Aeons of Time
by Ralf Rohner
Title
Aeons of Time
Artist
Ralf Rohner
Medium
Photograph
Description
Aeons ago, when I was still standing, dinosaurs were roaming the plains around me. During the day, sunlight nourished my leaves, while every night the stars were performing their eternal dance high in the sky. Then, suddenly, a giant rock from outer space slammed into our planet and caused havoc and apocalypse around the globe. Earthquakes shook the ground where I was standing and volcanos blew molten rock into the atmosphere. Dust from the cosmic collision mixed with the ashes from the volcanoes and blocked the sunlight. A night, darker than anything I had ever experienced, fell upon earth and stayed for months without any sign of dawn.
When the ashes finally settled and sunlight reached the ground again, I was no longer standing, but lying flat, buried under a thick layer of ashes and mud. Like this, I stayed for an eternity. The mud around me turned into sandstone, but due to lack of oxygen, my wood did not rot away. Instead, mineral-laden water flowing through the covering sandstone deposited minerals in my cells, slowly turning me into stone.
Now, 70 million years later, wind and water have eroded the covering sandstone away, thus unearthing me. Sunlight touches my petrified remains again, but the dinosaurs are long gone. They died together with me. Now a new species, called humankind, is dominating earth, changing it as no other creature ever has. Not realizing that, like the dinosaurs, they are only guests for a limited time, they seem to think that they own the planet and have the right to abuse it to their liking. They are even lighting the night sky with something they call light pollution and although the stars are still there, performing their eternal dance, I cannot see them anymore as clear as I used to.
While the same processes that uncovered me slowly erode me away, chances are that I will still be around long enough to witness the demise of humankind, as I witnessed the end of the dinosaurs - aeons ago…
Uploaded
September 24th, 2017
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