The Times They Are a-Changin’
The Times They Are a-Changin’:
At the start of this new year we crack open some fossils, peer back into ancient seas, and look up at lunar skies to find that a year is not quite as fixed as we thought it was.
It’s serendipitous; sitting in the Amsterdam airport watching fireworks burst on the skyline as night falls. I’m beckoning in the new year listening to the latest Radiolab (in which I make an appearance!) about counting passing days as sedimentary lines in prehistoric corals and what it means when the number of lines in a year decreases, that indication of unavoidable change. This time last year I was on a plane back from a family trip, landing in Missoula at 11pm and rushing to welcome in 2013 surrounded by old friends and new. We toasted to the coming months and I felt we shared in a mutual excitement about what was going to happen for all of us; certainly I could have never predicted I would end up where I am now, wide-eyed in Europe, waiting to board a plane to Nairobi to talk about the diversity of Chiropterans and their pollinating prowess, marveling at the quickness of these passing days even as they apparently grow longer by milliseconds with every rotation.
Come midnight I’ll be toasting again with new friends, thirty thousand miles above the earth, wishing you all a happy and a safe New Year.
Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/71757689941.
