Tag Archives: Galapagos

A Galapagos Tale

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We visited Fernandina Island in the Galapagos some years ago at Christmastime. DSCN2016Among the thousands of the iguanas, blue-footed boobies and tortoises, the animal I remember most is an abandoned sea lion pup.

Alone on the rocky lava flats, it waddled back and forth, calling for its mother. DSCN2380No matter how much it squeaked and bleated, there was no response. None of the other sea lions showed any interest, lounging instead in the sun. The only animal paying any attention was a hawk, sitting atop a dead tree out of the bushes. DSCN2376“The mother has probably been eaten by a shark,” our guide explained.

“What about the baby?” we demanded.

“The hawk will wait until it stops moving and then come down to peck its eye out.”

“That’s terrible,” we replied.

He shrugged. “That’s nature.”

Brief History of Me Not Blogging

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I took a blog break of a week or so for a couple of reasons. First of all, I was technically impaired – something wrong with my cache – and second, I was immersed in Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time. STEPHEN-HAWKING-large570It is a challenge to absorb his lucid examination of worlds both extraordinarily small and massive, so much so as to inspire a kind of vertigo. A couple of the more dizzying facts he offers: distant galaxiesOur galaxy is one of some hundred thousand million, each galaxy containing some hundred thousand million stars. (48)twinparadox(T)here is no unique absolute time, but instead each individual has his own personal measure of time that depends on where he is and how he is moving. (44) DSCN2476Apparently, on Earth, sea level is the place to be.