I have held things in my hands that are about 400 million years old. You can, too, if you’re into fossils. It’s always a profoundly special feeling, touching something like that. It’s humbling. It makes me realize that my life is but a tiny blip in the overall scheme of things. It makes all my problems seem inconsequential. I find that extremely comforting.
I’ve given several beloved family members ammonites as gifts. You can often buy them cut in half, so the beautiful petrified spiral chambers are revealed. They get one half, I keep the other. Then I can say that we now are connected over millions of years. The gift of staying power. The closest thing you can have to immortality.
Here’s the one I gave my husband for our first Christmas, and of course, the other half I gave to myself. I don’t know which is the “better” half, but it makes for a beautiful whole, indeed.
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The View from a Drawbridge 
Nice, as long as the supply doesn’t run out…
At the Suzzallo library at the UW there is a restroom whose walls are of what might be limestone with little things in it that might be fossils. But if you go to the Westlake station of the bus tunnel–down the stairs or escalator from the street to its upper level–see all that swirly, swirly stuff in the floor? Looks like someone kneaded a bunch of spam with charcoal and a few licorice chunks? That’s a form of gneiss from Minnesota that is abt 3 1/2 billion years old. Neat, huh?
I’ll have to check that out!
Beautiful. This planet has many secrets. We only see a spec of what is visible to us in this time. The photo looks like something I would see in a museum.
Aww, thanks! 🙂