I don’t think I’ve ever been one of those who thinks this world has different ages to it.

I’ve looked on, mildly amused if I must say, at the efforts of a certain agency as they endeavor to determine if there is/was water on Mars.  It amuses me because, at least to my small way of thinking, the truth is self-evident in a certain passage at the beginning of a Book I read where it says, “And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.”  Which leads me to think that before all this was, there was water everywhere. 

Including on Mars.

But all that aside, some do think this earth came to be in varying intervals, and thus they explain what looks to them like dated matter.  Others say there are old souls among us.  Souls that have lived a life, died, and came back to live in a young person’s body.

I suppose I’m too simple minded; it is easier for me to think it all got started at the same time.  The world came into existence all at once, just as a person comes into existence all in one piece, and not in varying stages and different times. 

But I must say that what I’ve seen in the last couple of weeks has made me think about it all in a little more detail.

Here in Western Kansas, the state of being is in continual flux. 

At least it seems that way.

I look out over the prairie at night, or what used to be prairie, and see flashing strobe lights to the west and south of me, indicating to their owners that their center pivot irrigation is functioning.  I hear the steady thrum of the motors pulling away at the lake of water below us, ever and anon doing their job.

I see huge piles of grain, a million bushels or more, taking shape in long Saharan ridges.  In a few months, I see a payloader reach into that same pile, back out, turn towards the waiting truck and dump its cargo, until at length, the pile is no more.

I take in the scenes of new houses going up here and there.  I see new shops and businesses take off, and, in most cases, flourish. 

Even the wind, which whispers or hollers along the open plains hints at a new season approaching. 

Crops are planted, little seedlings rapidly take on the form of their mother plant and in a couple of months are taller than my head.  A couple more months, and that same crop is brown, ready to be harvested.  It’s not long afterwards, and tractors with implements are working through the stubble in anticipation of the flurries of snow that may soon whisk across the cold fields.

In a way, all the change I see makes this area I call home seem younger, or newer, if you will, although I never would have realized that until I saw what I did a couple of weeks ago.

We started packing Friday evening, in hopes of leaving home Saturday morning.  A problem ensued when the luggage we were attempting to get into the car for a certain young lady in this house didn’t appear to fit.  But eventually, with enough muscle and new ideas, it did.  Even if the rearview mirror was rendered useless because it was completely blocked off, and even if the bed of the truck and back seat of the truck cab was filled. 

Once on the way, though, all went fairly well.  This was my first time farther north and east than Ohio (in the U.S. that is) and I was looking forward to seeing what I could see. 

It was when we got into Virginia that I started having thoughts about the age of things.

I saw hills, they called them mountains, that I knew had massive history.  I knew Indians had walked through them for hundreds of years.  I knew pilgrims had settled in them, fought for them, died in them.  I knew slaves had hid in the dark of night, and then stealthily ran through them, ever northwards.  I knew blood was spilled upon them as the war for the slaves was fought. 

As those hills gave way to scenic Pennsylvania farmland, it seemed I could look back into the years and see dairymen tramping out early in the morning.  And even before them, I saw frontiersmen, chopping down trees, exposing the fertile soil in which today’s lush corn now stood.  Stone built barns and houses easily told me of their 100 years and more of memories nestled within their walls.

Late in the evening of the third day, we started winding through hills again, more north now than east, towards the town of Little Falls, New York.  Rain fell, off and on, and ahead we saw patchy clouds and mist hanging low on the hills.

Perhaps it was the tracks of Amish buggies in the pavement, or, maybe the colonial style architecture, or then again maybe it was the actual stone house of one of the generals from the Revolutionary war that sat me back into a state of time warp.

It was no surprise, when I hiked up to the falls only a couple of minutes away from where the sweet daughter now lives, that I saw what I saw, and sat transfixed.

How long, I asked myself, has this water been running?  Since the civil war?  Since the pilgrims?  Did it start when Indians first came to this land? 

It seemed the answer cascaded upon me as easily as the water fell before me.  It had to be since the beginning of time. 

The rock strata arrested me next.  I looked, incredulous to see the seams running vertical, not horizontal.  I remembered, years ago now, hiking down into Canyon de Chelly, and running my fingers along the sand layers that so completely told me of a great flood many years before, a flood of such magnitude that it totally rearranged the landscape of the world then, cutting huge gouges into the landscape as the water flowed in torrents and how, as I looked, one could read the days of drying time in each horizontal layer as the water slowly dried away.

This vertical rock strata seemed to speak of years before that great flood, untouched as it were, even by that flood.  Or was it?  What did those colossal waterspouts during the flood do? 

I stared at that rock, looked below to see how much had fallen away from that wall, some one hundred feet high, and saw very little at its base. 

Time, it seemed to say.  Time stands before you.  And your existence?  Does it matter?

I thought back to something my Uncle John once told me.  He said, “If you’ll notice when tracks are made in the pastures that lie just behind our place, in a few years, they heal over, and you can’t really tell where they are.” 

The whole thing came full circle for me then, while I was still sitting by those falls. 

Nothing is older or younger than creation.  And, if another 5,000 years come and go as the previous have, my existence and efforts will be as effectively erased as the tracks in the pasture, or as the trace of man upon those hills in New York. 

But I will say this, that place where the sweet daughter lives is stunningly beautiful, and I probably wouldn’t mind if time did slow a bit when I’m there.

And I’ll also, say this. I’m not sure any of what I wrote made sense.