Okay but earth science is such an inherently romantic subject?? We have been sleeping on its dark academia potential, and I’m procrastinating reading a paper on upper ocean mixing (it’s fun! I do not know why I procrastinate doing fun things!) so it’s Time To Romanticise Earth Sci (speaking of literally romanticising earth sci, if anyone could tell me where I might find the movie Ammonite online, I would be forever indebted to you)
~ rocky shores and the pursuit of fossils at sunset; for a moment, time blurs, and old, gone things become more than just memories (what more than being remembered by the earth, though?); ancient trails forged by creatures long-dead that lead you deeper into untouched forests, where the trees wear their history on their bark, like badges or scars; the hallowed silence of sleeping bones in a museum
~complex modelling software and sheet after sheet of data collected painstakingly over decades come together, whispering of howling storms and withering droughts and change bearing down, still, you are triumphant, because it feels like you share a language with the seas and the skies, a language of numbers and time with which they tell you beautiful and terrible things
~ stories buried in ice cores and deep sea sediments, in smooth river rocks and the curve of a mountain just so, there are stories everywhere, and together they unfold a tale so grand in scale that fitting it within your skull sometimes feels impossible; how could you, after all? It is a story spanning millions of years, of oceans as deep as mountains are high and all that came before them, of whole continents that split apart and found one another all over again, of life, and all it did-
~ entire playlists dedicated to whalesong echoing through the sea, you think that if you listen to it often enough, you just might understand what they’re saying; leatherbound journals filled with blurry photographs of mushrooms and insects, and all the interesting habits of theirs you’ve observed; thick, dusty volumes with whimsical diagrams of birds and tides and everything in between, walls papered with old botanical posters and photo-prints of erupting volcanoes
~ fitted corduroys and loose shirts, bulky jackets with many pockets for collecting curious things, green tea left to cool on all available surfaces, waking up early to watch the sunrise and sleeping late anyway
~ witnessing the world’s (and particularly the government’s) response to climate change and wanton environmental destruction has filled you with a desperation that makes you throw yourself heedlessly into your research, it leaves you exhausted and sometimes hopeless, but this is how you would have the earth remember you, as someone who gave more than they took