are not above nature, as we have so often imagined. Not only are we in the midst of it, we are part of it, intimately connected to the smallest protozoan, as well as to those vast systems of stars, the dust of which is in our blood and bones. This means that we, too, are Nature and that we must, in a much wider sense than ever before, all be naturalists and love and care for the earth.
Acknowledgments
Primary gratitude goes to my wife Rochelle for enabling this work in countless ways. She was the first to say that I should put these reflections into print and provided the necessary organizational and computer expertise for this endeavor. Our daughters Marci and Heather and our son Garrett never tired of the subject; on the contrary, they have been anxious to accompany me on expeditions to explore the prehistoric world.
Gratitude is also extended to many others, who, over the years, have encouraged me to write and publish, including:
Paleontologist Dr. Jack Horner of The Museum of the Rockies on the campus of Montana State University, Bozeman, not only for his interest in this project but also for his affirmation relating to my collecting specimens of dinosaurs and other fossils for the Museum over the course of some thirty years.
Staff and volunteers at The Museum of the Rockies, whose enthusiasm for my presentations dealing with science and religion as well as paleontology helped me to see the need for a book such as this.
The same is true for students and faculty of Concordia College, Moorhead, MN, where I am especially grateful to Dr. Arland Jacobson.
Numerous individuals in Lutheran (ELCA) congregations I have served, in particular those of Zion Lutheran Church, Lewistown, MT, who expressed interest in a resource of this kind.
Finally, appreciation is extended to the publisher, Wipf & Stock, for bringing this project to fruition.
Grateful acknowledgement is made for permission to quote from the following sources:
“New Year Letter,” copyright 1941 & renewed 1969 by W. H. Auden, “Shorts II,” copyright © 1976 by Edward Mendelson, William Merideth and Monroe K. Spears, Executors of the Estate of W. H. Auden., from Collected Poems of W. H. Auden. Used by Permission of Random House, Inc.
“New Year Letter” and “Shorts II” by W. H. Auden, currently collected in Collected Poems by W. H. Auden (Vintage, 1991). Copyright © 1939, 1941, 1991 by W. H. Auden, used in the United Kingdom with permission of the Wylie Agency LLC on behalf of Faber & Faber.
The lines from “when god decided to invent.” Copyright 1944, © 1972, 1991 by the Trustees for the E. E. Cummings Trust, The lines from “i thank You God for most this amazing.” Copyright 1950, © 1978, 1991 by the Trustees for the E. E. Cummings Trust. Copyright © 1979 by George James Firmage, from Complete Poems: 1904-1962 by E. E. Cummings, edited by George J. Firmage. Used by permission of Liveright Publishing Corporation.
Alfred Publishing Co., Inc. for an excerpt of the lyrics to It Ain’t Necessarily So (from “Porgy and Bess”), words and music by George Gershwin, Du Bose and Dorothy Heyward, and Ira Gershwin © 1935 (Renewed) George Gershwin Music, Ira Gershwin Music, and Du Bose and Dorothy Heyward Memorial Fund. All rights Administered by WB Music Corp. All Rights Reserved. Used by permission.
Creators Syndicate for use of the captions to two cartoons of The Far Side© by Gary Larson: “Creationism Explained” (Release date: 3-27-85) and “The picture’s pretty bleak, gentlemen . . . The world’s climates are changing, the mammals are taking over, and we all have a brain about the size of a walnut.” (Release date 11-7-85) Used by permission.
LSU Press for an excerpt from the poem “Monet Refuses the Operation” by Lisel Mueller in Second Language © 1986 by Lisel Mueller and published by Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge. Used by permission.
Excerpt from “Glass House Canticle” from The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg, Revised and Expanded Edition, copyright © 1970, 1969 by Lilian Steichen Sandburg, Trustee, reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
The National Film Board of Canada for an excerpt of the narration to film Universe © 2009 by the National Film Board of Canada. Used by permission.
The Union of Concerned Scientists for two excerpts of the narration to the video Keeping the Earth: Religious and Scientific Perspectives on the Environment © 1996 by The Union of Concerned Scientists. Used by permission.
Part I
1 / Into the Badlands
Isn’t it astonishing that all these secrets have been preserved for so many years just so that we could discover them?
Orville Wright
The prairies of the West stretch and roll for hundreds of miles. However, in places, the land abruptly falls away. With each rain, channels that are usually dry widen and deepen by eroding the debris of former ages; they all lead, by one way or another, to the Missouri River Breaks. Boulders of the Rocky Mountains disintegrate and mix with the sands and silts of the High Plains in a long but inexorable passage to the Gulf. In the process, strata comprising the skeleton of the earth itself are laid bare, and sunlight falls once again where it has not for millions of years. Such are the Badlands.
These regions in several states were named by the earliest French voyageurs mauvaises terres, the evil lands. To those who lurched toward the setting sun in the wagon trains of the westward migrations, these crumbling terrains were definitely bad for travel, and routes were sought to circumvent them. Beginning in the 1870s, however, crews from eastern universities with their fledgling discipline of paleontology (literally, “the study of ancient being”) were drawn specifically to those scarred landscapes in Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas, Utah, Montana, and the Dakotas.
In 1877, railroaders discovered huge dinosaur bones weathering out at Como Bluff, Wyoming. Ten miles away, fossil bones were on the surface in such profusion that a sheepherder had used vertebrae to build the foundation and part of the walls of his cabin. The dinosaur rush to such regions was on, and excavations at Como Bluff and at so-called Bone Cabin Quarry began to reveal the largest of the dinosaurs: the giants of the Jurassic Period. Collecting on behalf of Yale University, the English clergyman Arthur Lakes documented his fieldwork in a series of watercolors. One painting showed himself and another man clad in parkas and digging in a trench to excavate the great bones, this in the midst of winter with snow banks all around. This laconic inscription was used: “Pleasures of Science.” Thus, the first workers in the field had begun to visualize for the public the hitherto unimagined Lost World of the dinosaurs in the American West.
Today, the desolate Badlands are the Goodlands for paleontology, the science that seeks to reconstruct the prehistoric world from the mineralized bones and other fossils that erode out of such strata.
The sandstone cap-rock on which I am standing provides a view of the banded sedimentary layers extending in every direction. I gaze at the gray, brown, tan, and rust-colored tones, which change with the angled light from morning to mid-day to afternoon. Sitting down on the ledge, I ease off my backpack to pause for a long drink of water and a short lunch consisting of a jelly sandwich. I also blow the dust off the lenses of my binoculars, this in order to better watch a band of showers moving slowly a few miles south. It is rain that has carved these hills.
I swing my legs over the rim and begin to work my way down the slope, leaning into it and steadying myself in the sliding talus with the pick that always accompanies
