Curiosity killed the cat But satisfaction brought her back
Curiosity and Perseverance
In the world of science, these attributes can lead to breakthroughs. Rewrite text books. Create paradigm shifts in our thinking.
Let's spotlight two prominent physicists of the late 20th century, who exemplified those qualities.
* Dr. Stephen Hawking * Dr. Richard Feynman
Stephen Hawking is considered one of the greatest physicist of recent times. And he passed away this year (2018) on March 14th, the same day as Einstein's birthday. [reference: Stephen Hawking ]
Yet perseverance helped him overcome the physical challenges of ALS. With perseverance and curiosity, he pursued a distinguishing career in cosmology and theoretical physics, as shown below:
Likewise, Nobel laureate Richard Feynman was driven by curiosity. Which drove him to learn new things. Get out of his comfort zone. Search for answers. Solve nature's puzzles. Connect the dots.
While a graduate student days at Princeton, Feynman developed a method that served him well. He started with an empty notebook titled -
NOTEBOOK OF THINGS I DON’T KNOW ABOUT.
He filled the pages as he reorganized his thoughts in the concrete form of pen and paper. Trying to find the essential kernel of each branch of physics. This discipline may have paved the way to his Nobel Prize.
But such beauty in nature deserves a more than just the scientific facts.
The June full moon of Native American folklore is the Strawberry Moon. Its European counterpart, the Rose Moon. Where the sky and earth meet in the eye of the beholder.
And one of my nostalgic memories is when my dad took me to Disney movies in the drive-in as a kid. One of those movies was Bambi (1942). And he laughed at Thumper and Bambi more than I did.
But one of the scenes was Bambi experiencing his first spring - April showers.
But the wet weather doesn't last. The sun comes out.
The grass is greening up. The buds bursting on trees. Birds are nesting. And yes, the deer and the bunnies are frolicking in the meadows. Like Bambi and Thumper.
Bambi was awed by nature. Like the young ones born in spring find all things new and wonderful.
And Disney tapped into our inner child. So as we get older, we may still wonder, too.
But chance and physics do not take away the snowflake's fleeting beauty. Often it's hard to find the words that describe the wonder of nature. And that's when the arts, such as poetry, take off.
Almost thirty years ago, I wrote a poem about winter, pondering a scene, such as what I'm looking at now:
Snow
Clean and bright
The winter scene
Pearly snow
Is everywhere seen
Yet the snow
Is still not pure
Formed from dust
Like mortals, here
Dust is woven
Crocheted to snow
And robes the world
From heaven, below
Frozen and still
The sleepy land
Under snowy blankets
Till Spring, again
S. K. Smith
(c) November 1986
So starts another thread - Poetry.
And on this poetic note, may I leave with this thought about the Creator:
Our camp site at Wallowa Lake State Park with a deer
Camping in the Parks ...
It has always been popular. Even more so in these tough economic times. And those observations during recent camping trips has inspired another series -
* Signs of the Times *
The second week of September - after Labor Day, but before everything shut down for the season - seemed like a great time to travel. The kids were back in school. The traffic, we hoped, had thinned down - and it had. And for enjoying the outdoors, most of the pesky bugs had died off.
This late summer our destination was the Wallowas in Oregon. My husband had visited the area in the 1970s, and it had impressed him with its beauty. But I had never seen it before. So the visit was a treat and a new experience for me.
Wallowa Lake behind our tent
At our site - you can see in the photo above - our REI Habitat tent had caught the attention of one of the deer denizens of the Wallowa Mountains. We camped near the lake at the Wallow Lake State Park - which can be seen in my photo to the right.
It was economical. Sharing a campsite with a friend, all three of us stayed in two tents in these gorgeous environs for $20 a night. And there were facilities nearby with flush toilets, running water, showers, and coin operated laundry. At the sites were picnic tables, fire pits, and paved driveways for our vehicles. The area were patrolled and provided a level of security. Near this park were stores and restaurants with local character. So roughing it was not so ... rough.
No need for cooking - though we did build a campfire and gave a try at Jiffy Pop popcorn. (Got half the kernels to pop, but it was fun and the popped kernels were tasty.) In the morning, we had a marvelous breakfast at the Wallowa Lake Lodge. Below is a picture of the lobby.
Wallowa Lake Lodge Lobby
Anecdotal evidence indicated an increase in the camping these last few years. People were still going on vacations - visiting the parks and enjoying them, but opting out of staying at the more expensive lodges.
Camping has been popular as ever. At the park, the first to fill up were the RV sites, then the tent campsites. An employee at the Wallowa Lake Lodge confirmed this observation in the area - nearby, people were staying at the camps, but eating at the lodge.
Later in the trip, we chatted with one of the locals, a young man working at a city park. He said he had camped with his family that summer as a way to have a great vacation on a budget. And this makes sense. We had done that on previous trips.
Milky Way at night
Earlier in the summer, we had camped at a more remote area in Idaho - the Spruce Tree Campground. The campsite was free, but there were limited amenities - just pit toilets, a water pump, and picnic tables. But the remote site quickly filled up - even in the middle of the week.
Using the facilities was less convenient than having a motel room available. But walking to the pit toilet in the middle of the night did have an up side. In the back woods with a clear moonless night, away from the the light pollution of civilization ...
Holy Cow!
What a view!
The Milky Way shines on nature's black dome ceiling displaying the glories of the heavens.
Camping trips were not unique for us. We had continued the trend from last year's late summer adventures -
Lodges typically started over $100 per night on the low side and can be much higher than that in the well known parks. For the National Parks, rooms needed to be booked more than a year ahead. They still fill up fast.
Kind of takes the spontaneity out of life, doesn't it?
But camping was relatively cheap - about $20 per night in the national and state parks. We had no trouble getting a site that morning we arrived - no reservations required. And we shared the same multi-million dollar views as those staying in the more pricey lodges.
Interesting how we have come full circle on this camping thing. Growing up in the 1960s, my most precious memories were camping with my father and brother in the mountains during hunting season. And in the 1930s, my mother-in-law described during the Great Depression how her family had enjoyed the parks, perhaps much like this silent video below.
During the Great Depression, families had fun and camping was an economical way to do so, as suggested in this article: Calisphere - Everyday Life in Hard TimesAnd during hard economic times today, people are still enjoying themselves, spending time with their families, experiencing the beauty of God's creation, as their parents and grandparents had done. And this can be a good thing.
We've come full circle and the surge in camping is one of the
Mid-August, we took a trip to Yellowstone Park. We met with friends, did some camping, and took in many things wonderful and wild.
Huckleberries - a wild blue berry - were omnipresent in and about the park. Restaurants served huckleberry pie, huckleberry ice cream, huckleberry sauce, huckleberry milk shakes. Concessions sold huckleberry jams and jelly, huckleberry coffee and tea, huckleberry candy, .... I can't remember them all. I do remember the huckleberry ice cream with huckleberry sauce was wonderful. The wildness of the fruit makes it sought after and intriguing. And it is the state fruit of Idaho.
Wild things were the tourist's obsession, seeking wild life as the paparazzi seeks after hot celebrities. As the traffic crawled to a halt, odds are it was a buffalo jam. When a buffalo, an elk, a deer,whatever, does what comes natural - grazing the the meadows, basking in the sun, the cars slowed, many stopped, cameras whipped out, pictures taken. The tourist were thrilled.
The day after we left the national park, I just missed one of the biggest jams of the Summer - the Obama Jam - as the President of the United States swung by to visit Yellowstone.
What was amazing and wonderful is that so many people get excited about nature and the beauty of God's creation, whether animal (buffalo), vegatable (huckleberries), or mineral (Yellowstone Falls.) And this wonderment is shared from the humblest camper to the President of the United States.
Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created these things, that bringeth out their host by number: he calleth them all by names by the greatness of his might, for that he is strong in power; not one faileth.Isaiah 40:25-27 (King James Version)
