Working at the Falls of the Ohio is a reflective experience and thinking about the construct of “time” pops into my head a lot. To reinforce matters even more, less than a mile from my “studio” is this giant clock ticking away in a grand, but conventional manner. I once read that the largest clock face in the world was at another Colgate Palmolive plant in Jersey City, New Jersey, but it was demolished in 1988. Our clock, the one in Jeffersonville, IN, I believe is now the biggest. At night it glows red. The building was once a prison before the toothpaste factory relocated here. Recently, it was sold to another interest and we aren’t quite sure what’s going to happen with certainty, but it is everybody’s wish that the clock remain. From downtown Louisville, you can tell time by looking across the Ohio River.
About a mile or so away from the clock is another landmark, the Falls of the Ohio State Park in Clarksville, IN. If it had nothing else, it would be one of the most important fossil sites in the world. In the rocks here you will find more species from the Devonian Age than anywhere else. In the time line of life, the fossils here are the high point of life as it existed over 375 million years ago. Essentially, this bedrock limestone is the bottom of the river. The best time to see these rocks is in the late summer and early fall when the water level is low.
Although today’s park is a fresh water environment, back in Devonian times this was a shallow, marine reef ecosystem dominated by various corals. When these now long extinct animals were alive, they existed somewhere in the latitude of the present day Bahama Islands. The Devonian age is noted for the appearance of fish, the first animals with backbones, but here at the Falls their fossils are rare. Contemporary fish bones, however, are not. Here is a carp skeleton.
There are many lessons about life in these rocks. I often wonder as I stand upon them whether intelligence and sentience will prove to be an evolutionary advantage. I think that’s why we are here. So far, I think the book is still open on that one. I found this faux-fossil (one of two such balls found over the years here) and couldn’t resist the juxtaposition. Fossil collecting in the park is prohibited, but I did pocket this pink ball with its embossed trilobite.
Presently, the migratory birds are feeling that rhythm to move northward. The yellow-rumped warbler is the first warbler to arrive and the last to leave. This male has staked out his territory and is singing away as his kind has done for thousands of years. Last year was spectacular for warblers. Here’s hoping for a repeat.
Artist at Exit 0 Riverblog 
gotta say that i think “intelligence” and particularly self-consciousness will not prove to be an evolutionary advantage… i remember steven jay gould’s lecture where he speculated that if a bacterium that can exist at 600 degrees were miraculously allowed to swap this ability with a human’s self consciousness and was granted the ability to voice an opinion, it might say, “yeah, that’s great but let’s see how you do in 600 degrees”. our downfall will be particularly our obsession with future and past and the long forgotten ability to live in the present.
Here’s an old “time” joke that I was reminded of recently:
Two farmers are talking to each other, but one is holding a pig up to a fruit heavy branch of an apple tree. The other farmer, sans pig, notices that there are fallen apples littering the ground and turns to his friend and says, “Wouldn’t you save time if you let the pig eat the apples on the ground?” The man with the pig replies, ” Time don’t mean nothing to a pig”.