Ever hear the saying everyone talks about the weather but nobody does any thing about it? If one substitutes the word climate for weather, that might start a debate. The debate might be heated. There is controversy about climate change, well about what is causing the change.
When one thinks about it the only thing constant in this universe is change. The stars, the planets and even the universe are constantly changing. Isaac Newton said that gravity causes most of it. But that can’t be all, because Albert Einstein says gravity isn’t alone; it is intertwined with time. And we all know that time is constantly marching on.. Tomorrow, however, just about now it will be the same time.
Because we are in a most wicked drought, ponds and rivers are drying up. Lakes are disappearing. Some can remember back in 2007 we had more rain than we needed. We had the year’s average amount of rain by the end of August. One thing though about the current drought is that there are far fewer mosquitoes now than then.
A few years before that, the yard was mostly mud where I live. Things just change. We all hope that the rain gets back to normal pretty quickly. Washing cars hasn’t helped too much so far. Maybe we should all have a car wash day and really break the dry spell.
A couple of years ago, while paddling the Missouri river in Montana and listening to tales of Lewis and Clark, one of the locals said, “You know that the Gulf of Mexico was up here once.” That was taken with a block, rather than a grain, of salt.. How could the Gulf be several hundred miles north?
Once home, the geologic record was checked. Couldn’t let those northern cowboys pull my leg, even if the Lonesome Dove guys came from here.
It was a surprise that the story was true. There was something called the Western Interior Seaway during what the geologist call the Cretaceous Period. That period began about 135 million years ago and ended about 70 million years ago.
You will have to take their word for it. It was so long ago that even my great grandfather didn’t tell me about it. We can trace our ancestors back only a few hundred years. Those geologists must have a really long family tree.
In that period the earth just rose and fell so that the Gulf went north and the Arctic ocean came south. They formed this long, rather narrow, sea that went all the way through North America. So Mother Nature can change things pretty drastically if you give her enough time.
Personally I am glad that it was long ago. I like living on land like it is now however, it is true that things eventually will change. The change might be for better or for worse, so we should make the best we can of whatever way it is at the present.
