinking beyond the planet, then these may serve to blow things right out of perspective.

Planets and stars in scale: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tfs1t-2rrOM
Journey to the edge of the universe: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zr7wNQw12l8

Annie Dillard writes in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek: "We must somehow take a wider view, look at the whole landscape, really see it, and describe what is going on here. Then we can at least wail the right question into the swaddling band of darkness, or, if it comes to that, choir the proper praise."

I had not thought of that quote in quite awhile and found it coming to mind after this little space odyssey that has been opening up before us. The thing is, the swaddling band is not dark but light - filled with stars and galaxies beyond counting - and somehow it seems like it would be easier to comprehend if it were pared down considerably: wonder gets a little dizzying when you start adding zeros.

However, taking the wider view does not necessarily demand astronomical forays. This very place is stocked with wonder enough. On a recent rainy Saturday, I took a small personal retreat with the Montana Natural History Center to go on a Glacial Lake Missoula field trip. During the last ice age, a large lobe of the Purcell Glacier impounded a vast lake behind it filling much of western Montana with water. This lake, known as Glacial Lake Missoula, contained more than 500 cubic miles of water which, when the ice dam broke, rushed to the Pacific, scouring and chaneling Washington and Oregon on its way. I do not understand the geology of all this, but am told that this happened many times over. Geologists dispute the numbers of fillings and emptyings of the lake, but agree that it happened dozens of times (I believe a conservative estimate is in the 40s). The land on which I walk about, I take my sons' hands to cross the street, I have made my home, this land was under more than 950 feet of water.

We walk about on an old and vast lake bottom. Perhaps, this is nothing so very wonderful, the world has long been changing and will continue to do so given the arc of time. But somehow, when I take my boys up on the surrounding mountains where the lake surface used to lap and when we run our fingers over the rocks, ridged and rippled by that long ago water, the place stretches me, even as it destabilizies my capacity to "look at the whole landscape, really see it, and describe what is going on here."

Whether wondering at a landscape that was filled and formed by water, or losing my senses to the vastness of our solar system, (...much less our galaxy, ...much less our universe), I feel the stretch and bend of things that extend so endlessly beyond my small concerns, and somehow through this I meet again, as if for the first time, the here-now of my own life and home.