Unseen and Misremembered
Much of the natural world is concealed or obscured from us. We think we know. I think I know clay. I walk over the clay under my house and the clay under all of Chicago every day but it is unseen.
I stripped away all of the vegetation in the field by my barn and exposed the clay surface I have never seen. I strapped a camera under the belly of my mule and rode her all over that field. With every step the clay flew into the air. I replanted the field and don’t see the clay anymore.
I was given soil borings from downtown Chicago, pipes driven 30 to 40 feet into the clay ground, pipes filled with clay to be tested before a skyscraper is built on top of it. We never see the exposed clay in Chicago.
Encyclopedias were written to record and explain everything. Hundreds of years ago scientists traveled the earth in search of the unknown and unseen. One returned to France and hired an artist to draw the animals from his description for the encyclopedia he was writing. Misremembered or inaccurately explained, the artist drew the mule.
