During my 10-15 minute escape outdoors, I've been watching guys working on the road outside my apartment. Hard-hatted moles duck down into manholes and disappear; it brings to mind the whole elaborate world that may be beneath our feet. Granted, in Boulder you aren't going to see much more than sewers. In many very old cities, there are whole layers of catacombs, tunnels, mazes, and chambers. Even the relatively modern New York City has a whole culture of "nesters" who live underground in abandoned subway tunnels and defunct transit stations. Paris, Rome, Jerusalem, Mexico City, and many more have entire marketplaces and palaces below the buildings that touch the sky today.

Sometimes I get a yearning to search for buried treasure, to explore new domains, to uncover history. I can only imagine how incredible Howard Carter must have felt excavating Tutankhamun's tomb. In his memoirs, Carter notes how vividly he remembers the scented air, the dust of history. I got to experience something akin to this when a 40,000-60,000 year old chunk of glacier broke off when I was in Greenland. The liberated air smelled organic and fresh, like a garden. When it was sealed into the icy confines, it was rife with the scent of now-extinct Arctic forests and meadows. I too, vividly remember it.

P.S.- No, I haven't been reading Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle comics lately, thank you very much!

Posted by James Dziezynski @ 1:20 PM