Perspective

(We have a winner of the L.J. Smith Giveaway: Amie! Congrats, Amie! Send me your address and I’ll put these books in the mail to you this week. You have LOTS of good reading ahead of you, for sure!)

I wanted to tell you about our trip to the local salt mine last week. Friends invited us to go Trilobite hunting in this giant shale pit there. And, seriously, how could we say no to that?

First of all, we got to see gigantic piles of salt and huge eighteen-wheelers going by constantly (BIG excitement) (I kid you not) AND we got to dig through a HUGE pile of rocks. My kids had so much fun they are already planning our next trip over there.

(Hey! That’s my LOVELY friend Fey, whose name I STOLE for the character in my book.)

And I have to say that looking for trilobite fossils in all those little shards was like looking for a needle in a haystack…except there are LOTS of needles in that haystack.

Check out a few of what we found. Some of these are really amazing.

This is the kind of thing that just blows me away. I mean, the HISTORY here in this little chunk of rock. The imprint of this creature that lived over 250 million years ago. An animal that existed on OUR Earth for over 270 million years. Can you even fathom that? Like really even begin to understand that length of time? I can’t. I mean, modern humans (homo sapiens) have only been around for about 200,000 years. (And I have a hard time using “only” in that sentence, but comparatively it’s a blink of an eye.)

It really makes me aware of how short each of our individual lives are. Even if we get to live a good, long life…it’s just so short. And our troubles are pretty insignificant on the whole, no matter how very significant they are to us.

Perspective. That’s what a little trilobite hunting will give you. (That, and a slight sunburn.)

Hope you’re having a great week!