LMT May 7 April

Monday, May 7, 2018 • Last Mountain Times
13
CONTINUED from PAGE 2
nificant meandering of the Qu’Appelle River is very
obvious! From Regina, trace Highway #6 north
going to the Valley, and then crossing it on the way
to Southey. Just below the Fairy Hill area and East
is the Piapot First Nation. The natural grooves in
Mother Earth are the significant evidence carved,
and re-carved by the immense amount of meltwater
from the last glacial period about 13,000 years ago,
and previous ones. These grooves creating ravines/
coulees are like the “capillaries and veins” of Earth’s
circulatory system returning the water and other
harmful stuff to the oceans. Note Condie Nature
Refuge, and the various local Creeks in the left half
of the photo. See some of Valeport Marsh above
Craven which really is part of another major glacial
drainage channel - the bottom end of Last Mountain
Lake. Multiple little side streams/creeks can be
seen. Near the bottom right and in the top right, see
the remnants of poplar tree bluffs that haven’t been
torn down to create more agricultural cropland.
There is much more that can be interpreted from an
enlarged, actual photo, or on the computer screen.
Can you pick out the speck where you live?
Because they’ve been to space, all astronauts have
a different perspective on life and living. Check
these books by two Canadian astronauts: Roberta
Bondar’s Touching the Earth (1992), and Chris Hadfield’s
You Are Here (2014). Chris’s photographs are
also featured in a recent book (2013) by Magic Light
Publishing of Ottawa called Earth: Spirit of Place.
However, the classic volume is: Kevin W. Kelley’s
The Home Planet (1988) published by the Association
of Space Explorers. By conceiving and editing
this book, his understandings
about space changed dramatically.
His introduction says:
“… walking on a round
planet hurtling around the
sun at 62,000 miles an hour
[100,000 kilometers per hour/
kph], turning at 1,000 miles
an hour [(1,600 kph] at the
Equator producing day and
night. … [being aware] of our
Sun as the center of the Solar
System that is moving around
VALLEY
VIEWS
BARRY MITSCHKE
the Galaxy at more than 500,000 miles an hour
[800,000 kph], and of the whole Galaxy itself hurtling
in a direction unknown to me at an unimaginable
speed through an ever-expanding universe
populated with billions of other galaxies stretching
to eternity. I think this sense of wonder at our universe
and the strangeness of our lives within our
tiny part of it is important to our sense of ourselves
and perhaps to our very survival. I hope this book
will help you see, and will add to your appreciation
of the great beauty, the incredible wonder, and the
unfathomable mystery of all this as it unfolds in the
eternal moment.”
We don’t feel those speeds, because we are part
of them because we are part of the Earth - all is
relative. But we need to appreciate that grandeur,
that wonder, that beauty, and that incomprehensible
mystery of where we live as human beings. This
leads quickly to the spiritual and religious!
(to be continued next week, in the May 7 issue)