When I was a curious five year old, I asked my Dad what he did when he went to work each day. He replied that once in his office at the university, he drank a magic potion that made him shrink. Once tiny, he studied things that were even tinier than he was. At the end of the day, he drank another brew to make himself grow big again and drove home for dinner. Later I would understand that he was a physical chemist who specialized in the density of electrons. I must have been reading Alice in Wonderland around then as his peculiar answer satisfied me. It caused me to ponder all that was too small to see, even if I squinted really hard.
A half century later, my partner’s preoccupations are cosmic. Even in the morning before coffee, Rob wonders about stars swallowing planets and the nature of dark matter. On a shivery winter night, he perches his telescope on the deck and coaxes me to join him. Wrapped in a blanket, I peer into the lens. He adjusts the scope and pulls Jupiter into view. I am amazed to discern several moons that orbit the planet: Europa, Ganymede, Callisto, rosy dots against the hazy sphere. As he takes his turn, I gaze at the black dome of sky and try to imagine all that lies beyond our solar system and beyond the Milky Way—galaxies thought to be in the billions or trillions, perhaps infinite in number.
Both the nanoscopically small and the intergalactically large test the limits of our ability to think of them as real. The moons orbiting Jupiter seem strangely equivalent to electrons and protons orbiting atoms, the immense and the minute equally wondrous. Sometimes when I can’t sleep, my mind sways between sub-atomic particles and swirls of stars. I imagine immortality as a merger of my molecules with unending cosmic soup.
In my awake life, it is the immense that most compels me. While exploring Argentina, Rob and I catch our first still-distant view of the massive Perito Moreno glacier. A double rainbow hovers above, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet light refracting on infinitesimally small particles.
Later we stand facing frozen cliffs two hundred feet tall, alabaster striated with aquamarine and cerulean. The glacier dwarfs us—three miles wide and nineteen miles long, a solid river of icy spikes inching inexorably forward to calve into Lake Argentina. From the safety of our lookout, we hear thunderous cracking as gigantic wedges of ice splinter off and collapse into the water below. Huge, just-formed icebergs bob white against the blue cliffs, releasing a tsunami of waves. I lose my ability to speak, choked by the beauty before me and the knowledge of the fragility of glaciers.
At the southern tip of the continent, in Tierra del Fuego, we rent a car and wander back roads. Miles into our explorations, we realize that something is amiss; our windshield has remained pristine. We have seen not a single insect. Not a butterfly, not a bee. Not even a mosquito.
We are driving along a narrow gravel road through dense forest when we encounter a lonely metal sign that announces, simply, “It is against the law to destroy signs.” Who would even see this sign, we wonder, on a byway devoid of traffic. And where should a sign be posted to warn that the world has become inhospitable to bugs?
Insect populations are diminishing globally at a rate of over two percent a year. Their progressive obliteration threatens to collapse our ecosystem. Our glaciers are shrinking at a rate of over a trillion tons of ice per year. Unless the destruction slows, two-thirds of glaciers will be gone by the end of this century, with irreversible effects on ocean temperature and sea levels. Whether as grand as a glacier or as modest as a ladybug, there is nothing in our natural world that human activity doesn’t threaten.
Like her grandfather before her, my daughter is compelled by science and the very small. No magic potions for her; she uses mass spectrometry to examine the effects of oil spills on the molecular composition of the oceans. She wants her work to make a difference. But how much salvation can science offer in a world economy driven by power and profit?
We humans don’t easily tolerate feeling helpless. Our minds recoil at a mere glimmer of the environmental challenges that we face. Our hearts can’t hold our fear. Who wants to feel molecularly small in front of galactic existential threat?
So we distract ourselves. We frenetically pursue the quotidian demands of work and family. We consume the latest films and fashions, and follow our investments as if they could save us.
My preferred defense is travel; I crave seeing all before becoming cosmic dust myself, despite knowing that while logging air miles and snapping pictures, my carbon footprint expands. I feel compelled to consider why I travel, its cost beyond dollars, and the restitution I owe the planet for my pleasurable pursuits. The alternative to such reflection is to merely remain dumbstruck by the magnificence of what is left.
- Taking Measure at El Fin del Mundo - March 19, 2024