We live in difficult times. You feel it in the news cycle, in conversations with friends, even in the checkout line at the grocery store. The global fabric seems frayed: rising authoritarianism threatens democracies near and far. Tariffs destabilize markets. Inflation pinches wallets. And tensions in the Middle East raise the chilling specter of yet another devastating war.
And yet… it could be worse.
I had that thought—unironically—as I was hiking Park City Mountain this week. There, perched along the trail, was a volcanic basalt boulder. Not just any rock, but a time traveler from the Tertiary Period, roughly 40 million years ago. It had ridden a wave of molten fury from the earth’s crust in an eruption that once transformed the land we now ski, hike, and bike upon. It was a reminder that while human conflict and economic angst feel overwhelming, we are lucky to be living in the eye of Earth’s geological storm.
Consider Yellowstone—now a serene wonderland of geysers and elk—yet it harbors a supervolcano that exploded catastrophically during the same epoch. Its granitic fury could, if awakened again, obliterate the continent as we know it, sending Homo sapiens the way of the trilobite. It’s not hyperbole; it’s just Earth being Earth.
Add to that the glaciations that have repeatedly frozen much of the planet and the orogenic (mountain-building) periods that reshaped entire continents. And somehow, between ice sheets and magma floods, we humans managed to rise, build cities, write symphonies, and invent espresso machines. We’re living in a surprisingly stable window between cataclysms.
So I stood there next to that black basalt relic and whispered a small, slightly ironic prayer: Kiss the ground.
Because despite man’s inhumanity to man—despite corruption, division, and our perilous flirtation with extinction—we’re still here. And we still have choices. To treat each other better. To protect what’s left. To prepare wisely. To hold fast to the fragile but precious peace between geological and geopolitical upheavals.
We owe it to those who come next. And to those rocks that remind us:
The alarm blared at 6:00 AM wakening me from a deep slumber. An early message in retirement is never a good thing, I thought, as I brought up the message icon. Our ‘grandson to be’ had decided to arrive five weeks early. We booked our airline flights to the nation’s capitol and arrived, rumpled and tumbled by the Uber drive over the Potomac, to our hotel off the National Mall.
Too much knowledge can be a dangerous thing, we pondered, as grandparents with 70 lifetime years of pediatric and internal medicine experiences. Lung function, oxygen requirements, surfactant, feeding ability, brain development and infection risk percolated through our collective anxiety. Scientific probability tempered with prayer was the way to dispel these troubling thoughts.
He was born fully formed, loudly screaming and feisty. He entered the Neonatal ICU for warmth, feeding, oxygen and observation time for the next 10 days as we wandered around Washington, D.C. awaiting his discharge and arrival to his parents’ home.
My anxiety was heightened by the present and past of the U.S.A. A man with a train conductor’s hat sat in front of the White House blaring music and chanting, “We are on the train of destruction.” Placards in front of the Capitol declared the illegality of vaccination for union workers. We strolled to our grandson’s future home by passing the Garfield Statue (assassinated president) and Ulysses S. Grant on Horseback (Civil War with 600,000 dead). We continued on past well dressed legislative assistants (struggling to pass much needed infrastructure bills) coming out of the Richard Russell Building. I looked up Richard Russell, who was a former Senator from Georgia who defended Jim Crow and obstructed Civil Rights legislation, and wondered how his name was chosen for an entire building in Washington DC.
Our grandson was thriving, gaining weight and bonding with his parents. Relieved, we passed the time in our nation’s collective warehouse: the Smithsonian Institution. Endowed by James Smithson, a wealthy Englishman who dabbled in chemistry and mineralogy in 1820, who generously donated his inheritance to a country he never set foot in for the cause to advance science and knowledge. The Wright Brothers started their research through the museum’s scientific holdings and solved the heavier than air flight conundrum that baffled the world’s best minds. Lieutenant Commander Philip Van Horn Weems, recruited by Charles Lindbergh to perfect a better aviation navigational system led to an era of safer air travel for all. We saw the art of Saul Bellows documenting urban life in the early 20th century and appreciated the genius of the early neoclassical architects such as James Renwick, Charles Bullfinch and William Thornton who shaped our Capitol and early federal buildings.
At the Library of Congress we saw a portion of the over 800 miles of library stacks and more than 25,000,000 volumes that are available to all Americans that wish to research any topic and can participate in a plethora of summer programs for kids to introduce them to learning and research. This spectacularly beautiful building was full of historical treasures and important information. For example, we learned of the accountability of a democracy, embodied by the Presidential Recovery Act of 1978 that transfers Presidential papers to the public domain after office. This Federal Act was prompted by the willful burning of presidential records by Grover Cleveland, Millard Fillmore and numerous other Commanders-in-Chief.
Throughout our stay in DC we continued our US historical scavenger hunt: we saw the documents of Lincoln establishing agricultural/land grant colleges in the 19th century that created American engineering superiority, the bravery of Harriet Tubman guiding slaves to their freedom through the Underground Railroad and the bigger than life statue of Albert Einstein in front of the National Science Administration accompanied by his proclamation of free thought in his new country and safe harbor away from fascism.
Opportunity, American ingenuity, hard work and the limitless resources of art, science, politics and jurisprudence documented in our nation’s capitol left us truly humbled. The presence of such endless possibility that is freely bestowed upon every American Citizen— in the backdrop of our grandson’s birth— left us in awe and rendered us speechless.
Our grandson graduated from the Neonatal ICU into his home now several ounces heavier, with healthy lungs and an animated disposition. We, as grandparents, are now in the grandstand joyfully watching every moment of his wonderful life. Just knowing that opportunity and choice are around the corner as he grows and prospers in our great country brings us comfort as US citizens and hope for a brighter future for our newest patriot and family member.
