Red Green Show

Interesting how just one branch of this tree produced these red and orange colors while the rest is still vibrant green. I don't remember what kind of tree it was; perhaps a kind of maple. It certainly stands out though.

Which leads to some thoughts I have had about individuality. We often see in people the desire to stand out from the crowd as an expression of one's own identity. As one of the first two punk rockers in the small village where I grew up, the concept is close to home. It begs the question though: "In a room full of punk rockers, which one is the real individual?" Many years later, I was talking to a geologist friend, who knew about my past fashion sense, about the dress code for the company Christmas dinner coming up at the time. When I mentioned that I had planned to wear my tuxedo, my friend exclaimed that I was bowing to the establishment...betraying my 'rebel' self...and that she was attending in her jeans and field shirt.

"You think so? Hmmm. I would imagine that geologists being geologists, most would be doing the same; or maybe throw on a sport jacket or something."

"Right. We don't do the business uniform."

"Ahh, and in this way all these geologists would be bucking the trend."

"Right."

"And one tuxedo standing in this crowd would be...?"

Well, that wasn't so much driven by the desire to express my individuality as it was to shake things up a little...that can be fun sometimes. I had learned much before that exchange that the battle toward the declaration of individuality was not one necessarily successfully fought on the outside, but very much on the inside. A strong sense of identity can wear any clothes. Thomas Jefferson is credited with saying,""In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock." The crux of growing up is figuring out what kind of rock one is.

I'm thinking metamorphic...I like change...and gneiss things.