Death and rebirth at the bottom of the ocean

I'm starting to write some of the short geology stories, and I'm finding it difficult, but enriching. The writer in me wants to draw all sorts of analogies, but the universe and the planet operate on such grand time scales that their beauty is hard to express in terms of our short seasons and lives.

As pagans, we see the seasons of the year as they come and go. The phases of the moon as it passes. The signs of the zodiac, for those that follow it. The children of the Earth see these cycles, and need these cycles. But for the Earth herself, they are like seconds on a clock, passing very quickly. To her there are greater, deeper cycles. And we can see those cycles if we pay enough attention.

Deposition cycles are some of the clearest examples. They read like tree rings, telling stories of periods from years to millenia to eons. And when you know what you are looking at, it is absolutely awe-inspiring to see it.

Some of the biggest, most beautiful structures, that fit the cyclical view the best, are turbidites. In the deep oceans on the continental shelf, there is a constant flow of gravel, sand, and silt laid down from rivers like the Mississippi or the Nile. They slowly pile up in a rather haphazard sort of way until, like an overbirdened snow pack, they give way and rush down the slope in huge avalanches of sediment, burying everything in their path. These sheets are tens, hundreds, even thousands of miles across and travel miles down slope.

What makes them so beautiful, and so breathtaking is how the sediment settles out. Just like in your middle school science class, the debris sorts itself by size, first depositing gravel, then sand, then silt, then clay. The richest, finest layers settling out on top With layer upon layer piling up like this, you can see nice, clean lines indicating each cycle. And in the clay layers you can often find tracks and even remains of plants and animals that, in a grand cycle of death and rebirth, thrived on the rich, marine beds before themselves being buried in preparation for the next cycle.

And just like the animals of the temperate climates above the waves need the cycles of cold to lay down what is to become new, rich soil for spring, here life needs the renewal of rich mud upon which to build the next generation.

And so the wheel turns. As above (the waves), so below.