Tag Archives: Burgess Shale

Golden

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They arrived at Golden in the late evening, following the Kicking Horse river, a high plains stream that often broke into multiple paths only to go join up again at a bend or a narrow. The name, Kicking Horse, had a historical anecdote to the early explorers of the place. A series of snow capped mountain peaks arranged in a straight line greeted them. It was a magical hill town surrounded by half a dozen of the most picturesque national parks in Canada – Banff, Glacier, Jasper, Kootenay, Mount Revelstoke and Yoho. They had seen most of those parks in different years and in different times. On this trip, Neil had planned to cover Yoho, Kootenay and a bit of Banff National Parks. To their west lay Yoho, and the small town of Field, north of which was the famous stone quarries at the slopes of the Burgess mound, known as the Burges Shale fossil deposit sites.

They had checked into an Inn with their room overlooking the gorgeous mountain range to the south-west. Neil did not know or remember the names of all the hills and did not carry any backpack map, but the view facing their room was spectacular. It comprised of a mountain range whose slope westward, towards the town of Golden was carved into several deep and parallel ravines. What forces created that landscape, Neil did not fully understand, but these features made him think. He could see, clearly, that men had made mountain roads leading half way up some of that slope, the steepness causing them to zig zag the unpaved road that was dusted in snow cover that was clearly melting away in April. There were tell tale signs of landslide and avalanche, where soil and small rocks had tumbled down and landed in a heap at the base of the steep hills. The roads were likely out of bounds at this season, but might have been open for the right vehicles when the snow was firm, so folks to ski or skate or use snow mobiles. In the summer, those roads should be navigable with all terrain or all wheel drive vehicles, for some spectacular landscape viewing. Right now, they were in a transition season, not cold enough and the snow gone soft but heavy for the unmaintained mountain road. According to the girl at the reception, the show on those roads can be more than a meter deep and would bury most vehicles, hence the road was closed now.

Mabel had gone into the bathroom to freshen up. They had planned to go walkabout in the small hill town, and eventually find a place to have a bite before settling for the night. They planned to head straight into the Yoho National park hills early in the morning after a hefty breakfast. Most of the days, they would skip lunch but carry a fruit and some snacks with them, and a jug of coffee.
Neil relaxed in the settee overlooking the large window and put his feet up on the low table. He tried out the TV, but did not like the shows and switched it off. The room was cool but not cold, so they kept the air conditioning off.
He watched as the light began to fade and the horizontal strips of cloud in the eastern sky turned from orange tinged to gray and then to grayish blue. The sun had set behind them in the west, and it reflected in the eastern sky before him.
“I like the pensive look on you”.
Neil turned his head away from the window. Mabel had emerged, and was drying her hair in a towel. She had another big bath towel wrapped around her. She had pale skin. Neil had noticed through his years of traveling around and meeting folks, that the so called white people, were actually more colored, than the so called colored people, or the Africans.
The issue of race, he now understood, was a non-science. Genetically, most people were quite mixed up, and the racial distinction of features, skin color, shape of nose and eyes, type of hair etc were very recent adaptation of the anatomically modern man, most likely to suit their surroundings. It could also be a certain kind of dominant gene pushed certain populations towards adopting some specific features more strongly.
Anyhow, he had learned that the so called white people could come in different shades, and none of them really white. In his mind, the Mongoloid race, or people of China and surroundings, were perhaps more uniformly pale skinned, and should have been the “white race” instead of the yellow. And the white people should have been the “colored race”. A white man from southern Italy was darker than is own father, from Bengal, India. But a real pale skinned northerner, or a red haired Irish person or a freckled European with colorless eyelashes were the other extreme.
Mabel was not quite that extreme. She did not have freckles, but her skin was paler, her hair was light and her eyes were different shades of green, gray or light blue, depending on the light.
“I like the fresh pinkish look on you” he ended up saying.
Mabel acknowledged the compliment. “What were you pensive about ?”
“Ohh, this and that. I am often pulled by two opposing feelings. One is a sense of joy and pleasure from seeing beautiful landscapes, rivers, animals, birds or stories of the people and animals that once lived here.”
He stopped, and considered his feelings.
“And the other ?” Mabel started drying her hair using a dryer that the Inn had provided.
“The other – is a sense of dissatisfaction, a sense of betrayal. Human civilization as we know it, has let us down, and we are destroying the planet and pushing our species towards doom.”
Mabel watched him somberly. “I can clearly see your positive side. It is a pleasure to just hear you talk about your wonder on this or that item about Canada, about other lands, about the flora and fauna, and about evolution and stuff.”
“And the other side is not a pleasure ?”
Mabel sat down on the bed, still tending to her hair and looking over at him.
“The other side is shows a lot more deeper and darker feelings, justifiable and well thought out, but pickled with a tinge of resignation and fatalism.”
“Fatalism?”
“Well, you do believe that man will bring his own world down. Right ?”
Neil nodded, and got up. “Yes, I do believe that, but it is not a matter of faith or premonition. Man has left tell tale signs of destruction on his path every since he evolved into a being separate from others. Even in our collective genetic history, we share traits with other animals that would, if possible, overdo things till life became unsustainable. But as our ancestors, we were incapable, more or less, to cause maximum damage to the ecology that the modern man can. Do not forget, many of the mega-fauna of the world at the end of the last ice age perished when they came into contact with their first humans. Today they find fossils and permafrost remains of mastodons and wooly mammoth, with clear sign of them being killed or butchered by humans. Same for giant ground sloths, giant flightless birds etc. And we know what happened to the American passenger pigeon or the bison.
“Buffalo ?”
Neil nodded – “Bison”.
Mabel brushed her hair, put on lipstick, and slipped into a fresh set of clothes. Neil got up and moved into the bathroom, to clean up himself. He left the door open, so they could discuss.
“You were talking about the flightless cormorant?” Mabel said.
“I was? When?”
“Earlier today. You know – comparing humans with lemmings or the flightless cormorants?”
“Ahh, yes. The Flightless Cormorants of the Galapagos islands show a curious behavior when faced with the danger of marine iguanas coming to steal their eggs.”
“Really ? What do they do ?”
“Well, we have not fully understood how much of an animals behavior is instinctive in its genes and how much is from rational analysis of situations using their brains etc. We know however, that man is a relatively very brainy creature, but we still have instincts that prompt us to reflexively do things without thinking, when we perceive danger, or example. The same goes for birds. Somethings many of their behavior is coded into their genes and their brains might be incapable of handling situations that they have no program for.”
“Explain please”
Neil adjusted the water in the shower and stepped into the warm stream of water. A soft envelope of steam gathered around him. It felt good to just stand in the warm shower.
“Marine iguanas are not the swiftest of land animals. They come up the rocky slopes ponderously, towards the nest of these birds. The birds themselves are not exactly tiny and they have a beak that could be considered sharp. They could, I think, easily try to fight the iguanas, snapping at their tails and even drawing blood. Usually a female will go to any length to protect its babies, even face great danger.”
“Yes, or course”
“But, not the flightless cormorants of the Galapagos”
“No ?”
“No”
“Why not?”
“I don’t have the answer, but I can guess. Living on an island that had no natural predator, the cormorants eventually lost the ability to fly. That same evolutionary adaptation might have also removed the genes that are inherent in cormorants and most other creatures elsewhere – to fierce protect its eggs, chicks and babies.”
“Ohh. So what do they do, when the iguanas come?”
They stand next to the nest, watch the iguanas slowly eat the eggs, and tuck their beaks into their own feather – a sign of confusion, I think.”
“How terrible”.
“Well, thats actually evolution. Given sufficient time, lie a thousand generations more of evolution, if the cormorants do not go extinct, and are not overly protected by man, and if the iguanas too do not go extinct, then it is likely that the Galapagos cormorants of the future would show ability to deal with this new threat to their survival.”
Neil stepped out of the shower, and grabbed a second large towel.
“Hmm, and why did you compare us with them ?”
“What ?”
“You know, lemmings and the flightless cormorants ?”
“Ahh” Neil chuckled. “I was mentioning how people know we are heading in the wrong direction and still ignore it, hoping that the real bad times may come after they are already dead, so the next generation may deal with it. A vast number of others are simply ignorant. Others do not wish to know, since there is no good solution to it. In short, the world remains in denial, and is unable to deal with an impending crisis. In that, I thought their behavior resembles that of the flightless cormorants of Galapagos, when faced with the danger of seeing their future babies killed by a slow moving menace. We too are sacrificing our children’s future to a slow moving menace. But in our case, the menace is our own creation.”
“And this bothers you?”
Neil nodded, stepping out of the bathroom naked. He fished around in his bag and pulled on a fresh set of clothes, and stood before the mirror, combing his hair.
“Ready?” Mabel asked.
“Yes – lets forget the pensive mood, the lemmings, the cormorants, the iguanas and the disbelievers. We shall enjoy the town of Golden on foot.” Neil took her hand, and they walked out towards the elevator.

Storm Warning

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It was early Saturday morning when power went off. There was no sound, no indication of a storm, and no bang. But, the sudden silence woke him up. The brain perhaps gets used to tiny levels of continuous drone or repetitive low level noise, so that folks can sleep through them. The brain might even work like a noise canceling device that allows folks to sleep on a moving train, for example. They become part of the background noise.
But when the noise stops, there is a dead silence. Somehow this triggers the brain to recognize a change of status as an event of sufficient importance to wake one up.
He could sense that the entire neighborhood had gone silent, and rightly guessed it was a regional power cut. Calling up the local power supply company proved his suspicion. Several thousand homes were without power. There was a storm at night. Folks had identified the location where the trouble was. It was expected that power would be restored in about two hours.
He got up and looked at the time on his mobile phone. It was just after six in the morning. He had been planning to spend the weekend north of Vancouver into the mountains, if weather permitted. Weather was always a big thing in this season. It rained often in winter. It was not convenient to go hiking through the countryside if it was raining. But, the flip side of the argument was, it was perhaps better than it rained, instead of snowed, in winter. Iced up roads in a hilly land can be difficult for vehicular traffic. Accidents can be frequent.
He did not have an all-wheel drive vehicle. IT did not snow in the lower mainlands around Vancouver except of a few days in a year. And he did not take his own car for long trips into the mountains much. He preferred to rent a newer all wheel drive vehicle on his trips. A front wheel drive vehicle like his can get bogged in snow or mud. It had happened to him a few times already.
Mountain roads were often steep and with hairpin bends. Also, remote highways and roads were not plowed as regularly as roads with heavier traffic.
He had gotten himself a new SLT digital camera. SLT stood for single lens translucent – a new term. He loved the camera, partly because of its ability to shoot many still frames in a second, or high definition movies, though not both at the same time.
He had recently gotten a swinging Gimbal for his tripod mount, to handle heavy cameras. He loved it so far, though did not get enough chance to use it yet.
He was planning to go either to Boundary Bay area or to Westham Island or to the serpentine fen region early Sunday morning, if it did not rain. Miguel was going with him.
But meanwhile, this power cut made his work a bit difficult. He brushed his teeth. The tooth brush was powered, but with batteries. Same for his electric shaver. He used up what hot water was in the boiler, which was sufficient for him for now.
He dressed up using his flashlight to search for clothes in the closet. He woke Miguel up and explained the situation. Miguel took it with his customary sense of humor. Apparently this was common in his home country in Ecuador. While Miguel got himself ready, he got down and opened the garage door manually and took his car out into the drive way and closed the garage door down by hand again.
The roads appeared littered with small branches of conifers, indicating there had been a storm at night, which he apparently slept through.
He drove to the local Starbucks and sat down with a hot chocolate and a sandwich. Miguel duplicated the order. They had internet and a wall socket. He checked on the status of power supply and the local weather forecast. The overnight storm had abated, but the rain was there for the next several hours. He might find a dry sky with scattered clouds later in the afternoon.
Atmospheric storms were different than those caused by seismic activity at the seabed and below, that causes tsunami. The Asian tsunami of 2009 caused death of a quarter million people.
In contrast, the recent tsunami in Japan killed a few thousand. And the damage to Fukushima nuclear power plant as a result, has not killed a single Japanese, and is unlikely to kill anyone outside of Japan either.
“We are going to have a bigger meal a bit later Miguel, either at home or in a restaurant. I needed my morning coffee, and without power, I could not make it in our kitchen.”
Miguel nodded. “No problem. I enjoy myself any way. They have Starbucks here too!”
Neil nodded. They had that here too. Soon, there may be no significant difference between one country and another, wherever you go.
They sat down at a table at the back end of the place.
The coffee was hot and good. The sandwich was hot and tasty. Miguel went into it right away.
Neil sat back and contemplated the news coverage of the Asian Tsunami of 2009, Hurricane Aila a year later, and the smaller Tsunami of Japan the next year followed by the damage to the nuclear power plant there.
There is a lot more talk of the Fukushima plant and the dangers of accident at nuclear power plants, than deaths and destruction caused by the tsunami, and the danger of global warming, sea level rise and sinking of various islands and coastlines.
Bangladesh is one example of a densely populated low elevation country that is threatened by  rising sea level. Flat island nations around the world are threatened. Countries like India are going to lose a lot of coastal land with rising sea.
Even in Canada, the cities of Delta, where he lived, and Richmond, where barely above sea level, and are prone to tsunami on one side, and also earth quake prone.
But nations such as India and China are in grave threat of their own. While China might battle with scarcity of water and deterioration of agricultural land, India too will lose a lot of coastal land as well as great reduction of water in their rivers. India’s population density was already approaching 400 per square km. That was over 120 times that of Canada. Canada had room to move internal climate refugees. India did not.
Africa, on the other hand, was going to be cooked.
China might be tempted to invade Siberia, which would get increasingly habitable and fertile as the planet warms up.
There would be an unprecedented rush to colonize Antarctica, the last continent to be taken over by man.

He sipped a coffee and looked around. Through the glass wall facing the street, he saw Karen park her car and get out with her daughter.
She was a neighbor, though they don’t meet often. The last time he saw her was at the bog two weeks ago. That was when he clicked the barred owl.
They were walking towards Starbucks too. It was very likely that their home too was without power.
Karen swung the door open and let her daughter in. Neil was sitting at the back end of the coffee shop. Karen did not see him first. They stood in line at the counter. Mother and daughter discussed what they wanted to have. Karen moved up the line and placed her order. Then they moved to the near end of the counter to collect their choice of drink and a sandwich. That was when the little girl saw him. She stopped and pouted, then pointed at him with her finger.
Karen glanced at him, and smiled.
“Hello there, stranger. How are you?”
Neil smiled and nodded. “Good morning. Power cut at home for you too ?”
“Yep. No light. Decided to drop in for a coffee and a cookie”
“Join us?”
They had a small table, but there were four chairs to it. Karen nodded and looked down at her daughter. “We shall join Neil and his friend for our cookie and milk. Okay Kate?”
The little girl nodded, watching Miguel.
Neil remembered her name – it was Kate.

Neil introduced everyone, referring to Miguel as a friend from Miami, and Kate as his friend from the neighborhood, and Karen as Kate’s mother. The little girl liked it, smiled, and shook hands with Miguel formally.
As Miguel engaged Kate, Neil and Karen caught up with each other. Karen was what Neil thought of as a bleeding heart liberal. She spent a lot of her spare time on efforts geared towards getting the liberal party back in power. She had invited Neil once to protest the Harper Government in Ottawa on some issue perceived to be not too parliamentary. Neil did not understand the issue too well, but had joined the protest on a Sunday just to see and get a flavor of things. It was a good experience.
She had asked to be Neil’s friend on Facebook, and often sent her invitations to various events related to social justice. She had borrowed a book from Neil almost a year ago, and had not yet returned it. It was ‘Shock doctrine’ by Naomi Kline.
“So, how far have you gone with Shock Doctrine?”
Karen shook her head and smiled energetically. “I have read about half of it Neil. Its so true about the way disaster is used by corporations and governments to make money.”
Neil nodded. “There were two Naomis he had read. One is American – Naomi Wolf. The other is Naomi Kline. Both wrote interesting books.”
Karen shook his head at Neil. “You are such a well read person. I am not a fast reader. You should tell me something about her books too.”
“Well”, Neil finished his sandwich. “I have read her ‘Give me Liberty’. It was a reminder that encroachment into personal freedom and liberty by a Government in the name of national security can be a dangerous path for the people. She draws a lot of examples from Germany of the 1930s, and slowly, almost imperceptibly, the German democratic Government was turning into a monster, and the public went along with it, in a fever of excess nationalism.”
Karen nodded. “People cannot take democracy for granted. I have always felt one has to fight to keep their Governments from moving to a war mongering military industrial complex.”

Miguel was listening to all this, without comment. But he was watching Kate use her colored pencil on the picture of a bird, painting her wings blue.

Neil watched Kate and Miguel. “Did you like the picture I sent of the owl” he asked Kate. Kate looked up and nodded vigorously.
Karen piped in. “She loved the picture of the owl. The other picture was also so good, of Kate and her mother. Did you not like that one too, Kate baby “?
Kate nodded again. “I have them on my wall.”
Karen clapped her hands to show her support. “Yes. We printed the pictures and put up on the wall in her bedroom. They are so good. Thank Neil, Kate, for the pictures.”
Kate smiled back at Neil. “Thank you”.

Volcanic hotspots, from Geology of British Columbia, by Greystone Books

They finished their mini breakfast. Someone commented that power was going to come back in another hour.
“I have another book in my sight, of Naomi Wolf. Its called End of America. It was a best seller and a kind of indictment of the Bush presidency, more or less in the same line as her first book, I think. Thats why I haven’t bought it yet.”
Karen shook her head. “You are amazing.”
Neil smiled and flipped open his iPad. He had carried it with him. He had hoped to show Miguel some of the maps that explained British Columbian geography and geology. Karen watched as he brought the device to life and opened a page on a book. It showed colored picture of the Canadian west coast with lots of black circles on them.
“What is that ?”


“Its a map showing the seismic hot spots. As you can see the hottest region is at the end of the continental plate to the immediate west of Vancouver island. And then there are more on the shore line and a few more just inside the shore line. The various plates and sub-plates are grinding, colliding, or pulling away from each other there.”
“Wow. Where did you find this ?”
“Well, its available as an eBook free of charge online. I bought it to learn about British Columbian geology. It is very good. For example, look at this map of the early Devonian period. Can you identify future Canada here?”
Karen peered at the map, as did Miguel. Even Kate looked in and pointed her finger at a patch of grey on the map.
“Uh huhh, thats Gondwana. Thats not what will turn into North America.” Neil smiled and watched Karen as she scrutinized the map.
“I dont know. I can see Siberia mentioned as a ball. I cannot recognize the other names.”
“Well, yes, Siberia is there. But the clue is not so much in the names as in the shape or the contours of the fragmenting landmass. If you look closely, you can identify north America, with the future Husdon bay somewhere.” Neil said, giving a clue. He smiled and watched as Karen went over the pieces on the map again.
He flipped the page. A new map came up, from late Devonian – Mississippian phase, 350 million years ago. Karen’s eyes lit up. She had seen a name attached to a lump of land separated from the fragmenting chunks of Gondwana. That lump was south of the Siberian landmass, separated by an Uralian sea. This lump of land had a new name – Euamerica. She pointed at it – “There it is.”
Neil smiled back and nodded. “If you have a kindle or an iPad, you might consider getting this book. Wont cost you nothing.”
Karen nodded, continuing to look at the maps, as she flipped more pages. “Its amazing. You are an amazing person, Neil. You know so much.”
Neil felt embarrassed. It was not about him. It was about the geology of British Columbia that was so interesting, and same time so alarming with regard to chances of earth quakes and tsunami.
Karen stopped at a page showing the map of Pangaea. One could clearly make out Africa and South America fitting each other like a jig saw puzzle, and north America hovering nearby. She could even make out the Hudson bay, along with Green land floating above and some of the Canadian arctic islands. She felt like a school girl and clapped her hands.
Neil flipped the pages, and stage by stage, maps showed how the planet began to gradually looked identifiable with todays landmasses. Karen could see the breach between Africa and South America widen up, along with the gap between North America and Europe, thus widening the newborn Atlantic ocean, a that essentially continues till date.
Neil pointed out a small piece drifting in the ocean to the west of Africa. “Thats India. It travels on its own for a long while, moving north by north east for tens of millions of years, till it collides with Eurasia some forty million years ago.
“Wow” came the response.
Neil grinned and leaned back in his chair. Miguel too appeared interested. He had a way of widening his eyes in wonder.
“Let me ask you a trick question. This is a hint already – its a trick question. Which kind of dinosaurs drank water from the Ganges in India?”
Karen smiled and frowned in mock concentration. “Trick question ? There were no dinosaurs in India at all ?”
Neil shook his head. “Close, but not close enough. There surely were dinosaurs when India split from Africa. So, some of those dinosaurs separated from their African brothers, and evolved independently on India. Fossil evidence of that has been found.”
“Then whats the answer, and where is the trick?”
“The trick is not in the dinosaurs, but in the birth of river Ganges.”
“How ?”
“Well, India the island subcontinent had its own river system, but Ganges was not one of them. Ganges and a few other rivers of India was born as a result of the rising Himalayan mountain range. Himalaya rose only as a result of India’s collision with Eurasia. That collision happened 40 million years ago. But the dinosaurs all across the planet, including in India, went extinct at around 65 million years ago, a good 25 million years before India collided and more million of years before Ganges was born and became a big river. So, the dinosaurs were long extinct before Ganges had water for anybody to drink from.”
Karen clapped her hands. “Thats so cute. I must remember that trick question. Do you have any such for Canada?”
Neil’s face widened up in a broad smile. “Canada is full of geological tricks. Some day I might tell you about them. Do you know anything about Burgess Shale ?”
“Umm not much” Karen said.
“Then there is the issue of the moving hot spot that is currently under Yellowstone. And why Canada has so many fresh water lakes. Some day, we can talk about them.”
Kate listened to it and finally make a comment. “I have seen Pitt Lake”.
“There you go Kate. Some day, you can ask mom to show you Slave Lake and Mackenzie river. A bit cold at this time. But if you make it by April, you can also see the northern lights in Yellowknife”
Kate clapped her hands although she perhaps did not understand all of that.
“I have seen Northern lights, in in Kelowna, but that was sometime ago.”
Neil looked at his watch. “Well, the Easter holidays are coming. I was contemplating going somewhere. One idea is Winnipeg and on to Churchill, but I think that takes longer time. The other is only Winnipeg. The third is Yellowknife, for a second time. The fourth is White Horse, also a second time. Cannot figure out where, yet. Visiting WInnipeg or Whitehorse might be the cheapest, far as airfare goes. Whitehorse is unique in its own way. Winnipeg and Manitoba is a province I have never been to, so I guess I owe it to myself to go there, even if just for three days.”
“Wow. Are you going alone?”
“Well, yes. I often end up doing that. Involving friends can be tricky. Not everyone wishes to hang around in remote locations just to watch the sky or the river, rodents building a dam or a bird catching another bird”, Neil smiled.
Karen nodded. “I’d have loved to go with you some time. But with Kate, I cannot plan these things on the spur of the moment.”

“Of course. But you might consider widening her horizon. Not that you need to come with me, per se. Just visiting places and telling her about them is a good way to help a kid in her growing years, I’d guess. Thats education of a kind that one cannot duplicate in a class room. I am not particularly impressed by the school system in North America as such, you know. This is not to say that I am impressed by the school system anywhere. But I do not know much about it except that I have seen in India, Hong Kong, Singapore, USA and Canada, with a bit of indirect exposure to the system used in the old Soviet Union and in Great Britain.”
“Ohh wow. Neil, you know way too much already”. Karen widened her arms to emphasize how much she thought Neil knew. “What is wrong with the school education system, you think?”
Neil considered the question.
“I am not too articulate when it comes to this subject. I just feel that the curriculum based education system of today, like much else about our civilization, is heading down the wrong path. It is blinding the people from some aspects of knowledge and it is inundating the pupils on specifics that might prove counter productive down the line. Also, the schools are turning out to be mostly a bad influence in a child’s cognitive development and ability to think outside the box. Education, like most other things, is a business venture today, to make money. It tries to create mass produced zombies.”
Neil stopped. Perhaps she spoke a bit much. It can be annoying, or depressing, to someone like Karen, with a young child about to enter school age.
Karen nodded somberly. She too looked at her watch. It was getting time to leave. “You are right, Neil. It is so hard to get the right exposure for a child these days. And for a single mother like me, it is more difficult. We are always fighting for time. I know the best thing for her is to have more time with me and with close relatives. As it is, she does not have the company of her father.”
Neil did not comment. As such, he had no idea who the father of the kid was, and if Karen was married to the guy, or if she was till married or what.
Life, for single mothers in Canada, was a lot tougher than his own, Neil concluded. But then, just being a mother of a young child should be so much rewarding at a different plane. Neil could easily appreciate that fact.

Life was complex. That was for sure!

Where pronghorns meet trilobites

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I looked at list of items before me. There were the pronghorns, feisty little pseudo-antelopes from Montana.
——————————————
“Pronghorns are interesting animals. I heard they do not like jumping fences”, Neil observed. “Instead, they prefer to crouch and go under the lowest opening, the lowest line of a wire fence.”
“Really?”
“Well, I did not see them crossing a fence myself. But I heard from our tour guide in Yellowstone.”
They were glancing through pictures on his iPad, clicked just a few months ago, at the turn of the year, mostly in Montana and British Columbia. A group of pronghorns were browsing the brownish grass on a field lightly covered in snow by the side of the highway. Neil was driving east towards Yellowstone and stopped by the roadside, clicking off a few shots through his window. He usually kept one digital camera with a long lens on the passenger seat beside him, and another smaller pocket type camera in hanging off his neck.
——————————————
The story was moving in fits. I wondered if it was right to engage Neil speaking with Mabel about pronghorns. He had barely managed one scene with a second woman, a single mother named Karen. Her child still did not have a name, partly because I could not think of one. Without developing that side of the story and giving it some shape and texture, I had instead brought Mabel back, and tossed a group of pronghorns on her lap – pronghorns that did not like jumping fences.
They were not true antelopes, these pronghorns. Antelopes were essentially grazing mammals from the old world. In the new world, pronghorns were artiodactyls that look similar to antelopes due to convergent evolution. Now, if he was to explain convergence in evolution to Mabel, through Neil, or let both of them search it out, there was going to be several pages written about that animal. Besides, the term ‘old world’ and ‘new world’ was wrong. The north and south American continents were discovered by modern Anglo Saxon men only five hundred years ago, while indigenous Asians had already walked into them some twelve thousand years back. The continents themselves have been around, in different forms and arrangements, as long as other continents. Calling the American continents as ‘new world’ based on todays knowledge, felt a bit stupid.
I decided to be careful in future, in using the established but wrong terminology of old and new world. Perhaps we owed it to ourselves to use better representative adjectives for such issues. But, the question was the direction of the story.
As it is, pronghorns were the sole surviving species of a larger family of Ruminant Artiodactyls that were present when man first stepped onto the savannah. I had no doubt that arrival of man, the ultimate hunter, was at least partially responsible for the extinction of all those species, except for the pronghorns. That goes to show that early man was as destructive as modern man, in annihilating and eating through entire genera of the animal kingdom if he cold. The only difference is, being hunter gatherers, their numbers were small, and they did not possess the technology to speed up their activity. Modern man does everything super fast – including denegration of this planet’s ecosystem and causing mass extinction of species.
But, again, the story was supposed to focus on a few people and not on the whole biosphere and the future of mankind ! I wondered if discussions of this kind should deserve a number of pages in a story that was essentially about Neil and his search for a root in Canada.
There were three women and one man in the story already – a story that was still searching for a theme.  Two of the women lived in the present, both in Canada. That was because the main character in the story, Neil, was sort of an alter ego of myself, who, like myself, also lived in Canada, but was of Indian descent. Indian descent might mean different things to different people. Hereabouts, Indians can mean people from West Indies. Down south in the US, Indian can mean American Indian tribes. Anyhow, if was after I arrived in Canada, that I learned a new name for my kind – east Indian. This distinguishes me from a west Indian. The original inhabitants of the land here are not called Indians or American Indians, but first nation.
I felt a bit odd about being called East Indian. After all, the term Indian, when applied to either American tribals or people from West Indies, was due to a gargantuan mistake in geography by Christopher Columbus. India, or the land I was born in, was the one and only India, and all others were mistakenly linked to it. Therefore, I should be an Indian – end of story. All others may be called new Indian, green Indian or, preferably by their own names, such as Apache or Blackfoot or Maya etc. Being called an East Indian was, I found, odd, and again, perpetuating that greatest mistake of geography by Columbus.
Anyhow, back to the story.
I glanced at my notebook. I had jotted a few places and things on it, as potential sub-topics for the story. Next to the pronghorns, I had written two words – Burgess Shale. And next to it I had also jotted a few words that related to the human genome, and that of the living creatures of this planet. There were RNA, DNA, gene, chromosome etc there. I had also jotted items such as evolution, and geology. There was a bewildering mix of topics, none of which seemed directly linked to Neil’s effort to blend in his adopted country – Canada.
I went to the bathroom and prepared to take a shower, still thinking about it all. Perhaps I should leave the genetics but touch upon Burgess Shale.
A pronghorn and Burgess shale had little to do with each other, except for a proximity in the map of north America. I saw most of the pronghorns in northern Montana, not far from the Canadian border. And Burgess Shale was only a bit to the north across the border in British Columbia.
Apart from that, there was no similarity. Burgess shale was famous not because of animals that roam there right now, but because animals that lived over five hundred million years ago in a shallow tropical ocean. These sea animals were the products of the Cambrian explosion – the first of the Cambrian multi cellular large creatures of the sea that were to give rise of all living animals of the world today, including the first of the known chordata, or animals with a central backbone. There were foot long trilobites and other creatures with an exoskeleton, as well as worm like creatures that showed signs of rudimentary central column, or a spine.
The planet at the time did not have animals, or plants of insects on the land or in the air. Life only existed in the sea, and there was an explosion of new species coming up at an incredibly fast rate. That was why scientists call it the Cambrian explosion.
These marine creatures sometimes got buried by mud due to the special underwater cliff like arrangement of the continental shelf of the time. These soft bodied creatures buried in fine silt and mud eventually got fossilized. The continent was at the time right angle and horizontal over the equator. But over time turned itself ninety degree around and travelled north to its current location. Different blocks of it got clubbed together or torn apart. What is southern British Columbia today, was that shallow ocean with buried earliest of creatures. Tectonic forces engaged in mountain building, and the fossilized creatures ended up high on the mountains of the Rockies, in British Columbia in Burgess Shale. Today, it is recognized as one of the best locations for fossils of the earliest of the animal kingdom.
It was about ten hours drive from my home.
But, should there be pronghorns and fossils of Burgess Shale in the conversation with Mabel? What would be relevant for the story?
I sighed as I dried myself off in the shower stand. I did not know what should be relevant for a reader. I knew I liked all those multi directional threads, and snippets, from the past and the present, that, together made up what this planet and this land is all about. It is natural for me to watch life at the surface and let my thoughts drift below that surface to pry out what took place in the past and what might happen in the future. The present was just a point in the space-time coordinate, and my banging the keyboard was a collection of events that played only a marginal role in the game of dice that propelled existence as we know it – towards its unknown destiny.

I had seen the pronghorns, but had not been to Yoho National park yet, though I drove past it a few times. Ir was in that park that Burgess Shale was located. There was also the Burgess Shale Geoscience Foundation nearby, in the town of Field, BC.’ It would be a whole days drive through serpentine mountain roads. I had done it before. The journey would be as pleasing as the destination might be thrilling. Add a 22 Km round trip through mountain slopes and a climb of perhaps over two thousand feet, to reach some of the fossil beds there. The place was out of bounds except by guided tours of less than a dozen individual at a time. I was not sure I could do the 22 Km hilly trek a day and still have time to check the fossil beds. One would need to start at around 7 in the morning and be back before dark.
Pronghorns were easier.
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Pronghorns in Montana – 30th Dec 2011

“They look so cute. I have never seen these deers.”
“Well, I am not sure these should be called deers, Mabel. Of course, there are lots of deers in America and Canada. But these are not among them. Some call them antelopes, because they have sort of permanent horns, like old world antelopes. But this animal is not a true antelope, and the horns themselves are different – actually they are projected bones from their skull. The animal just looks like the antelopes of the old world – I mean from Eurasia and Africa. It is a Ruminant Artiodactyl, and the last surviving species in its family.”
“Wow. Whats a Ruminant whatever ?”
“Artiodactyl. That means a hoofed animal that has even number of hooves on its feet. It has to be either two or four. It is classed differently than hoofed animals that have odd number of hoofs. The difference is in the way weight is distributed through their legs. An even hoofed animal has multiple hooves that sort of shares the load and the centre of gravity runs through the middle of its feet with the hooves arranged on each side of it. But for an animal with odd number of hoofs, the centre of gravity runs through the central hoof”.
Mabel watched him. “And give me an example of each type, Mr. Neil Dusty, if you will”, she said with mock seriousness. She was both fascinated by the topic and equally fascinated by the way he described these issues.
“Well, pretty much most of the hoofed animals you know are even-toed angulates, or  artiodactyla. This includes all domesticated hoofed mammals. A cow, a buffalo, a lamb, a goat, a pig, as well as deers and antelopes are all examples of it”, Neil said. He picked up a cream cracker from the plastic box before them. They were sitting on a woven mat on a field near the river mouth. It was a sunny clear skied afternoon. A gentle breeze was blowing. It was still cold in March, and both of them kept their Parka on. Neil had taken his shoe off and stretched his feet forward, leaning back on his arms.
“Hmm, ok. And how about the other kind?’
“Odd toed ungulates are called Perissodactyla. There are a few rather famous animals in it – a horse, a donkey, a rhinoceros.”
“Ohh cool. A rhino! They all have a single hoof?”
“Nope. A horse and a donkey does. But a rhino has three hoofs. So, a Rhino is a closer relative of a horse than a moose or a cow.”
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I stepped off the shower and watched myself on the mirror and tried to see a similarity between myself, a pronghorn a trilobite, a rhinoceros and a scavenging anthropoid from Burgess Shale.
Similarity of not, I got them into the story already, not to mention an ice age nomadic woman from central Asia for good measure. Neil an Mabel were just talking about animals and soon might also talk about mitochondria and ice age women. What they did not seem to do, was the most normal things that two humans might do when in a sort of relationship – talk about each other. More than talk, they needed to relate to each other, act on and about each other and try to overlap each others sphere a bit. That was what relationship was all about, was it not?
I looked at myself in the mirror, and focussed on the nails on my fingers. Come to think of it, a hoof was only a modified nail. And a nail was only a modified scale from our reptilian common ancestry, I thought. This was just a guess from me. I had not read it anywhere, but it seemed logical to me. The scales came from fishes, onto the first of the animals that got on land and needed a water tight body, unlike the amphibians. This allowed them to venture far from water. But, development of water tight skin made scales somewhat unnecessary. Hair was evolved down the line, I suppose, as a result of finding natural insulation for the body, in cases where body fat for the same purpose was not desirable.

I had a bathrobe that came in handy. Stepping into my shorts and the bathrobe, I shuffled bare feet to the kitchen downstairs to make a coffee.
I might think about it some more. There was a four day vacation coming – Good Friday and Easter Monday. That was in April. I wondered if that might be a good time to drive to Yoho National Park and take a look at the fossils of the time.
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Mabel liked flipping through the pictures by brushing her fingers across the face of the iPad screen. She liked how the images moved sideways. But more importantly, he took wonderful pictures. There was a landscape in stark black and white world with rising steam and hot water across a snow covered landscape – of Yellowstone national park in winter. Neil had not told Mabel about going there, alone. Had be offered, she would have gone with him. It would have been so romantic.
She turned and watched him a moment, as Neil spoke about how close to the surface the hot mantle of the planet was at Yellowstone and how thin the crust was.
She took his face in her hands and kissed his mouth.
“I love you.”
That shut him up.