Picto Diary - 30 July 2024 - Reach for the Stars! Fossil Butte National Monument
Above: Park Meadows, Park City, UT. 30 July 2024.
LSDM Walkers.
Doe.
Above: Park City Cemetery. Park City, UT. 30 July 2024.
LSDM Walkers.
Jack Rabbit. Big fellow. Uncommon wildlife sighting (at least for LSDM Walkers!)
Above: Kemmerer City Park (the triangle). Kemmerer, WY 30 July 2024.
LSDM members listen to Kemmer mayor, Bill Thek, and Kemmerer city manager, Brian Muir, update on construction progress of TerraPower nuclear plant.
Reasons for selecting Kemmerer as a site to revive the construction of new atomic power plants in the US:
1. Welcoming community.
2. Favorable geology.
3. 800-megawatt grid to support coal plant scheduled to be decommissioned.
4. Geographical isolation from potential sources of protest.
5. Available land.
Out and about on the 'Wing.
Kemmerer City Park.
Ten Commandments Monument.
I asked Kemmerer Mayor, Bill Thek, if anyone had ever raised a stink about this monument "violating" separation of church and state. The mayor replied that once, five or so years ago, a woman asked for a permit to protest the monument on site. "We granted her a permit; it snowed the day of her protest; she set up a table; no one showed; she never raised the issue again," Bill said.
Above: Fossil Fuel Coffee shop. Kemmerer, WY. 30 July 2024.
LSDM field trip to Kemmerer, WY to review progress on construction of TerraPower nuclear plant.
Fossil fuel. Cute name. Play on words. Kemmerer is the nearest town to Fossil Butte National Monument. There are two or three stores in town that sell fossils from the 50MM year old lakebed ten miles from town, west, on US 30.
Above: Visitors Center. Geological Timeline Fence. Fossil Butte National Monument, Lincoln County, WY. 30 July 2024.
Out and about on the 'Wing. Round trip by motorcycle from Park City, Utah to Kemmerer, WY, Fossil Butte National Monument, WY, Rich County, UT, Evanston, WY back to Park City. 264 miles. Image: The Actuary, and Guzzi.
I have made at least a half dozen visits over the last twenty years to Fossil Butte National Monument, a little visited, out of the way feature of the US national park system. Apart from having a great picnic spot, the monument exists to feature a huge fifty-million-year-old fossil field once a lakebed. The size of the fossil bed is so extensive that people are allowed, with specific permission, to search for fossils and take them away. Also, near the visitor's center, and in the nearby town of Kemmerer, WY, there are stores which sell fossils.
There is a fascinating auxiliary feature of the national monument: a half mile long geological timeline with signs denoting the epochs and eras of the 4.6-billion-year-old earth along the national monument's entry road with the timeline representing the earth's last 500 million years, continuing on a fence that surrounds the national monument visitor's center.
The timeline fence reminds me to be humble. I'm forced to make efforts to comprehend the incomprehensible. The entry of homosapiens (or human consciousness) into the timeline at thirty thousand years ago happens at the very end of the timeline and takes up about an inch on the fence. I'm compelled to acknowledge that human consciousness, which I believe to be unique to our earth, is not guaranteed to survive. Along the timeline fence are labels representing the timing of the five extinctions on the earth that have occurred in the last 500 million years. I know that there will be another extinction. The earth's creation process is ongoing. The earth is not a static entity. The earth is ever changing in an ever-changing universe.
Mass Extinctions on the earth
- End Ordovician (444 million years ago)
- Late Devonian (360 million years ago)
- End Permian (250 million years ago)
- End Triassic (200 million years ago)
- Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) (which killed off the dinosaurs 70 million years ago)
What happened in the End Permian extinction, 250 million years ago, will recur, perhaps not tomorrow, perhaps, not even in ten thousand years, but a sixth extinction is inevitable. As continental shifts exposed rifts in the earth in what is now Siberia, 250 million years ago, ongoing continental drift in Africa's Grand Rift Valley or a blow of the Yellowstone Caldera will expose the earth to the same extinction forces that created magma storms which lasted several thousand years in Sibera 250 million years ago. The Siberian magma storms resulted in the extinction of 90% of the marine species and 75% of the terrestrial species then on earth. The certainty of another Permian like extinction does not take into account the possibility of the arrival of a comet such as caused the extinction of the dinosaurs 70 million years ago or a mankind self-inflicted wound... nuclear war, man caused pandemic etc.
Because of earth's fragility and because I am convinced that human consciousness is unique, I believe strongly in Elon Musk's quest to hedge humanity's bets by ensuring humanity thrives off the earth. In the US where the government's impetus to explore space has been flagging in recent years, Musk's quest to seek to populate humans on other planetary bodies represents the revival of a necessary and proper human quest to advance human progress and to secure human consciousness. Periodic visits to the Fossil Butte National Monument timeline fence serve, at least for me, as a necessary reminder of this exigency: Reach for the stars!
Above: Fossil Butte National Monument, Lincoln County, Wyoming 30 July 2024.
Out and about on the 'Wing.
Sage Grouse.
Addendum:
Love Tower of Power! What the heck breed is your dog? I’ve always had big dogs—labs, but that is another dimension!
Tony,
Park City, UT
Beautiful family Bishop! Love your stories, insight and travels.
Stay well, ski season is inside 150 days.
Golf,
Park City, UT.
Thanks,
Brand Man,
Ventura, CA