My oldest grandchild, Isaac, had just turned age twelve. Through his earlier growing up years we had told each other numerous made-up suspense and adventure stories, bicycled, read stories to one another, played board games and cards, and spent hours watching reruns of Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents on television. Isaac always had a yearning for things that were not boring or everyday or mundane. I fondly remember him calling Jesus of Nazareth by the name of “Gee-Gee” when he pointed to an artist’s sketch of what Jesus may have looked like hanging on the wall in church when he was just age two. In the Wehler family tradition, it was now time for him to sink his teeth into the experience of fossil hunting out West. The Badlands of northwestern Nebraska — just south of the Black Hills of South Dakota — beckoned as a spot for Isaac and his grandpa to celebrate his age twelve attainment on the paleontological landscape. I told friends that it could be likened to a bar mitzvah, of sorts, involving nature. It would be a rite de passage, for sure.

We had only one week to do what we needed to do. It was a day’s trip out there from western Minnesota and a one day journey back home again. And we wanted two days to wind through the attractions of the Black Hills, said to be a sacred location to Native Americans indigenous to that region. Perhaps, there would be time to talk about some of the oneness-with-nature faith traditions such as those of native Dakotans and share our experiences of awe and wonder (as I predicted we would have) found in scouring the Earth for very old life specimens and looking upward on clear nights to a vast universe of stars. In a science way of thinking, Grandpa hoped for his grandson to appreciate the enormity of geologic time — and perhaps, cosmic time, as well. But just as much, he hoped to expand Isaac’s consciousness to realize, more fully, the evolving creation process of divine orchestration in making not only humans a reality but also breathing mammals on Earth millions of years ago. Maybe age twelve was too young for this, but maybe not. I, myself, had begun this realization fifty-plus years ago at around the same age. With that in mind, we set forth on forays to hunt fossil remains on private ranch land.

The Sun beat down on us relentlessly during our three-day fossil adventure. The radio station out of Rapid City, South Dakota, gave weather forecasts for day temperatures of 100 degrees Fahrenheit or above, a record-setting week for heat in the region. That limited our field exploration time to mornings and evenings. Aside from naps, afternoons were spent swimming in a small outdoor pool at a modest ranch-style bed and breakfast place close to where fossils were weathered out to be seen and plucked for keeping.

The fossils we came for were from Earth’s layers determined scientifically to be about 30 million years old. Quite young for an Earth said to be about four and one-half billion years old! The treasured remains requiring hard work to find were quite varied. Remains generally took the form of teeth, jaw sections, skull parts, limb bones, and shell-coverings (as in the turtles). These past inhabitants had strange-sounding names such as oreodonts, entelodonts, and hyaenodons. Our list of possible finds included fragments and more complete pieces of rhinos, camels, pigs and pig-like animals, deer, rabbits, predatory cats, and even turtles — all ancient ancestors of current life forms, some of these now extinct.

Hot, dusty, buggy, and brutal are four words best describing our summer search for fossil remains of creatures once roaming these locations. When these animals walked upon the Earth here, the landscape was quite different. What we now saw was a vista of very eroded and sculpted land formations from nature’s never-ceasing weathering and rebuilding of the terrain. Sweat poured from our heads as morning advanced. Windy days led to the taste and feel of pumice-like, very fine sand and silt between the teeth. Recent rains had produced a crop of small, flying insects that you’d suck up into your nostrils at times. It was a taxing experience negotiating your body up and down the inclined badlands structures. Yes, it was often brutal, but through these hunting experiences, the conditions defined in a concrete and tangible way a “connectedness” with the land and the activity of discovering a window to Earth’s past about 30 million years ago. We were “one with the land.”

To imagine Earth so long ago through the fossils we found “now” was a difficult-to-describe experience. Add to that the clear skies at night, the stage being set for star-gazing and looking at other celestial wonders. Light travels about 180,000 miles per second. If a sky object (e.g., star, star cluster, gas cloud, or galaxy) is, let’s say, about 30 million light years from Earth, it’s light only started to leave that object when these creatures were walking about and just now falling on our retinas! Thoughts about the vastness of the universe could not be avoided. It felt like time and space were blended together in some ineffable way — time being the obverse of distance and vice versa. The thought and feeling of this was unavoidable. Even a twelve year old seemed to have some grasp of it.

Was our fossil hunting time together of any spiritual value? If we describe a spiritual moment as some portion of our existence where we are lifted out of ourselves to something “higher” than us that is beyond us but paradoxically within us — as well as transforming us — then my answer is a resounding “yes!”

Sometime after arriving back home, I did more reflection on our fossil adventure and wrote the following in order to express some of my spiritual-philosophical thoughts and feelings related to our trip. Isaac would likely have his own way of expressing what the experience meant to him and what he discovered. I can only speak for myself:

Divine Maker And Sustainer — Evolution Of Life

The divine presence can be known in so many varied ways

We stand in awe of creation, especially all the life forms made

As matter clumped together through the gravitational force

Chemical compounds were made with increasing complexity

Some divine “ignition” occurred to bring about that Earthly life

Life forms slowly changed into more advanced living expressions

Animal consciousness dawned somewhere along the line of change

Humans became the ultimate creation, a transition from this past

The human hallmark as self-consciousness — contemplating oneself

Evolving further to increasing awareness of a guiding creator force

Now pondering the mystery of life unfolding into an unknown future

To blend with universal consciousness, an existence with no end