Part One. The Odd Earth.
The world is full of places. All sorts of places. Here on Earth, we have balmy beaches, bustling cities, and mountain ranges that look like paintings. But every so often, the planet gives us something just a little bit weird. Maybe even a bit uncanny. These are the places that make you tilt your head and look on with guarded curiosity.
So. What are some of those places?
How about Racetrack Playa in California’s Death Valley? Most of us have seen the photos by now. It is the place where giant rocks glide across the desert floor. They just move along like they are out for a stroll or something. They leave long trails behind them. Like butt prints.
Yet no one has ever actually seen them move. Scientists think that thin winter ice sheets and wind might push them along. But still, the sight of boulders moving across a dry lake bed feels like the Earth might be showing off its weirdness.
Well. I mentioned ice sheets. But sometimes there are really, really big ice sheets. I am talking about Lake Vostok. It is hidden beneath more than two miles of Antarctic ice. That’s two miles thick. It is a gigantic subglacial lake that has sat untouched for roughly 15 million years.
It is a lake below the ice, living in complete darkness. It is isolated from the world above. Scientists believe microbes may have evolved in ways we have never seen before. They are trying to learn more about it.
On to the big heads. The really big heads of Easter Island. Formally, they were called the Moai statues. But we know who built them. It was the Rapa Nui people, hence the name of the statues. Rapa Nui. Mind you, not all memorials are built this way. The Washington Monument was not built by Washington. Lincoln didn’t build the Lincoln Memorial And so on.
Back to the Rapa Nui statues. So what is the purpose of these beasty heads? Were they ancestors or guardians? Were they territorial markers? Maybe they were good luck charms, like a rabbit’s foot. Who knows. What is certain is that moving 80-ton stone figures without machinery makes them among the most incredible enigmas ever made in all of history.
One more place that is quite odd. It is in Nevada and is called the Fly Geyser. This thing is a rainbow-colored, alien-looking mound that keeps growing taller every year. How? It is a combination of geothermal water and dissolved minerals that keep building up. It is on private land, so most people will never see it.
And more on this again tomorrow.
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“The earth is what we all have in common.” — Wendell Berry
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“We do not see nature with our eyes, but with our understandings and our hearts.” — William Hazlitt
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“Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.” — Albert Einstein
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