Roadside Geology

On the road to a volleyball match in Red Wing, I stopped to look for fossils. Ahead of schedule, I had half an hour to look for remnants of ancient sea life among the scrabble of shale at a highway cut through an Ordovician outcropping. Some extra time to rummage through time.

What does it mean to find a fossil? The strangeness, the real incomprehensibility of the vast amount of time involved weathers away the mind. My thoughts fissure as cars speed by on the highway behind me—crescendos and shadows.

As I pick among fossil crinoids, early mollusks still working out the mechanics of a spiral, chips of trilobite, and the twig-like fragments of bryozoans, a living fossil slowly legs it across the crumbles of shale and shell. A Harvestman, its long legs traversing eons.

Posted on October 13, 2017 04:16 AM by scottking