Original publication, Methow Valley News, June 12, 2019
Pack up the car, pack up the kids, pack up the sunscreen,
broad-brimmed hats, sunglasses and water bottles and sally forth to where the
Methow River meets the mighty Columbia.
Saturday, June 22, is the sixth annual Salmon Bake and
Cultural Celebration at the Methow Monument in Pateros Memorial Park.
Festivities start at noon. Randy Lewis will serve up traditional flame-grilled
Copper River salmon. Lunch includes salads and SweetRiver Bakery rolls, for a
suggested donation of $10. Cultural demonstrations in the park will include
basket weaving, beading, canoes, music and more. There will be a silent auction
and raffle with all proceeds from the event to benefit programs offered by
Pateros-Brewster Community Resource Center. The Salmon Bake and Cultural
Celebration promises to be a fun event to celebrate our Native American
neighbors and support community programs.
Summer solstice is right around the corner. I have mixed
feelings about the longest day of the year, the changing of the seasons. On one
hand, the summer solstice is the one day of the year with the most hours of
sunlight – a positive, solar-charged, illuminating event. However, it is the
longest day of the year – and the word “longest” has never impressed me.
World’s longest limo, world’s longest hot dog, world’s longest tapeworm … these
translate as “impossible turning radius,” “indigestion,” and “gross.” The word
“longest” is laden with a long list of negative connotations. At the end of a
tortuous mind-numbing work or travel day, no one says, “That was the longest
day,” with any modicum of enthusiasm. I’ll have to travel to the southern
hemisphere to celebrate the winter solstice, I suppose.
A tragic thing that more than one person has said to me is,
“I don’t believe in the solstice.” Instead of patiently explaining how a
spherical Earth rotates around the sun, I usually just reply, “Don’t say that
out loud, it makes you look stupid.” Here we live in the age of information and
Google and someone doesn’t believe in a physical event they can view with their
own eyes. I hope they are enjoying their foot-long hotdog on the longest day of
the year.
I must admit that any wondrous reminder that we are the
smallest part of large universe fills me with joy. Our tiny green-and-blue rock
is situated in the most perfect position of all the planets to receive just
enough light and warmth to foster life, but not to toast our existence into
burnt bits.
Speaking of burnt toast, sometime between June and July is
the 66-million-year anniversary of when an asteroid toasted the dinosaurs.
Based on analysis of pollen in fossils found at the impact site, scientists
know that the asteroid impact occurred between the flowering of lotus and water
lilies.
Perhaps on this very day, 66 million years ago, a 6-mile
wide asteroid named Baptistina hurtled towards Earth at 20,000 miles an hour
and barreled into the surface. The impact liquified rock, which turned into
steam. The resulting plume exploded into space, and then cooled and
re-condensed into tiny droplets of glass. The hell balls spread out through the
atmosphere and creating the greatest meteor shower no one has ever seen, except
for the dinosaurs in a few hot moments. You can see these glass balls, aka
pseudomorphed tektites, embedded in a patch of mudstone from the Powder River
Basin in Wyoming. All the details can be heard in “Dinopocalypse Redux,” a RadioLab
podcast found here: www.wnycstudios.org/story/dinopocalypse-redux.
Happy Asteroid Anniversary season, and Happy Solstice!
