Creatures Great and Small

What an amazing story on NPR today about tortoises in the Galapagos Islands!

http://www.radiolab.org/story/galapagos/

There's beauty in the amazing biodiversity and adaptation of creatures to changes in their environment... from finches to tortoises.

In the show there's also humor and sadness--how a few goats brought by pirates grew into hundreds of thousands that ate the food supply of other animals in the islands.

Much food for thought... hallelujah!

Thank you to Radio Lab for this hour-long show.

Snowmelt & Danger on the Pacific Crest, 2017

Amazing snowpack has created record snow melt and flooding in the Sierra Nevada...  I took this photo on July 8, 2017, with these trees at about 10,000 ft. still surrounded by snow.  The scene is about two miles from the Pacific Crest Trail.

For more photos, see:

http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-flooding-sierra-nevada-20170714-htmlstory.html



People hiking the Pacific Crest Trail were endangered by higher-than-normal streams to cross.  Two drowned, one slipped to his death on ice, and one probably died from heat or dehydration.

https://www.pcta.org/2017/sadness-deaths-pacific-crest-trail-50680/

Earth Day: Hallelujah!

Right to left: Lizard Head, Gladstone Peak (slightly in foreground), Sheep Mountain (very small) to far left,
all taken from Wilson Peak (foreground) - from the internet, unknown photographer about July 1, near Telluride CO

Earth Day dawns with exquisite beauty, a crescent moon rising close to Venus an hour before the Sun, our life-giving star.

When One River Captures Another...

The Grand Canyon of the Colorado River, not far from
where river capture occurred 16 million years ago

There's nothing like a glimpse of geologic time to make you whisper or shout "Hallelujah!"

Here's a report by John Schwarz in the New York Times about how a small river in Alaska, the Slims River,  was captured by another river, the Alsek River in four days in 2016, reversing its course.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/17/science/climate-change-glacier-yukon-river.html?_r=0

Here's another report by Hannah Devlin in The Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/apr/17/receding-glacier-causes-immense-canadian-river-to-vanish-in-four-days-climate-change


I knew that this had happened to two rivers I love:

• The Gunnison River near Grand Junction, Colorado, was captured by the Colorado River, leaving behind the riverless Unaweep Canyon.
• The Colorado River just east of the Grand Canyon once flowed north into the Great Salt Lake, but about 16 million years ago, the lower and western portion of today's Colorado River captured the upper Colorado River, which with the Little Colorado River had been flowing north.  "...the lower Colorado River captured the ancestral upper Colorado River and the Little Colorado in the vicinity of the present confluence of the Little Colorado and Colorado rivers."

But it's shocking to see a river capture occur in a few months in 2017, rather than millions of years ago.

Other strange things that rivers do in Utah:

http://geology.utah.gov/map-pub/survey-notes/glad-you-asked/why-does-a-river-run-through-it/

Bats are 1/4 of the species on earth

Bats make up one-fourth of all the world's mammal species.

And in terms of sheer numbers, bats make up one-fifth of all mammals on earth.

Something to think about.

Here's an article by Annalee Newitz that begins to explain why:

So why do bats represent such a large number of mammals? Based on this study, published today in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the researchers would argue it has to do with the animals' ability to diversify quickly in new environments — and that a big part of that is bats' extremely varied diets. Bat species range from nectar-sippers to insect-eaters and blood-munchers, and this allows them to spread into new territories.

http://io9.gizmodo.com/5862099/one-fifth-of-all-mammals-are-bats-heres-why

Words that drop like rain

A flower blooms in parched soil, Antelope Valley

I was driving through the lower San Joaquin Valley, listening to a preacher on the radio, when I heard these words: "Thy doctrine will drop as the dew..." (from the CEV Bible translation).

What an odd metaphor!  Doctrine seems rather stiff and large, probably klunky when dropped.

It's hard to imagine it dropping "as the dew."  Only a male in love with doctrine could imagine it dropping softly or welcomely.  

I grant that the alliteration is striking--literally and figuratively--in a klunky way.

I looked up the verse:

Deuteronomy 32:2 Context

1Give ear, O ye heavens, and I will speak; and hear, O earth, the words of my mouth. 2My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distil as the dew, as the small rain upon the tender herb, and as the showers upon the grass: 3Because I will publish the name of the LORD: ascribe ye greatness unto our God. 

Speech and words could drop like dew, yes.  

In the Hebrew Tanach, I found the verse.  The facing page (in English) says, "May my teaching drop like the rain, may my utterance flow like the dew."

First of all, the passage is identified as "The Song of Moses."  It is Moses or some other prophet speaking, not God, because verse 3 says "When I call out the name of YHWH...."  So verse 2 should not be translated "Thy doctrine."  It's "my doctrine" or teaching.

The Hebrew word lamed - qof - chet - yod could be pronounced "leek-ach-ee" and in my Webster's New World Hebrew-English dictionary, it is translated "[my] lesson; moral lesson."  It is definitely smaller than doctrine.  It is singular, not a collective plural like doctrine or information.

I can see how the prophet speaking could say, "May my lesson drop like the rain...."  It is just one little lesson, followed by another and another, like drops of rain.  But it is life-giving, like rain.

The song ends after 43 verses--43 drops of rain.  Moses says, "Apply your hearts to these words... Be careful to perform all the words of this Torah, for it is not an empty thing for you, for it is your life, and through this matter shall you prolong your days on the Land to which you cross the Jordan, to possess it."

And then YHWH commands Moses to climb Mount Abarim, see the Land of Canaan, and die.

Rain in Arizona making puddles in dinosaur footprints

Moses loved the Torah of YHWH, the Law given to him by Yahweh.  It was life-giving, like rain in the desert, where he lived most of his life.

I can feel the rain as a gift and the words of Moses from YHWH as gifts.  

Just don't hit me over the head with doctrine.

The Mighty San Andreas

What a feeling to stand at the edge of a grand display of the giant crack--the San Andreas--where the North American continent tugs and pulls against the Pacific Plate-- between Frazier Park CA and Maricopa CA.  Take Cuddy Valley Rd. to Pine Mountain to Hudson Ranch Rd. to Hwy. 33.