Bonneville Salt Flats / Utah

To accurately describe a thing, sometimes describe everything around it until you have a hole the size and shape of the thing you're describing.

Based on dinosaur skulls science can figure how big and powerful their brains were. The hole is only so big.

Consider a time in the future when humans are obsolete. Imagine any hint of us buried under so much dirt, and for so very long, and whoever finds our remains is so different from us, biologically, that our form is completely incomprehensible. Or completely boring. Instead they become fascinated with the curios surrounding us in the layers of sediment, the internal combustion engines and drive trains.

And when they study the cavernous interiors of these monsters they mythologize about a time when quadruped beasts ruled the land, conquering great distances and achieving dominance despite possessing poorly formed and inefficient brains.



Moose crossing / Colorado

You always hear about how butterfly wings flapping in one place can trigger a devastating tornado on the other side of the world. The idea is everything that happens maintains a "sensitive dependence on initial conditions" ... chaos theory.

It's always something insignificant on one end creating the catastrophic on another, but surely other butterflies, maybe migrating through Mexico, cause your boss to bring in donuts one morning. The short pause of a hummingbird on a tree branch in California that helps you figure why the toilet isn't flushing properly. Our muscles never stop twitching.

Once in a while I get where I'm going and wonder, had I taken a detour or changed my plans, would I have survived? Like, it's really good I stopped at Subway otherwise I might be dead.