Gene's Footnotes: No Caveat: Life

The sun just rose across the Pacific, eventually overwhelming the Kauai lighthouse. The darkness had gradually dissolved to reveal the cliffs below and the extended beach and low sea bottom that cause the wave sounds unlike the East Coast.

Below, I saw there were homes, far below, directly across the street from the ocean. I could not tell, but will assume the homes were on fifteen foot high stilts, which is normal on the shore area. The photo is looking over my hangout, but looking north. There was a beach, so it was low tide.

Seeing the houses, my thoughts turned to tsunamis, of course, Then, I thought of Alaska having an earthquake and sending pressure waves at me. I wondered what sort of pressure would it take to top the two hundred foot plateau that is home to the resort in Princeville.

Realizing I was envisioning a three hundred foot tsunami overwhelming the whirlpool, I turned toward the opening market store and found my way to a Starbucks (it is a resort after all). Perhaps, the temperature will soon top 83 degrees so I can get comfortable.

A chicken chick just jabbed my toes, exposed of course, and looked up at me. A few minutes ago I dumped the crumbs from my scone about the big chicken. This guy was smart; he stayed around. I wonder, is a "chicken" female or do we not have a counter-part to "rooster?" This is the sort of important thing you wonder about here.

I saw a T-Shirt with a picture:

Hawaiian Chicken:

not

Endangered Species.

The chickens, here, are omnipresent, like robins in New York. They are wild and much more fun than those in prison at home. They even take to flying over brush. In addition to chickens, we European-types introduced some sort of pine tree that grows straight with light branching. The trunks were used for masts. The landscape that is supposed to be lush and low, is filled with tall evergreens. I makes you consider the adaptability of life.

Yesterday, I walked along a beach at the end of Route 50 and the trees, evergreens, had massive roots systems exposed. The sea had cleared out over ten or more feet of dirt and the roots created a magical web. The roots, by the way, are huge, almost like they exist for the purposes beyond the systems found at home. The trees are happy, their chins jutting out to sea.

The island has many suspiciously perfect rivers. I will to my homework, but I expect there was excavation long ago so plantations had water transportation. The rivers look like canals. There are cheap kayaks about, but this place would do very well to provide better ones, especially surf kayaks. Tourist, however, should be kept on cheap, safer boats.

Off the coast to the interior are beautifully envisioned and maintained farms. Behind the farms are massive igneous mountains. They are not odd, geologically. They are the peaks of the highest mountains in the world and I am sitting on the area flattened by the sea and rain and time. They are covered by foliage and one finds a reference in the film "Jurassic Park."

Indeed, there is a Jurassic Falls somewhere off to the south. There is something I have not yet seen, yet, modestly called: The Grand Canyon. It is ten miles long and, having seen what I have, thus far, I already know it is beyond my imagination to envision the canyon.

The chickens have moved off as the East Coasters occupy tables and drink coffee. The time zone difference for us is six hours, so even those who are not working have no choice but to wake before the sun. I am having trouble getting back to the business flow at home, which I must, as it is already afternoon, there.

The sun is noticeable upon the back of my neck, so I should consider sun screen, my adaption to environment. Life adapts and in the macro sense, does what it has to. The individual leaves that fail to meet the environment die and fall back to mother earth. In this part of the world, death and renewal is ever-present. It may be that is the reason life is well lived.

I will leave you with what I read this morning and which prompted this missive:

NASA 1976 Mars mission discovers life

English.news.cn 2012-04-17 14:20:51

BEIJING, April 17(Xinhuanet) -- A new research conducted by a team of American scientists provided evidences that the 1976 Mars mission found microbes on the planet, according to a report released Tuesday on the website of American National Broadcasting Company (NBC).
Four decades ago, NASA launched the Viking Mission to probe life on Mars, and then came to a conclusion that the red planet is lifeless.
After using the modern technology to reanalyze the data of 1976 mission, scientists found the microbes in the collected Mars soil might be killed by mistake at temperature of 160-degree Celsius.
"I'm 99 percent sure there's life there," said team leader Dr. Joseph Miller, a former NASA researcher and current associate professor in University of Southern California.
And the studies conducted by the team recently on methane emission on Mars also support the new finding, he said.
NASA's latest probe, Curiosity, is due to land on Mars in August, which will again search for signs of life on the planet.