An old rancher looks at me and asks, "You ever seen a dust storm?" I open my mouth to say yes, but before I can answer, he says, "You've never seen a dust storm."
I look into the distance. Today I can see dust devils on the horizon, three of them, cutting through a bleached cornfield. The cornstalks raise their leaves in panic, but it is too late. The stalks are twisted and torn from the ground and pulled apart, leaf from trembling leaf. Bits of leaves and stalk flutter down from the sky like snow - dry, square flakes of corn snow. I hold a dozen of them in my hand. No two flakes are different from the other. This is the best we can do.
Mars is covered with dust devils. From above, you can see their circular tracks on the iron oxide and basalt, much like those left by tornadoes as they twist across asphalt. But there is no Martian travel guide. So the amateur astronomer peers into his narrow, cloudy lens and jumps! He sees the twisting tracks, scoured into the bare rock. He squints and starts counting the tracks. He spends days counting and cataloging. Then one day he sees something coiling across the rocks. From 100 million miles away, he studies it. From directly overhead. It's an organic, evolving shape, moving, gyrating, growing, cutting a track in the rocks and sand. Tracks like a sidewinder, a kangaroo rat, great blue heron. Therefore it is alive and animal. Is that a tail? A hypothesis is born: Sepia colored, one-eyed, leathery desert giants, with rippled, olive-green arms, twirling across the surface like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, swishing their ribbed tails behind them, leaving sparking, spiraling tracks in their wake. Perhaps they make a call like lemurs or dolphins. He rushes out the door. He spreads the word to his friends. His friends spread the word to their friends. Their friends spread the word to their friends. Thus, if each person tells two of his friends today, and each of those friends tells two of their friends tomorrow, within several days the amateur astronomer with the tiny telescope will himself be contacted by eleven million, seven hundred and thirty-eight thousand, two hundred and two breathless people, gasping to tell him the news that not only are there herds of highly developed, one-eyed aliens on Mars but that they have invaded earth and have taken over the railroads and control the media and are driving that ice-cream truck that is idling in front of his house. Armed with independent reports, he is ready to sit down and write his thesis. Now the shadows on the rocks in his telescope look like a top hat and a sparkly sequined gown. He hears them talking to each other.
No, singing. His thesis is published and the audience of millions embraces what they already knew millions knew to be true. Letters pour through the mail slot in his door like coins from a slot machine.
But somewhere out in the wilderness, a village was overlooked and never got the news. Too bad for them. It could be in the desert southwest, somewhere down a slick-rock canyon beneath a sandstone overhang. An Anasazi village. Stone houses tossing empty windows into the dry wash. Scattered amongst shards of clay pots with jittery lines and charcoal cubes are tiny corncobs as big as your thumb, multicolored with stripes and solids, with blue and red and black and purple and orange - like a Scottish scarf, Indian beadwork, an African kanga, a Laotian sihn. Footprints are in the sand from a woman who had just looked at the lines on the corn. Now she draws lines on the wet clay. She is making more pottery. Too bad for her. Drought is sweeping over the stone ridge above her and will suck the creek dry, take the life right out of her. Winds swirl the corn cobs around the dry creek bed leaving circles in the sand. She drops everything and runs, but it is too late.
Today, the winds continue. The fact is, on a barren, stripped landscape, the whirlwinds run amok. The heat is absorbed by the dark basalt and granite and asphalt or depleted inorganic soil, then it rises, fueling a global army of dust devils. They march across the surface exploding and burning everything in their path, exposing more basalt and granite. This does not have to be observed with a telescope. This day, as they pull the plants out by the roots and vaporize the soil, I hear a hissing sound and at several points across the landscape it appears as if the whirlwinds have peeled away the earth's mantle. Air escapes from the earth's core, sucked into the sky along with carpets of spring ephemerals, moss agates, desert varnish, coral reefs, cloud forests, and cobs of corn, no two of them alike. I drop everything and run. I would pass it along, but millions already know that millions know that this is not true. Too bad for them.
I look into the distance. Today I can see dust devils on the horizon, three of them, cutting through a bleached cornfield. The cornstalks raise their leaves in panic, but it is too late. The stalks are twisted and torn from the ground and pulled apart, leaf from trembling leaf. Bits of leaves and stalk flutter down from the sky like snow - dry, square flakes of corn snow. I hold a dozen of them in my hand. No two flakes are different from the other. This is the best we can do.
Mars is covered with dust devils. From above, you can see their circular tracks on the iron oxide and basalt, much like those left by tornadoes as they twist across asphalt. But there is no Martian travel guide. So the amateur astronomer peers into his narrow, cloudy lens and jumps! He sees the twisting tracks, scoured into the bare rock. He squints and starts counting the tracks. He spends days counting and cataloging. Then one day he sees something coiling across the rocks. From 100 million miles away, he studies it. From directly overhead. It's an organic, evolving shape, moving, gyrating, growing, cutting a track in the rocks and sand. Tracks like a sidewinder, a kangaroo rat, great blue heron. Therefore it is alive and animal. Is that a tail? A hypothesis is born: Sepia colored, one-eyed, leathery desert giants, with rippled, olive-green arms, twirling across the surface like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, swishing their ribbed tails behind them, leaving sparking, spiraling tracks in their wake. Perhaps they make a call like lemurs or dolphins. He rushes out the door. He spreads the word to his friends. His friends spread the word to their friends. Their friends spread the word to their friends. Thus, if each person tells two of his friends today, and each of those friends tells two of their friends tomorrow, within several days the amateur astronomer with the tiny telescope will himself be contacted by eleven million, seven hundred and thirty-eight thousand, two hundred and two breathless people, gasping to tell him the news that not only are there herds of highly developed, one-eyed aliens on Mars but that they have invaded earth and have taken over the railroads and control the media and are driving that ice-cream truck that is idling in front of his house. Armed with independent reports, he is ready to sit down and write his thesis. Now the shadows on the rocks in his telescope look like a top hat and a sparkly sequined gown. He hears them talking to each other.
No, singing. His thesis is published and the audience of millions embraces what they already knew millions knew to be true. Letters pour through the mail slot in his door like coins from a slot machine.
But somewhere out in the wilderness, a village was overlooked and never got the news. Too bad for them. It could be in the desert southwest, somewhere down a slick-rock canyon beneath a sandstone overhang. An Anasazi village. Stone houses tossing empty windows into the dry wash. Scattered amongst shards of clay pots with jittery lines and charcoal cubes are tiny corncobs as big as your thumb, multicolored with stripes and solids, with blue and red and black and purple and orange - like a Scottish scarf, Indian beadwork, an African kanga, a Laotian sihn. Footprints are in the sand from a woman who had just looked at the lines on the corn. Now she draws lines on the wet clay. She is making more pottery. Too bad for her. Drought is sweeping over the stone ridge above her and will suck the creek dry, take the life right out of her. Winds swirl the corn cobs around the dry creek bed leaving circles in the sand. She drops everything and runs, but it is too late.
Today, the winds continue. The fact is, on a barren, stripped landscape, the whirlwinds run amok. The heat is absorbed by the dark basalt and granite and asphalt or depleted inorganic soil, then it rises, fueling a global army of dust devils. They march across the surface exploding and burning everything in their path, exposing more basalt and granite. This does not have to be observed with a telescope. This day, as they pull the plants out by the roots and vaporize the soil, I hear a hissing sound and at several points across the landscape it appears as if the whirlwinds have peeled away the earth's mantle. Air escapes from the earth's core, sucked into the sky along with carpets of spring ephemerals, moss agates, desert varnish, coral reefs, cloud forests, and cobs of corn, no two of them alike. I drop everything and run. I would pass it along, but millions already know that millions know that this is not true. Too bad for them.
0 comments:
Post a Comment