The following is not an entry for a recent day, but an entry from my field notebook when we first stayed at the Koobi Fora base camp. The entry is a short version of a longer rambling of thoughts.
When viewing the lake shore, the waves and birds, I am caught in limbo between ocean and a Great Lake with a hint of Yellowstone national park. The alkaline waters push against the sand peppered with aquatic Gastropoda and a confetti of dragonflies dancing above them. I feel honored with the gift of normalcy by familiar sights, sounds and actions. A fish skeleton, catfish by design but purposed for electrical scavenging, half buried in sand and bleached by the sole driving force of consistency known to man…the sun. Reeds stabilize patches of water/sand intersection reminiscent of a few fishing lakes back home.
Water calls out in the stillness of the night with a chush, chush of breaking waves accompanied by a slender breeze strumming plant strings in what could be called the Koobi Fora base line. Chorus derives from the combination of bird calls, bat squeals and human camaraderie. What a fantastic opera cradled in the hands of life. In moments like these, humility comes all too readily.
So I say “thank you.” A thank you to the processes that allow our finite existence to mingle among the natural forces in this world. We may be small though we think big.