Passing Through

Human footprints which date back 23,000 years have surfaced in White Sands National Park. Might the prints belong to a man spearfishing on the shores of some now extinct ocean? Or to a woman collecting shells there for a bauble? Or even to a child running at play, or from some ancient danger? Who is to say, except that a human was here, and once passed this way?

23,000 years? There are footprints found in Greece which scientists claim are +5m years old. “El Graeco” they call the owner of the foot who made them, though they cannot know his name, or even she had one. This is, of course, even older than the prints of “Lucy” found in Tanzania… twice as old, in fact.

Neil Armstrong’s footprints are not nearly that old, but they are still up there. With a strong enough telescope you could see them. It could be that Musk will send someone up who wipes them away in the soft dust, whether purposefully or accidentally. It will not really matter that they are destroyed, I supposed, as their significance will have been lost anyway, at that time. And maybe they already are insignificant, as NASA conspiracy theories abound.

Still, they are there. I know they are.

Well, “who are you,” some of you might be asking, and “how can you know”? Excellent questions these. I applaud you for asking them. They are questions I might have ventured myself, once upon a time, though they are also ones with no good answers, for my footprints (if any can still be found) are as irrelevant now as are those discovered in White Sands.

For you see, I am laid out. My body probed, picked clean, and wiped over; vanity’s and insecurities notwithstanding. With any luck my suit is gray (as I abhor black and blue) and my tie red. Other than that I do not care, nor do such trivialities matter anymore… not now, as the lid is being closed, leaving me safe inside my own capsule. Safe to wait 23,000 years. Safe to wait +5m years. Safe to wait an eternity until unearthed and opened, whence I can be marveled over by those who will cease to exist themselves, in their own good time.

But should that footprint of mine be found someday, it will be a clean print and honest, left by a man who passed this way with the intelligence to question what was told, and the courage to believe what was true.