Geoscience Reference
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except Antarctica. Although each trip offered an opportunity to learn something
new, every trip ended with my books, baggage, and suitcases needing a thorough
dusting just as if I were still earning my fi rst dollar in the bookstore.
Only halfway through my career and still learning, my academic life received a
once-in-a-lifetime boost as a result of meeting Kutílek during an international sci-
entifi c meeting. Although he may assert that when we met he belonged to a country
in the underdeveloped part of the world of sciences, he was at that time and remains
today a contemporary leader for explaining the evolution of plants and animals
including Homo sapiens and their adaptability to the ever-changing conditions of
soils and global climate. Before meeting him, it never occurred to me to seriously
include long-term geologic processes associated with soil genesis, paleopedology,
climate change, and archeology that had impacted contemporary soils and their liv-
ing communities. And as I walked across and dug into dusty soil surfaces around the
globe, I never thought of myself as being a member of the living community that I
sought to understand.
The second half of my career, fi lled with many visits to outdoor environments
examining soil profi les, fossils from the past, and artifacts stemming from prehis-
toric communities, was absolutely exquisite owing to my unique inspiration from
frequent communications with my greatest personal friend, Kutílek. I even returned
to Arizona to walk once again down to the bottom of the Grand Canyon, but at that
time, to observe different geologically buried soil profi les, to study remnants of
deteriorated Native American villages, and to pay more attention to the impact of
the Colorado River eroding and cutting through a region that began to uplift 75 mil-
lion years ago. And of course, each visit ended with the necessity of removing the
dust that accumulated on my baggage and me.
As I recall my lifetime activities, I now believe that the statement attributed to
Antonio Usurero by Kutílek was absolutely true - not fi ctitious. I was born in a
dusty environment; earned my fi rst dollar in the middle of a dusty room; spent my
entire career studying the intricate complexities, movements, and reactions of dust
in living and inert entities on the Earth's surface; and today still learn more about
soil without focusing on activities to become rich or to make lots of money. I have
always and happily followed an exploratory path directed into soils. I have no inten-
tions to stop in the future until, like other living global organisms, my lifeless resi-
dues rejoice within the soil and other domains of the Earth's captivating
environment.
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