A particle of Dust

Our Port into Infinity

A Time to Remember
A particle of Dust
By Ronnie Powell
Man and all related aspects of Earth are a bit overrated I believe. We inhabit a planet when compared to the universe is nothing more than a speck of dust hurtling around a ball of fire. It is remarkable Earth and its inhabitants have survived so long, considering the fragility of our existence, but of course it was and is a miraculous journey to nowhere, caught in the gravitational pull of our source of life. Man alone is probably of the least importance and most destructive, yet seemingly superior in intelligence, but lacking I believe in old fashioned common sense for we are surely and methodically destroying our only environmental haven, at least as of the present. If not for the seemingly natural order of things Earth would surely not survive another day.
A fellow I know, a friend of great insight while walking with me one day along a bank of the Niangua River stooped and picked up a handful of sand. He handed me a tiny single grain of sand no lager than a flea and a moment later a large pebble about the size of a marble.
“You have in your hand a comparison of the Sun and the Earth to the universe out there,” he said. Yet when you think about it, the Earth as small as it is has creatures on it that have begun to venture out and away from the planet, the beginning I believe of Earth’s human migration into space. I believe somewhere out there are other mortals with equal intelligence or possibly more than we humans can comprehend. It is an exciting concept.
My friend is not alone in his belief that intelligent beings are somewhere beyond our planet, how close is a matter of opinion. During the many years of my exploration of caves, overhangs and village sites of Prehistory humans I have often wondered what they saw in the skies over Earth especially after observing images left behind on walls, or clay and stone figures representing much more than we give credit to those Prehistoric people. Many details have been exposed, much too numerous to mention that in part inspired those people to begin worshipping the many gods that came and went over the ages., changing forever man’s perceived ideals to which nations were built and destroyed.
The night skies are a panoramic view into the infinity of the Universe, a taunting reality that has inspired many possibilities from the practical to the absurd. It could be both definitions are the same for we cannot say with certainty what exists out there among the stars.
It has been at least thirty odd years and perhaps more when near midnight while walking my beat at the Bennett Spring Trout Hatchery I experienced a bizarre event that I cannot explain to this day. I was walking along the service road on my way to the hatchery building when I noticed a bright light appearing above a prevailing ridge top. Naturally curious I stopped and watched as it drew closer, a blinding light moving rather quickly from south to north. Only seconds had passed when I observed a huge craft, which appeared to be about the size of a semi tractor and trailer. I heard no sound as it swept across the sky at tree top level. The entire valley around me was bathed in its light and when reaching the approximant area above the spring it ascended rapidly and simply disappeared from view.
I hurried to the hatchery building, astounded by what I had just witnessed and as I entered the office the phone rang and I discovered the caller to be the hatchery assistant manager. “Ronnie,” he said to me with great excitement, “what was that. It lit up the entire hill top and never made a sound. I didn’t even get a look at it?”
We both were rebuked for telling about the encounter the next day. The matter was dropped from conversation during work hours.
The S.E. T. I., the world’s most powerful telescope is probing the universe or at least a small part of it, searching for new planets similar to our own. It is possible that today or years from now an inhabited planet will be revealed. Perhaps it will be thousands of light years away and virtually impossible to reach. But the discovery alone of such a planet would be nothing short of monumental and would create a storm of controversy among Earth’s human inhabitants.
If we could build a vehicle that would travel through the light years to far off galaxies it would change mankind beyond comprehension. If I were young without the responsibility of family and was allowed to do so, I would without hesitation step aboard, knowing I would probably never return to Earth, for I would be nothing more than a microscopic organism in a vast, wonderful expanse of space witnessing for the first time unimaginable discoveries and perhaps die among the stars.
I will not be boarding a ship bound for the stars and beyond, but it will happen I am certain. The men and women who are chosen to go will cease to be earthlings after lift off. There may even be children born on that infinite journey and they truly will be children of the universe, wanderers among the stars.
There are no limits to what man can and perhaps will accomplish in the distant future, but he must first learn to take care of the tiny speck of dust we call home, a beautiful fragile jewel swinging along in space. Adios