I think
about extinction a lot. It’s only natural for someone in my line of work. On my
way to work I drive past the Colorado National Monument. Even from a distance
it’s impressive: piles of dark schist 1,500 million years old; Wingate
sandstone from the age of dinosaurs, all of it formed into cliffs, carved into
spires. I can see Independence monument from the highway; a tall tower of tan
sandstone that John Otto climbed near the beginning of the 20th century without
rope. The monument is a display of the massive changes in the world. I often
think about the rainforests and the oceans that once covered the land.
Ecosystems have come and gone, the planet destroyed and rebuilt over and over.