November 2005

"daylight savings edition"

November 1, 2005

True to our nature we seek to make time linear. We record our lives with events between birth and death. We count years of service, days before holidays, hours of work. Observation of the seasons tells us another story, however—time is circular. Leaves fall each autumn. Birds sing each spring.

Yet watching the water level of the campus marsh ebb and flow from day to day, I cannot help but think that circular is no closer to the truth than linear. Indeed, time is relative--not E=mc^2, but time lived fast and slow, repeated yet unique. For the salamander, time measured in cellular activity must wax and wane with the whim of clouds revealing and concealing sun. For the tree frog, whose brain essentially shuts down when nothing moves in his field of vision, does time start and stop as well? The metronome for the dragonfly clicks at double time as it darts across the emergent vegetation and the measure of time for the one-day life of a mayfly is unimaginable.

And time stretches eternal as well. Deep in the genetic inheritance of this year’s progeny lie copies of instructions faithfully passed on since the beginning of life on earth.

Linear, cyclic, relative. Arrhythmic, sporadic, eternal...Time... Worth a moment of ours.

with an eye on nature,

Wally