Post #68: The More You Look, the More You See

Wednesday, February 17, 2021

Time for another hike, campers.  Grab your water bottles and let’s go!

I let everyone go ahead and lingered behind so I could take my time observing what was going on around the trail, not just zooming ahead to the beach.  I learned on a walking safari in Kruger National Park in South Africa that there is much to be gleaned by slowing down.

And taking time to look at the dirt. As the Park rangers in Kruger kept reminding us, the more you look, the more you see.

Obviously, the size of the animals is different from the African plain, but the questions are the similar:  who made these tracks? where did they come from? where were they going? what were they searching for?  Upon closer inspection you can see a spaghetti tangle of tracks that rival the superhighways of Los Angeles!  Why do some areas contain lines and groups of small shells and some areas contain only sand?  Did the pathways originate from the conch shell on the left side of the second photo or did they lead to the shell? Why are some pathways straight and others look like a maze?  So many questions.

More questions arose for me when we spilled out onto the beach for there were familiar rock formations of weathered limestone and coral with spikes and cavities.  But why were there also flat sandstone “shelves” on the southern side of the beach?  What happened here to make the two ends of the beach so different from each other?  

(I think I want to go back to school....)

It was pretty hot by the time we got back to the dinghies on the other side of the island so we jumped into the clear turquoise water.  Renee and Jim from Invictus joined us.  Renee is a photo journalist who used to work for The Columbus Dispatch.  She had a half-bubble attachment surrounding her GoPro that allowed her to take really cool under/above water photos!

Geologist Rick was exploring again, searching for more evidence of living stromatolites that we could see up close and actually feel. Admittedly, I have struggled to understand the concept of stromatolites even though I could “see” them. 

Now that we have reception, I was able to do a bit more research. According to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, “Stromatolites are layered rock structures made by photosynthetic cyanobacteria. The microbes secrete sticky compounds that bind together sediment grains (i.e., sand), creating a mineral “microfabric” that accumulates in fine layers.”

So the rock formations Sue pointed out to us in the video I posted earlier (Post #66) were layers that had dried out and hardened over the millennia.  On the other hand, the living stromatolites in the video below continue to form the microfabric mat that releases oxygen through photosynthesis into our atmosphere.  (I think I’m beginning to understand.)

 

All this thinking and exploring can be tiring (and fun!) so after our nightly gathering on the beach and a conch salute to the sun, it was time to call it a day.