Accidents of erosion.

That’s how my first geology teacher explained the surface of our world.  He was talking narrowly, as scientists do, about seeing the history of the earth in its current landforms.

Landforms like this shoreline cliff and creek bed:

 

The phrase stuck with me. It covers so much. All the stuff I used to try to understand, that no one really can. Why why why I took the jobs I did, moved the places I went, lost these loved ones, saw those illnesses recur, effortlessly vaulted to success here, bashed my head against failure’s wall there. How it came to be so important for me to try to understand.

When I look at my life geologically, I see that things fall apart, and they form again in new ways, and what it looks like, well, it just depends – like erosion – on the weather.

What’s that the Buddhists say? You are the sky. Everything else, it’s just weather. (- Pema Chodron, maybe quoting somebody else).

Recently I moved, to be closer to the ocean. The move surprised people, including me. (More about that at some point.) My new neighborhood has spectacular views of the beauty of erosion. I especially love the trees, in varying stages of change.

This one I call Nessie:

Jurassic predator tree:

The alien and the protector of the cliff (you get to decide which is which):

(The WordPress weekly photo challenge was Waiting.)