This land is your museum

I kind of quit like an afterthought. I had stopped the whole coffee thing many times before and the day of headache I experienced never really needed much planning. So I was not expecting to wake up on day two unable to move from nausea.

Coupled with a bad weather forecast, my journey paused in Bozeman a couple extra days.

One full day of zombie-ing around and one amazing massage gift later, my haze cleared and I decided to partake in one of Bozeman’s main attractions.

"Big Al" 

This is happening now!

Maybe I was a bit biased, having just toured through some of the most dramatic landscapes in Montanta, but I was absolutely enamored with the Museum of the Rockies. I never knew that Montana was such fertile ground for Dino digging but because of the topography of its landscape, erosion has exposed just the right layers to create an interactive fossil playground. There have been fossils found in 48 of the 56 counties in the state! Much of the Dinosaur and geology exhibits were constructed from research done by Montana State University students and there was also an active lab that you could look into to see the fossil castings they are currently piecing together. I’ve been to the natural history museum before but I don’t think I was ever as struck by the massive bones as I was here. They had one rib bone that was believed to belong to an 80-foot, 24-ton creature! I felt like such a little kid, going back through the time periods to read every panel as a review of what we had learned in Glacier. The admission was good for two days, so I went back the next day also.

Some nifty things I learned and saw:

This is our Precambrian earth 4.5 Billion years ago!

Remember that mediocre looking rock in glacier? This is what it would have looked like when it was alive! 

This is a Microbrial Mat on a live Stromatolite. The stromatolites started dying off when we started seeing more complex life forms that learned to use oxygen (the oxygen that had been put into the atmosphere was previously produced as waste through the photosynthesizing Microbes) and it is believed that this is because those life forms ate all the microbial mats. So now these single celled organisms only live in extreme areas like Yellowstone’s hotsprings.

This dude is a Pikaia and we all evolved from him. He is the first vertebrate with a backbone characteristic. 

This giant vertebrate belonged to a Sauropod. Paleontologists like studying them because they were so common and lived so long despite a ridiculous proportion issue. If their body were our size, their heads would have been like little golf balls on long straw necks. They were however, very light for their size because in between the vertabre were air sacs that functioned sort of like birds, allowing them to breathe more effectively and grow larger. The way the muscles and tendons were attached also suggests that those big long tails were carried parallel to the ground, as opposed to dragged.

I ran out of time to check this part out but the museum also maintains this 1800 home, complete with an all-heirloom garden. Every crop dates back to the 1850s or earlier!

 I've never been very good at processing large sums of information about scientific processes so it was especially helpful to go through time here, looking at all of the shifting plates and flooding/erosion periods after having been in those areas. The affinity for them helps the information stick.


They also had a pretty snazzy NASA exhibit up and I spent almost two hours touching moon rocks and clicking interactive buttons to learn about our different satellites and waving my hands in front of infared light readers. And of course, I made sure to get a seat in their Planetarium (supposedly one of the most technologically advanced in the country.)

The first conceptual drawing of a lunar orbit - doesn't it all look so simple? 

The wheel of the Apollo 11 Land Rover is made out of a layering of spring-like material,
giving it buoyancy and cushion for the rough terrain. 

Rocks from the moon are compiled of Basalt, Anorthosites and Breccias.
These are all basic sediments of earth and are older than 99% of our rocks
so the moon is a key component to understanding early earth geology.

These Fuel cells are what allow rockets to keep going after
the initial launch. Hydrogen enters the negatively charged anode, splitting its atoms into protons and electrons. The electrons are passed through circuitry to create energy while the protons are blocked. Oxygen enters the positively charged cathod and as Hydrogen atoms re-combine, the fuel cell releases pure water as waste. These highly efficient systems are now being looked into for future self-driving cars. The exhibit emphasized a ton of ways in which NASA's innovations have effected our daily lives. That was neat. They're responsible for progress in solar energy, CAT/MRI Machines, insulation barriers in cars and memory foam, among other things...

I notice that when grown ups go into Museums, they take a highly abbreviated approach. If kids are present and asking a lot of questions they do their best to answer them, with various levels of engagement and accuracy. But for most of the time, the kids are off getting fascinated on their own accord or some adults come in untethered to any oversight responsibility. And yet, the way they engage with the exhibit is brief, making commentary as to the impressive size or look of a design, if anything. Rarely do they stop to read a full panel. And if they do it is usually half-heartedly while carrying on a conversation with a peer. I just don't understand the use in going to a museum if you aren't going to try and understand what you are looking at. Maybe it is an age thing. Maybe they are so solidly into their roles in life that a simple glimpse at other pers
pectives is enough. Maybe since I don't quite know where  my passions will land me yet, I cling to everything as a possible spark for some unrealized path.

But maybe that is important. To keep that unlimited notion of possibility. To feel like a kid every once in a while.

The morning before my headache set in, I also ventured to reach the big ‘M’ on the side of the Bridger Range overlooking the city. 5,800 very steep feet later, the M was an unimpressive pile of white rock. But the view was amazing.