Powers of Ten

A Walk Under the Tall Trees Near the Shores of Lake Michigan…

Years ago, I saw a short film called “Powers of Ten” that made a big impression on me. Here’s a link if you haven’t already seen it.

The zooming out in this short film is pretty amazing but it’s the zooming in that blew me away. In my alternate life I would have loved to be a theoretical physicist.

Here’s the connection: on a recent visit to the suburbs of Chicago I walked the neighborhoods near the shores of Lake Michigan. In the suburb I was in the leaves were coming out on some trees but on others the leaves had not yet appeared or were barely appearing. The trees that impressed me most were the giant Burr oak trees. Leviathan comes to mind. You feel humbled standing underneath them in much the same way that one feels humbled when thinking about the Universe of the micro and macroscopic.

I craned my camera up to get an image of the magnificent canopies. They could have been the veins of a human or other animal, rivers and streams of the Earth, rivulets and gullies in the desert. Isn’t nature wonderful?