Multimedial Allegoriganza

 

It rarely gets more ‘meta’: watching a slide-show about lava tubes inside a lava tube. Was that pop the sound of your head exploding? If not, try the movie version:

 

 

Those perplexed by the title may wish to brush up on a little classical philosophy:

and,

The point being, that I didn’t spend my entire trip up to Lava Beds hunting problematic titmice. I flipped a few rocks…

 

…chased some snakes and lizards, and beetles, lepidopteran larvae

and wasps, and spiders, and more beetles…

[that spider tube is also metalogical btw]

And, we even crawled through some lava tubes that didn’t have LED lit paths running through them. We patiently watched some minerals precipitating

and there, some twenty feet below the surface, roots!

(From an Artemesia perhaps?)

Oh yeah, and I watched a kick-ass powerpoint on Sierra Cave climate records…

(Where’s your helmet!?)

Emerging from the tubes does feel a bit like stepping back into a world of Platonic truth and light, with a little fern and moss oasis at mouth of each cave.

We also heard a foul-mouthed Lemurian with night terrors, but that’s another story. If you haven’t been to Lava Beds National Monument, I highly recommend it!

I kinda wish my flashlight broke, perhaps then I could have written a blog post nearly as gripping as this piece by Chris Clarke). But anyway, people mostly read microecos for the pictures, much like Plato. So…you’re welcome.

I’ll bend over backwards to write a real-live science post tomorrow! (so…apologies in advance)