Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
5
Viewed from the distance of the moon, the astonishing thing about the Earth, catching the breath, is that
it is alive. The photographs show the dry, pounded surface of the moon in the foreground, dead as an old
bone. Aloft, floating free beneath the moist, gleaming membrane of bright blue sky, is the rising Earth, the
only exuberant thing in this part of the cosmos. If you could look long enough, you would see the swirling
of the great rifts of white cloud, covering and uncovering the half-hidden masses of land. If you had been
looking a long, geologic time, you could have seen the continents themselves in motion, drifting apart on
their crustal plates, held aloft by the fire beneath. It has the organized, self-contented look of a live creature,
full of information, marvelously skilled in handling the sun.
—Lewis Thomas
The Lives of a Cell
