Riding Fire

For all I know, the title of this blog is already a cliche, because it's just too easy. Doesn't it shock every monkey who thinks about it, that soft bodied mammals like us would even consider getting in instrumented lockers, ignite unbelievably powerful explosives directly beneath them, and rocket off our warm, securing earth into space? Space? Defined by incomprehensible vastness, killing cold, and absolutely no snacks? How curious would such an animal have to be?

I can't pretend I don't understand that level of curiosity, but it may not be a survival trait.

Alligators thrive in the 84,000 acre protected area owned by NASA near Cape Canaveral. Not perhaps in the immediate launch area, since humans die within 800 feet from the impact of sound waves alone. Yet, on the bus ride from our morning briefing for this very impressive tour to the Astronaut Hall of Fame, a guy in front of us spotted at least three gators in the ditches beside the road. (I saw two, several great blue herons, pelicans, and a host of egrets.) An alligator, our Florida friends Mari-Claire and Kira tell us, have a brain the size of a chicken's. And yet they have proved to be as durable a descendant of the Jurassic Age as turtles, sharks, or maybe, in a way, chickens. These animals have found their evolutionary groove.

Discontent in ditches, we may not last so long. We may vault past our limitations instead, at least for a few amazing moments, riding fire.