As is true of many places we have visited, we feel like we are just barely getting to know this place now that it is time to move on. Yesterday was a lovely day of paddling and hiking and learning more about this area. When I was growing up, I guess I had a negative bias about the dry country of northeastern Montana, but it is a land rich in diversity and wonder.

The Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge isn’t just a spit of land. It is 1.1 million acres on both sides of the river that stretch from the end of the Upper Missouri Wild and Scenic Area to the Fort Peck Dam. It is home to deer and elk, mountain lions, bighorn sheep and a whole host of other animals. It is also rich in ancient history.

The story is that paleontologist Jack Horner, who provided the scientific consultation to the Jurassic Park movies, traveled all around the world in the 1990’s looking for the best dinosaur-dominated ecosystem within a clearly defined time period in the rock layers. He found what he was looking for in his own state. The Hell Creek formation is rich in deposits from the Cretaceous Period and within three miles of where we are camped, paleontologists have unearthed many dinosaurs, including the first Tyrannosaurus rex, found in 1902 by Barnum Brown. Recently in the area, scientists have discovered multiple dinosaurs including Triceratops, Ankylosaurus and other well-known dinosaurs. The Hell Creek and Bearpaw formations are filled with badlands today but once were the shores of a huge Cretaceous ocean filled with fish, squid, ammonites and paddlefish. The paddlefish have endured and adapted and still are caught by anglers to this day. Roaming the seas were giant Mosasaurs, with four-foot long jaws. A very complete mosasaur is on display at the Museum of Geology at South Dakota School of Mines and Technology in Rapid City.

It was in this area that the opening scenes of the movie Jurassic Park were filmed, with the rather eccentric paleontologist, modeled after the real life Jack Horner, digging up dinosaurs. There are active explorations and digs going on to this day. Had we more time, we might have gone exploring and gotten to where we might watch some of the research.

It is a land of deep contrasts. We paddled on the huge Fort Peck reservoir surrounded by millions of acre feet of water and we hiked on dry hillsides covered in cactus, yucca, sage and other scrub plants. It is a good place to have a supply of water with you whenever you hike and it makes sense to keep an eye out for rattlesnakes at all times. We didn’t see any snakes, but we were aware that we were the visitors in their territory.

It is a bit difficult to imagine this area as it was 68 to 65 million years ago, with sandy beaches alongside a deep sea and dinosaurs roaming the semi-tropical hillsides. The scale of the changes that have occurred make the size of human impact seem fairly small by comparison. The massive Fort Peck Dam, which was, at the time it was finished, the largest dam ever built and the reservoir backed up behind the dam are very minor occurrences when viewed in geological time. The lake will eventually fill with silt and the dam will be rendered useless at some point in the distant future. Through it all the river will continue to make its way from the Rocky Mountains to the Gulf of Mexico.

The effects of human action, including climate change and other global impacts seem very significant to us. Our lives span a few decades, at most a few years more than a single century. The scale of time in this place is so much bigger than our limited perspective.

It is a gift to come to a place like this and be reminded of the vastness of God’s creation that spans more years than our limited imaginations can conceive. Even when our perspective is stretched by the discovery of dinosaurs and the tools of scientific dating, we realize that what we can observe is just a tiny fraction of the great expanse of the whole of time and space.

That is not to say that our lives and what we make of them are insignificant. That is one of the great miracles and paradoxes of our faith. We are but a speck in the vastness of the universe but we are a speck that is deemed worthy of relationship with God. Our minds have the consciousness to peer out at the universe and behold its massive distances. Our brains have been given the gift of being able to learn about things that occurred long before our birth - long before there were any humans on this planet. We have been given imaginations that can speculate about the future and the possibilities of humans to travel to other places and experience other dimensions.

I rather enjoy the sense of feeling small in God’s universe. I like to paddle my boat on a lake that is too big for me to cross and to vast for me to fully explore. I like to hike in hills that would take decades for me to feel familiar with their various shapes and paths. I don’t mind the sense that I am a part of a universe that is far bigger than I.

So today we pack up and drive home. It has been a refreshing and varied week. The intensities of family dynamics and relationships, the revisiting of places of my childhood and ancestors, and the exploration of some new territory have made for an interesting and wonderful balance. The work that we do awaits and there are plenty of surprises that are just around the corner. I know that there will be piles of undone tasks and messages to sort through. But those are for tomorrow and today we start by driving down some of the roads less traveled.

It is indeed a luxury to explore this varied world.

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