During my time at Navajo, I read James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis’s The Gaia Hypothesis. Lovelock was an atmospheric chemist and systems thinker. As a fellow systems thinker, I was reading along with “yes” and “of course.” But the part that impacted me the most was his description of working with NASA figuring out what tests its probes could do to detect the presence of life on Mars. Lovelock researched the question and concluded that we didn’t need to go to Mars to determine if life existed on Mars. We could detect that from Earth.
We already knew the chemical composition of Mars’ atmosphere and it was at thermodynamic equilibrium. All the chemical reactions possible had reduced the atmosphere to its least-energy configuration. The Earth’s atmosphere, on the other hand, was way out of equilibrium. The most spectacular example is our 21% oxygen atmosphere. Atmospheric oxygen is highly reactive. We inhale it to sustain life. Forests burn in its presence. Atmospheric oxygen oxidizes iron into rust (as it has on Mars, giving the planet its rusty-red color). Our atmospheric oxygen is constantly flowing out of the atmosphere and binding in a variety of oxidized states (including with the hemoglobin in vertebrate blood which allows oxygen to reach every living cell in our body). By the Rules of Flow, in order to maintain that 21% level, our atmosphere must somehow have an equivalent inflow of oxygen. That inflow is generated through photosynthesis by cyanobacteria and later by plants. Atmospheric oxygen has been created, and is actively maintained, by plants. Plants have used solar energy to raise the atmosphere out of thermodynamic equilibrium, making life possible for all of us oxygen-breathers. Lovelock concluded that life’s presence lifts atmospheres out of thermodynamic equilibrium; therefore, Mars does not have life.
This was one of many examples Lovelock and Margulis used to hypothesize that life, collectively, has evolved a variety of feedback mechanisms by which life, oftentimes bacteria (a specialty of Margulis), can regulate global flows of molecules to maintain dynamic equilibriums that optimize conditions for life on Earth. This was their Gaia Hypothesis. (Gaia was the Greek goddess of Earth and the primordial mother of Life.) One of their points, addressing anticipated criticism, was that this regulation did not require any “conscious thought.” But as a systems thinker, this was an “of course.” Systems create behaviors. Thought or goal intention is not necessary for dynamic equilibria to arise.
Lovelock’s oxygen example gave me a new perspective on my Second Law koan. I had accepted that there is a natural direction of decreasing useable energy towards which all things spontaneously flow. Nothing remains unchanged. Stars form and fade away. Mountains rise and fall. Generations come and go. I had also accepted what I call the textbook explanation of how animal life is possible within the Second Law: by harvesting the energy the plants have captured from the sun or by harvesting other animals that have harvested energy from eating plants. Up is possible but only if there is a greater down elsewhere. But what Lovelock and Margulis revealed to me was that the entire Earth system had moved “upstream” against this “downward” current. This, of course, is possible because the entire Earth forms an open system, open to the inflow of solar energy. But still, there had been so much emphasis on eating one another that I needed Lovelock and Margulis to expand my thinking to include the reality that our entire planet, collectively, can increase in useable energy.
Two Spirals
The Gaia Hypothesis imbued a deeper significance to what I was learning about the history of the park’s cliff dwellings and canyons. Many of the wooden beams in Kiet Siel are aspen; aspens once grew in that canyon. The archaeological record suggests that the people in these towns left after 15-30 years, partly because of arroyo-cutting. Geological evidence indicates that an arroyo eroded its way up through this system of canyons, coinciding with the abandonment of the towns. The first settlers coming from the United States five hundred years later recorded the presence of oaks, marshes, even some ducks (but no aspen trees in Kiet Siel canyon). But in the early twentieth century, the sheep and cattle population surged and a new arroyo cut down through thirty feet of sandy canyon bottom, down to bedrock where the inch-deep stream now flows.
When at Kiet Siel, I’d often go in the evening and sit at the top of the talus cone opposite Kiet Siel. From there, I could look straight across into Kiet Siel and to my right I could look up the canyon for almost two miles, level terraces flanking the arroyo gash all the way. I imagined sand filling the arroyo up to the level of the terraces, creating a level canyon floor from canyon wall to canyon wall stretching the length of the canyon and, growing up from that, an aspen wood of shimmering green leaves beneath the orange and tan sandstone cliffs.
In the morning, sitting by the spring, waiting for the jerry cans to fill, I’d look upon the stream, twenty feet wide and one inch deep, and sometimes imagine what would happen to this stream if sand began filling the arroyo. The water would not be able to flow one mile per hour over the bedrock. It would have to first saturate the sand that was filling the arroyo. As the sand rose higher, more of the stream would disappear beneath the surface, having to percolate through sand for the entire length of the canyon system.
The Relative Balance between inflow and outflow would shift profoundly. The discharge of the stream would presumably be the same as it is now (one inch deep x twenty feet wide x one mile per hour equals about 2.4 cubic feet per second), but the outflow would drop from one mile per hour to maybe one-hundreth of a mile per hour. The stream discharge equation would require the product of the width and depth to increase a hundred-fold. However, the water would be flowing through a sand-filled volume, so the actual cross-sectional area of the water table percolating downstream would be even larger.
In addition, current flashfloods rush out of the canyon within an hour. But a deep, sandy canyon bottom could absorb and retain most of that runoff, adding that retained volume to the ongoing discharge. A reliable aquifer would underlie the canyon bottom for those aspen trees found within Kiet Siel and for the marshes and ducks sighted by the American settlers. How much more could grow here if the arroyo could be healed?
But now the water flows over bedrock, gone from the canyon system within the day. Groundwater drains from the porous sand; the water table drops; shallow-rooted plants wither and die. Maples and oaks recede. Terraces are mostly sagebrush with junipers growing along the canyon walls, as far from the arroyo edge as possible. Cool shade disappears, exposing the sandy soil to intense sun and pounding cloudbursts. With less groundcover, erosion becomes stronger. A self-reinforcing feedback spiral drains possibilities for life out of the canyon. When this happened six hundred years ago, corn and acorn yields diminished. The canyon could not support as many game animals. The people were forced to move elsewhere. Sometime after they left, however, the arroyo began filling in again.
The arroyo cuts down and life diminishes. The arroyo fills in and life increases. The arroyo cuts down again and life diminishes again. Apparently, feedback within the canyon system can spiral either way. I much preferred the spiral leading towards aspens and water tables rising. Was there someway to help the arroyo fill in yet again?
Moss Mats
After a ten-day tour at Kiet Siel, I effectively had a five-day break. During the heat of the summer, more of those days were spent exploring the cooler Rocky Mountains in southwestern Colorado. One time, driving back over a mountain pass, I looked out to the east and saw the most mythically, steep-sided, sharp-pointed mountains I had ever seen. I found a trailhead heading into that area and started hiking in search of the heart of those mountains. Exploring that area became what I did following each time out at Kiet Siel. I had some of the most memorably spectacular hikes of my life, camping above 12,000’ near cirque lakes high above plunging U-shaped glacial side valleys, occasionally scrambling up onto 14,000’ peaks.
Glaciers had scraped and polished those mountains to smooth bedrock, a beautiful, large-crystalled bright grey rock. Up there, the pioneering edge of life was returning in a slow process scientists call primary succession. Thin lichens on bare bedrock and emerald-green mats of sphagnum moss were the main life forms. There was little up there to support any kind of food pyramid.
As the winter snows melted into summer, their water streamed across the bare, smoothed rock, gradually gathering together in rivulets that followed cracks in the rocks, converging into larger streams as they coursed down the upper flanks of the steep glacial valleys. I was up at the top where the meltwater was still finding its way. As it flowed across the bare rock, it washed along with it any pieces of frost-shattered grit that had broken off in the freeze-thaw cycles of the previous winter. Wherever the meltwater slowed down, the grit would drop out, accumulating into an inch-thick proto-soil that contained far more surface area than bare bedrock. These gritty sands could retain some of the meltwater. Here, mosses could grow. Emerald green, spongy sphagnum grew upwards and outwards wherever the gravelly sands accumulated. They drew me down onto my belly to closely observe the answer to that question that had emerged in my cruise through Glacier Bay: “How does the emergence of life onto land change the processes that influence the land?” I observed the moss mats with the Gaia Hypothesis perspective of life collectively having the ability to slowly move its environment “upstream” against the thermodynamic flow.
The moss absorbs and slows the meltwater and spreads it over the slope. Rock grains washing down the slope are trapped in the intricate surface area of the moss, expanding the volume of these mats of moss. As the grains are covered by more moss, they become encased in a sun-warmed, chemically-active moistness that weathers the rock grains far faster into smaller soil particles. Flowers can grow in this soil, lifting the upper edge of these mats several inches into the air. Like filter feeders, the taller plants create wind buffers that trap some of the wind-blown dust, pollen, and seeds blowing across the bedrock. The mats grow, both in volume and complexity. The flowers attract insects high onto slopes that were once bare stone. Birds occasionally forage up here, sometimes defecating nutrients they harvested from the valley below.
What I especially enjoyed observing is how, from secure, level birthplaces, the mats spread outwards onto steeper slopes or filled bedrock cracks, forming spongy dams that backed the snowmelt up into small pools that would trap any rock crystal washing into them. Life was slowing outflows, shifting relative balances, allowing soil, water and nutrients to accumulate where once they flowed away. As life slowly spreads over the bare rock, more sunlight is absorbed into the food web and more life becomes possible. As Lovelock said, life creates the conditions for more life. This creates a reinforcing feedback spiral of more life, altering its environment even more, allowing yet more life to colonize the territory. Moss mats are, in miniature, how Kiet Siel canyon must have filled with soil, groundwater, and life. If it can happen at 13,000’ feet on polished bedrock, it can happen almost any place where water flows and the Sun shines.
I began noticing another life-shaped process up there. I called them “terraces” because they reminded me of rice terraces on steep slopes. Like the rice terraces, contoured slopes like this can hold more snowmelt and be more resistant to erosion. These terraces are on a slope in Yosemite at 10,000 feet.
Evenings at Kiet Siel, looking up the canyon, imagining it filled with aspens, followed by days in the mountains, observing the moss mats. Life-draining arroyo: life-emerging timberline. Two views, held together with feedback spiraling in different directions. One is following the Second Law downstream; the other is crawling its way upstream. These two different views became a “3-D” experience revealing another dimension of usable energy that thirty-five years later I’ve come to call the Fifth Dimension.
Those
mats of moss are my ancestors. My DNA evolved from the DNA within these primordial
communities. Expanding boundaries out over cold smooth granite is my legacy.
This is what life does. This is what I should be doing with my life. But how do
I do it?
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