Month: February 2025
Winter Colors of Beaverhead Flats
This was going to be a post about lichen. Really, it was. And why shouldn’t it have been? This colonial organization of algae, fungus, and cyanobacteria living in mutually beneficial symbiosis, the first form of life to move into an environment denuded of vegetation and soil by natural disasters, and the initial agent of renewal in a devastated ecosystem: why shouldn’t we celebrate it as one of the more glorious inventions of our Creator?
James
James’s responses to the issues I raise in my interview present two different aspects: there are the straightforward logical answers he gives to my specific questions, and there are the more visceral expressions of opinion he presents as the same topics are discussed in more natural conversation. And these two dimensions do not always seem to be in harmony. When, for example, I ask him my basic cosmological, biological, and anthropological questions, his answers are the kind…
Sunset Crater
As interested as I’ve been in Arizona and for as long as I have, one item I would never have included among the state's primary geological features is volcanos. But the entire landscape surrounding Flagstaff is dominated by volcanic formations. Even its signature San Francisco Peaks are extinct volcanos. Volcanic material also constitutes a prevalent part of the soil throughout the state. Among the 600 plus cinder cones in the San Francisco Volcanic Field, sits one of the most recently active volcanos in the continental United States.