THERE IS DEATH, BUT “LIFE GOES ON”

Rex Burress

Those three words, “Life goes on,” were written by poet Robert Frost. What it implies is that though one individual dies, the persistence of life on Earth continues through reproduction.

As of yet, scientists aren't sure how that applies to Mars or other places, but on our planet there is a system of continuity...even in difficult conditions and unlikely circumstances.

Life, human and wildlife, has taken some heavy hits in the years of 2017 and 2018 from fires and floods, but short of nuclear annihilation of Earth, life will find a way. In 2017 was the February Flood at Oroville,CA, and in 2018 was the wildfire at Paradise. The death of my wife, Ellen Joanne Burress, on December 15, 2018, is more personal, and for that dear lady, contradicts the physical aspect of life going on. Spiritual life is another dimension.

My fellow Death Valley fan and son, Ben, reminded me of the pupfish, Cyprinodon salinus, that live in the deep valley of death desert, where indeed, there is life!

We became acquainted with pupfish one Christmas season when my family and I were camping at the National Park. As unlikely as it might seem, there is also water in Death Valley! The Furnace Springs visitor area has fresh water gushing out of the ground from a spring to feed a virtual oasis of date palms, a campground, and a community of wildlife. Darwin French, from Oroville, CA, named the springs when he was leading a group hunting for silver in 1860. The water flow turns into Salt Creek where the extremely alkaline soil soon turns it into a stream with salt as dense as the Great Salt Lake in Utah. The Death Valley Devil's Golf Course features a dried lake with sparklingly beautiful jagged salt crystals.

Nevertheless, in that extremely hot, shallow, salty water, a little two-inch fish thrives. The pupfish, leftover from a time when an extensive lake covered the floor of Death Valley, flash their short stubby tails joyfully in what nature hath provided for them.

Now that water has been declared to be present on Mars, be-it short seepage strips of water presumably with high salt content that keeps it from freezing, could some kind of pupfish or simpler organism be present? Or complex new forms of life? Or consider an intelligent form that doesn't need water! Kangaroo rats in Death Valley derive water from the food they eat and recycle the fluids in their own bodies! There are many routes of speculation in the absence of information when imagination and theories take over.

We know that organisms have adapted to extreme conditions on Earth. Some even survive in boiling hot water, as well as in very cold conditions. Witness the Emperor Penguins crouched in freezing winds on Antarctica flats, while under the ice, a multitude of creatures also survive. Even under the ice of streams in the Midwest winter, frogs and turtles live, and of course fish. We don't have much of that under-ice-life around Oroville, CA., but in boyhood Missouri days, you could lie on a clear icy pond and watch the underwater world. “However it is in some other world, I know this is the way in ours.”

Occupying our planet's environment, although we don't see the microscopic creature from the fifth dimension, an animal called a “Water-Bear,” Milnesium tardigradum, lives in practically every part of Earth--from the ocean's depths to the tropics to the mountain tops to the rain gutters on your house--and the most stunning revelation of studying them is that the 1,150 species can endure 10 years without water, reverting to a dormant state! To describe the eight-legged blob-anatomy would take pages; go to Tardigrade on Google. “Moss Piglets” have survived for about 530-million-years, according to rare fossils, feeding on algae and whatever micro mite they can stick their “stylet” sucker into.

The thrust of this “life goes on” story, is that life can adapt to seemingly impossible conditions on Earth, as we know it, so life, or mobility, could be present elsewhere in the Universe other than what we conceive life to be. “A rock that talks and eats other elements?” Or our dead human comrades transforming into another dimension! Hi Jo! Think outside the box of Earth life!

“Any glimpse into the life of any animal quickens our own and makes it so much the

larger and better in every way.” --John Muir

“I have been studying the traits and dispositions of the “lower animals,” and contrasting

them with traits and dispositions of man. I find the results humiliating to me.”

--Mark Twain