I’ve finally reached the bottom of ideas when dust is the only subject that comes to mind. But dust is a fact of life.
My History app said May 11th 1934 is called “Black Sunday.” A fierce wind whipped up a gigantic dust storm across the Midwest. It tore topsoil from the parched earth and hordes of broken people migrated to California. Same thing in 1935. The Dust Bowl was born.
My first experience with what I’d call a combination of dust and dirt was in first grade. Some lessons are learned early.
I had to walk to school. Walking home one day I somehow fell into a physical conflict with a kid twice my size. He promptly introduced my nose to the dust while sitting on my back.
Ever since this educational event, the highlight of my first grade, I have had a healthy measure of respect unto dust and how to keep my mouth shut when the subject of ‘fat’ comes up.
We were a family of farmers, agrarians since the late1800’s. We toiled on the same dirt and dust for over 120 years. We had great respect for this land and prayed fervently for it to yield more than thorns, thistles and weeds. It’s wise to be on good terms with the Higher Authority if you farm.
Eking out a living from this ground came only through sweat and hard work, following mules for miles down dusty rows. The advent of mechanical combines and the concept of ‘Gentlemen Farmer’ had not arrived..
Certain parts of our farm seemed hallowed. Other tribes had trod this land, lived off of it, died on it. Who were they? Where were they? We don’t need a sermon to remind us that from dust we come and to dust we go. That’s where they are now.
It caused me to wonder just how many people have ever lived on this planet. So I did some ‘rough’ calculations, totally unscientific, of course, that yielded an estimate of about 107 billion.
To test my equations, I consulted Google. Seems the Population Reference Bureau in 2015 came up with roughly 102 billion who had died. Imagine, all these coming from just two people. Now all dust. Staggering.
Such information should add some perspective to our self-centered egos, though I doubt it will clear the air of dust in DC anytime soon.
Several years ago I got interested in paleontology and read work by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Remember, he was part of the discovery of Homo erectus pekinensis, otherwise known as the Peking Man. Oh, you don’t recall? Peking duck is his recipe.
Anyway, he posited, among other things, that if we stand still long enough, cosmic dust would cover us entirely. Excavations the world over confirm this. In a sunlit room you can see motes of dust float through the air.
About twenty years ago we sold a portion of our farm for a golf course. It included a tangled area of swampy cypress trees and a pond. Often I had camped there, fished the pond, hunted birds and squirrels in the woods. And I knew I was not alone as I walked this ground.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say it was haunted, but spirits seemed to occupy the humid air. Especially at night. It’s the eerie kind of feeling you get in old cemeteries, like walking across ancient graves without tombstones. You ‘feel’ what you can’t ‘know.’
One day my mother wanted to say goodbye to this area. We took off our shoes and walked in a freshly-harrowed, red clay field. A fine mist of Dixie dew had fallen. The red clay squished between our toes. Tiny flint stones shone like small lights in the mud. It was the last time we ever walked barefoot in a field together.
A red-flint arrowhead protruded from the mire. I picked it up. It was marred by a harrow disk or discarded as unacceptable by its maker. I stuck it in my pocket. It reminds me of my history there.
Dust is a humbling excursion into nature. Carl Sagan synthesized the essence of our planet: “…(it’s) a mote of dust suspended on a sunbeam.” Photos from Voyager I some 3.5 billion miles out confirm his statement.
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Other souls were here before us, and others will be here after us. What will our dust reveal to them? Google can’t answer this. Only we can.
Bud Hearn
May 18, 2018