The Snowboarder's Journal - The Snowboarder's Journal 20.3
FRESH TRACKS AND DEEP TIME
Words: Agent X 2022-11-30 08:18:22
Kaleidoscopic visions in the epochal icy matrix beyond Haines, AK. Photo: Colin Wiseman
Maybe it was the being dead for 22 minutes and then being resuscitated that led me to the understanding that much about life changed for me in 2016. Depending upon which docs you talk with, about 11 to 16 percent of those whose hearts have stopped, have ceased breathing and/or have experienced organ failure are brought back successfully, but only 2 percent of those people go on to live “normal” lives.
Whatever the hell “normal” is.
Mind you, I’m not complaining (not much anyway), though I was left with a few curious side effects including random aphasic seizures where I freeze up and can’t talk. My vision was affected in that lines and textures are now darker and accentuated. Whanging headaches along with a stained-glass effect happen at times and in bright areas, and the sky and clouds especially often look as if they are from a Georges Seurat painting. Perhaps the oddest aspect of post-death living is that I feel adrift in the currents of Deep Time.
We are adventurous and limit-pushing people, often full of bravado, seemingly tempting fate, the forces of nature and good sense. While speed may be a friend, following my experiences, my sole suggestion is to slow down now and then, slow way down. Life’s meanings are those that we give them and those meanings come with time and experience. Perception tends to be a sort of a set of phenomena we all subconsciously agree upon experiencing in the same way, and how we register time is seriously skewed and twisted by our minds, our sensory apparatus and the scale of our incredibly brief life spans.
When I write of Deep Time, I’m talkin’ ’bout hundreds of millions, billions and even longer spans that might as well be eternity to trivial space-time worms such as us. What I’m saying is that due to Deep Time, plate tectonics, volcanism, gravity-driven mass-wasting and weathering, we can’t scientifically exclude the possibilities of previous intelligent, technological, snowboarding non-primate civilizations as if humanity vanished today, little evidence of our existence would be visible in a few tens of thousands of years. Even fossilized slope tools (as well as our cities, art and technology) would be nearly undetectable after just a few million years. The modern snowboard is less than six decades old. Humanity, such as it is, has lasted about 200,000-300,000 years. Earth has abided for more than four and a half billion years, and our universe has persisted 13.7 billion years. Protons likely endure at least 10 decillion years. At least once and likely several times, our currently rapidly warming planet was frozen completely or near-completely.
Long COVID, several heart attacks and an invasive coronary procedure later, I’m sitting, recovering on the balcony and looking out over the expansive, warm and iridescent blue Philippine Sea. While currently living on the tropical island of Saipan, I’m often transported in reverie to what I perceive to be one of “Snowball Earth” epochs that endured for a hundred million years starting back approximately 600 million years past.
Cryogenian Terra is blindingly beautiful, brightly reflecting most of the adolescent Sol’s rays back into the void. Nearly lifeless, pristine and full of potential, waiting for an opportunity. Considering the current state of our world, Ice Planet Earth is a much better Planet Earth.
As long as you have the right base lube and enjoy living in a snow cave. The best part: Nearly the entire globe is a jib park/skating rink and there are zero lift lines.
The visions always end struggling to climb a pressure ridge as the much-closer full moon rises and as the planetary storm builds; winds wailing and howling through endless jagged pinnacles and shards of ice. Feeling myself smile, I know I’m home. Looking back into the lengthening shadows, watching the stinging snow filling my tracks, I feel the Deepness of Time erase me.
For our newer readers: Agent X, a one-time resident of Juneau, AK (among other desirable and sometimes esoteric destinations), has been gracing our pages with his thoughts since he first met our publisher on the streets of Las Vegas a couple of decades ago. As you may discern, recent events have slowed his contributions and taken him farther from freezing environs, but he continues to mind-surf snowy mountains with regularity.
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