‘Bucket list’ of future vacation destinations
I am daydreaming about ice.
It figures prominently in my “bucket list” of future vacation plans.
If all of the pieces fall into place, I will be headed up to Montana. That state, of course, has no shortage of mountains. There are a couple of places up there where thick glacier ice is creeping down the face of the mountain.
It is necessary for me to park my vehicle and then do an all-day hike up and back. Albeit it does sound like a lot of pain and misery to endure just for the sake of a vacation, but a visit to the melting face of that glacier reveals the frozen bodies of longextinct animals now embedded in the thick layer of mountain ice.
I’d like to see that.
I want to see bugs. Lots and lots of bugs. Bugs that are now extinct. The glacier holds the corpses of Rocky Mountain locusts. Those are the big grasshoppers that gathered in masses that numbered in the billions. These grasshopper hordes would descend on farmers’ crops very much akin to biblical plagues. The fact that this major pest of agricultural crops is extinct does not foster a tear in many people’s eyes. Even I am not going to rise in protest at news of this species’ demise in 1902. Good riddance, I say.
Nevertheless, what harm could come from bearing witness to the thousands of frozen insect corpses? My curiosity is such that I can actually relish the thought of hiking uphill to go see a bunch of dead things.
Go figure!
Neil Garrison was the longtime naturalist at a central Oklahoma nature center.