It’s high school graduation time again and our attention turns to that special threshold of modern life. I am reminded how those last months fly past as kids take care of final details, readying to cross into the adult world.
Then summer hits, time slows down, and you realize you haven’t seen your friends in ages — or at least two weeks!
I have willed to never forget what it was like to be a little kid and how achingly long it took for my birthday to arrive. Only the very young are so perfectly present in the moment that they find it hard to have faith that the future will ever come.
Speaking of youth, a hydro-geo colleague of mine was saying he believes that earth science should be taught in the 12th grade rather than to ninth-graders, to capitalize on students’ maturity as well as their enthusiasm for the outside world before they leave home.
Not a bad idea, but my hobby horse is that geology should be taught in about fourth grade — or at least the concept of the geologic time scale and the thousands, millions, and multiple billions of years that have come before this moment we’re in right now.
The concept of time scales seems important to grasp early in one’s life, before time speeds up.
We all know how quickly time flies watching kids grow up, with years and then decades disappearing in the space of a moment, it seems. Trees are another visible yardstick for the passage of time. The trees planted on our property in honor of passed family members remind us daily.
I’m not sure why I’m preoccupied with time right now but it could be a coping mechanism—my mind distracting me from the subject of age. My birthday is later this month and a quick rounding up of my age brings it to the normal retirement decade, and rounding up again takes me to a clean 100.
Yikes! If only I could will my birthday to “never get here” like it felt when I was little.
Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes …
Just last week I heard a story on the Seattle jazz station, KNKX, that featured volunteer radio hosts from our local KSQM expressing the delight of sharing songs from the swing era with their many fans in Sequim. Let’s figure those fans are in their 80s, because I’m guessing baby boomers are more likely delighted by the Beatles, Beach Boys and perhaps some Led Zeppelin.
Change in music genres is a cultural indicator of the vast shifts that have happened in the span of a single century. Technologic evidence is everywhere … to get around we have gone from using horses to fossil fuels to electricity, and to communicate we’ve advanced from using horses to making video calls into space. Increased scientific understanding has lengthened our lifespan and protected us from the most collateral damage of our progress — or perhaps just the most noticeable.
My personal example of scientific advance is a little awkward, since I recall that just yesterday when I was studying geology in college plate tectonics theory was still being worked out and the formation of the Olympic Mountains was under debate.
Global warming was hardly a paragraph in most textbooks.
Now we know about the Cascadia Subduction Zone and that earthquake recurrence intervals suggest we’re due for another big one. And we know that glaciers are melting much faster than they’re growing, making summertime water crises more likely.
The high, steady snowmelt flows in the Dungeness River right now may be another reason that time is on my mind. As a hydrologist, thinking about water supply is automatic. Other than flash storm flows in winter, June is when the most water is delivered to the Sequim Prairie.
As you might imagine, thinking about both water and time scales gets me worrying.
How has our water changed in 100 years? In Sequim we’ve gone from open ditches serving vast farmlands to pressurized irrigation pipes snaking through subdivisions, and we’ve gone from healthful fish and shellfish harvests to endangered salmon and toxic clams.
Suffice it to say that our easy solutions to most issues are used up. It will take progress in technology progress and political will to tap harder solutions that might quench society’s thirst without losing the biologic integrity we depend on.
When time flies yet again and I turn 100, there are a few things I hope for. Among the most important, I hope for summer snow fields in the mountains that provide for our grandchildren and their brethren in the rivers and bays.
And I hope that KSQM will be playing the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Geek Moment
May was very dry (less than 0.1 inch of rain) but the intense hail storms this weekend made up for it!
For the 2018 water year (started Oct. 1, 2017):
• At Sequim 2E weather station (elev. 25 feet): Cumulative rainfall = 19 inches (way above normal); Most rainfall in 24 hours = 1.14 inches on Dec. 18; Lowest temp = 21 degrees F on Jan. 31; Highest temp = 79 degrees F on May 13
• At the Dungeness SNOTEL station (elev. 4,010 feet) = 0 feet (assumed, since station data not available)
• At the USGS gage on the Dungeness River (Mile 11.2), Highest flow = 2,980 cfs on Nov. 23; Lowest flow = 101 cfs on Oct. 16. Range for the past month is 450-1,250 cfs (1 cubic foot per second, or just less than 650,000 gallons per day)
On the morning of June 11:
• Sunny but recovering from downpours all weekend!
• Dungeness River= 450 cfs (generally trending down recently probably due to cooler temps)
• Bell Creek at Carrie Blake Park= no flow; at the mouth at Washington Harbor= about 2 cfs
Ann Soule is a hydrogeologist immersed in the Dungeness watershed since 1990, now Resource Manager for City of Sequim. Reach Ann at colunists@sequimgazette.com or via her blog @ watercolumnsite.wordpress.com.
