Glaciers once covered most of North America, and many of the features of our current landscapes are products of glacial activity. Over the past 2 million years and as recently as 10,000 years ago, glaciers advanced and retreated several times. They wore down mountain ranges; deposited large rocks (glacial erratics), pebbles, sand, and clay; and created lakes, ponds, and deltas. Around 65 thousand years ago glaciers covered nearly 17 million square miles of Earth’s surface, and sea levels were more than 400 feet lower than today. Land bridges connected previously separated areas, supporting migrations to new territories.2
Musician Mike Vargas speaks of rhythm as “when things happen.” He explains that it has to do with the timing of events within a given time frame: there is rhythm in a moment and there is rhythm across a span of hundreds of years.” Consider the placement in time of a cough or of the periodic eruption of volcanoes along the Pacific Ring of Fire. “Listen to the sounds around you for ten minutes,” he suggests. “Note when they happened, for how long, and how they interact in time: the on-goingness of a waterfall, the chirp of a cricket, a blast of a car horn.” In his view, rhythm is everywhere in a landscape, including the words on this page.
TO DO
Bonding with gravity10 minutes
Lying on your back in a comfortable position, eyes closed:
• Let your weight be supported by the Earth. Notice any part that seems to be “hovering” weightlessly above the surface. Try to soften or melt all of your body toward gravity.
• Now lift your head about an inch off the ground, feel its full weight and relax it back to the Earth.
• Lift a leg off the ground; feel its weight; relax it to the Earth.
• Lift your pelvis off the ground; feel its weight; relax it to the Earth.
• Lift an arm off the ground; feel its weight; relax it to the Earth.
• Notice your full body weight resting on the ground.
• Begin slowly to pour the contents of your body toward one side and roll onto this surface (bring your arms along). Feel your weight drain into the Earth.
• Continue to roll slowly, pouring the fluid contents until you are resting on the front of your body. Release your “bellital surface” into the ground.
• Roll, very slowly, onto the remaining side, pouring your contents.
• Return to your back and nestle your whole body into the ground.
• Slowly begin the transition to standing, remaining aware of your fluid contents moving with the pull of gravity.
• In plumb line, remain in open attention, noticing any sensations (thoughts, emotions, images) that occur. Add vision and continue awareness of gravity.
Bonding with gravity underlies all other movement patterns. We must be able to release our weight down in order to push away, stand, walk.
Timeline45 minutes
On a large piece of paper, alone or with a group:
• Draw a timeline of the history of Earth, from the origin of this planet to the present day. It does not need to be an actual line; consider other ways of representing time. Include information you remember from your studies and details from textbook sources.
• Find a scale that spans millions and billions of years, as well as recent history.
• Add three dates that are unique to your area of study or interest: the birthdate of Martin Luther King, the date humans landed on the moon, or the first performance of The Rite of Spring.
• Write about the origin of your version of the evolutionary story: teachers, films, books, church lessons, photographs, talking to friends, family discussions, visits to museums, television shows, computer games.
• Read your story aloud to yourself or a small group; show (and revise) your timeline.
De-evolutionary sequence45 minutes
Begin standing in vertical alignment, eyes open:
• Let your plumb line fall forward to initiate a walk, like Homo sapiens, moving with multidimensional agility 130,000 to 75,000 years ago (ya).
• Explore your earliest hominid heritage in the African savannas, sharing food in family groups, before the erect stance, 5 mya.
• Reach your arm up and grasp a branch with your hand, brachiating like our early ape ancestors to locomote through the treetops, 22 mya.
• Pause and squat, hunkering on a branch along with other early primates. Feel the arch of your foot grasping the tree branch, eyes and hands free to pick food and groom and to communicate with others in your community, 50 mya.
• Travel down to the ground, like a shrew or other small mammal, 180 mya.
• Move through the land like an early dinosaur, using your big tail, 225 mya.
• Crawl or creep on your belly, like your reptile ancestors, 280 mya.
• Slither like your amphibian ancestors, moving between water and land. Imagine a salamander, needing a wet environment for survival, 350 mya.
• Swim off into a muddy pool, out to the ocean, leaving behind the first land plants and insects. Feel the undulations of your bony fish spine, 400 mya.
• Explore the mobile radial symmetry of the starfish. Attach to the ocean floor like the hollow vessel of the sea squirt, feeding as water flows in and out, 500 mya.
• Imagine yourself part of a cell colony, unique but interconnected, like a coral or sponge, 750 mya.
• Return to the integrity of a single cell, like a photosynthetic bacterium floating in the ocean, responding to sunlight, 3 billion years ago (bya).
• Imagine yourself participating in the fluid matrix before the cell, the raining down of the first ocean waters, 3.8 bya.
• Reflect on the erupting of volcanos from the molten core, changing the chemical composition of earth and atmosphere, 4 bya.
• Consider the differentiating of layers as Earth formed, the cooling of the crust, 4.5 bya.
• Consider yourself part of a swirling gaseous cloud, one of the tiny particles of an exploded star forming the basic building blocks of our universe, 4.6 bya.
• Pause in open attention. Write about your experience. Read aloud, feeling the ground as you speak.
Place Visit: Attention to underlying patterns of Earth30 minutes
Walking to your place, eyes open, let your arms swing freely. Notice the rhythm of your walk and the contours of the land. When you arrive, stand in vertical alignment, eyes closed, and notice postural sway. Imagine the surface of the Earth moving under your body, the planet rotating on its axis, the solar system revolving around the Sun. Open your eyes, but keep your imagination active. Attend inclusively to the sensations of moving body and moving Earth. 20 min. Write about your experience. 10 min.
FARMSTORIES: SOIL
Each July when I was a child, we would drive the thirty miles to the Illinois State Fair and catch up on the farming news. We would drink fresh-squeezed lemonade, ride the double ferris wheel, visit our favorite displays, like the giant cow carved from butter, and walk through the animal barns. But in the hot and heavy afternoons we would go to the farming tents and try to judge the quality of a product