Idaho Falls

Outdoors by Gregg Losinski 70 IDAHO FALLS MAGAZINE JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2017 No, that's not a typo in the title of the article. Those who have followed my writing for a while know that I've spent a bit of time lately in Central Europe, mainly Slovakia. In the Slovak language the word for year is Rok, pronounced like how we would say rock, just with a bit of a roll on the letter "R." So whenever I heard Slovaks talking about a year or how old something was, it always sound like they were talk- ing about rocks, hence in my convoluted way of thinking, rocks marked the passage of time. Back here in the States, as we move from one year to another I've actu- ally heard people say, "Another year gone, another rock in the box of time." Hence, "Rok in the box." People that have been following my writing also know that I often try to put things around us into context by scrap- ing away man's developments, looking at the rocky foundations of where we live and using the physical world and our geographic location to explain why things work a certain way, like why visitors get nose bleeds because of a combination of drier air and higher altitude. For fun, we can continue chasing the rabbit trail of my rock/time continuum. If we start to discuss the passage of time using different calendars like the Mayan or our Gregorian, things can get confusing very fast, and just to clarify I am not named after the calen- dar! If we use the geologic time scale or GTS, then we're rock solid with our rela- tive dates. I'm sure we all remember those wonderful eras like the Palaeozoic and Mesozoic that they tried to make us memo- rize in school. If you buy into the idea that the Universe banged itself into existence from nothing, then the world is about 4.5 billion years old and all events settle into place like the cobbles that tumble down the Snake River in the spring when they open up the canals. If you still dare to ref- erence dates according to B.C. and A.D., then the PC police will be stopping by for a chat any day. The point of all this mental meandering is to show how words change in relation to who we are and where and when we use them. Even the concrete facts of science are not always as solid as we count on them to be. Scientifi c knowledge is often relative, just look at the former planet known as Pluto or our location in the cosmos as origi- nally designated by the genius Aristotle. It's always important to use the best available science when confronting the challenges of the future, but it is even more important to remember that everything is ultimately based on faith, it just depends on what you feel comfortable placing your faith in. The one sure thing that we can count on is the time that has already passed as we toss another rok in the box. IF in the Box Another Rok STEVE SMEDE PHOTO

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